This paper considers the tension that can exist in the aims of religious education between the desire to encourage open-minded, critical thinking through exposure to diverse traditions, ideas and cultures and the encouragement, overt or otherwise, into uniformity whereby learners take on the values of a particular tradition, culture or ideology…

This paper explores the possibilities of teaching Genesis and the Popol Vuh, the Mayan creation account, in an interdisciplinary course at a church-related institution. The course is part of an alternative, interdisciplinary core curriculum typically taken by two hundred students a year at the university. A comparison of the Popol Vuh with Genesis…

The challenges of communicating a Christian worldview in higher education are considerable. Called to help students develop a Christian worldview, instructors must devise specific strategies for the transformation of student thinking. How does one do this? It requires, in part, rethinking our assumptions about the Christian worldview as a concept…

Post-Reformation societies and states that thought they had put religious wars behind them have been caught unawares by the vehemence of religious dissent that has exploded in their midst, sometimes literally, since the 1970s. I maintain that key Enlightenment propositions that established the means for peaceful religious co-existence seriously…

This essay explores the effects evangelical and/or fundamentalist Christian educators could have on the experiences of lesbian, gay and bisexual (LGB) individuals in schools. Evangelical and/or fundamentalist Christian educators' beliefs about LGB individuals may be at odds with the goals of equity, social justice and activism a true multicultural…

Jim Fay and James Dobson are two of America's most visible, popular, and influential "experts" on the topics of parenting and discipline for children. Dobson is widely known for the "pro-family" political activism of Focus on The Family, the organization he founded and currently directs. He first made a name for himself as a…

Faculty and administrators of a private Christian university responded to measures of overall, intrinsic, and extrinsic job satisfaction as well as organizational and religious commitment. The survey measured responses on a five-point Likert-type scale. Data were statistically analyzed by using descriptive statistics and factor analysis. Results…

This paper seeks to provide a conceptual framework for understanding the topic of public aid to Christian schools in a Reformed Christian perspective. To do so, I need to clarify a Reformed Christian approach in regard to this topic and then review the studies of the issue in legal and educational aspects in the light of the Reformed perspective.…

During the last third of the twentieth century, Christian schooling in the United States was typically identified with the growing conservative, evangelical Protestant movement of that time period. After several United States Supreme Court cases had effectively secularized public schooling by the mid-1960s, the American educational landscape was…

Questions about the relationship between religion and politics are discussed with particular focus on the consequences for religious education. Norway is taken as an example of a country where increasing cultural diversity challenges traditional politics of religion. In the present climate of conflicting views on the role of religion in politics,…

In 2003, the UCLA Higher Education Research Institute (HERI) began surveying undergraduates and faculty in a multi-institutional, longitudinal study designed to identify patterns of spirituality and religiousness among college students. Initial results revealed a high level of student interest in spiritual values, but they also showed that most…

Epistemology is the branch of philosophy that seeks answers to two main questions: How do we know? and How do we know we know? This paper is concerned with how four major schools of thought have addressed these questions and the implications that their answers to these questions have for education. The paper begins by discussing how four major…

Professional ethics is becoming a topic of high interest for counselors and counselor educators. Dogmatism and orthodox Christian religious beliefs are two variables which may help to explain the relationship between a counselor's personal characteristics and his or her ethical orientation. This study examined these variables and their…

The meaning and purposes of a Catholic college and the example of Madonna College in Michigan were assessed. Literature and documents were surveyed, and interviews were conducted with educators, philosophers, and theologians. The mission statement and documents of Madonna College were also reviewed. Consideration was given to: the identity of…

Myth is integral to modern as well as ancient societies in its service to multiple interrelated social functions. Among these are to explain phenomena and direct action, to justify particular interests or practices, to dramatize ideals, and to provide cultural cohesion. Three prevailing myths that are especially problematic are the myths of…