THE CONTRIBUTION OF THE CHURCH TO THE DEMOCRACY OF THE FUTURE

The purpose of this column is to keep religious educators abreast of the relevant significant research in the general field of psychology. Its implications for methods and materials in religious education are clear. Religious educators may well take advantage of every new finding in scientific research.

Each abstract or group is preceded by an evaluation and interpretative comment, which aims to guide the reader in understanding the research reported.

All of these abstracts are from PSYCHOLOGICAL ABSTRACTS, and used by permission of that periodical. The abstract number is Volume 28, Number 9‐10, September‐October, 1954.     

ANALYSIS OF CONTENTS,CONTRIBUTORS, AND RESEARCH DIRECTIONS: MAPPING PUBLICATION ROUTES IN THE JOURNAL

A content analysis of the journal Religious Education: An Interfaith Journal of Spirituality, Growth and Transformation was conducted for a 10-year period between 1993–2002 (Volume 88, 1–Volume 97, 4). A total of 325 articles (277 authors) were analyzed into 3 primary research directions (theoretical, qualitative, and quantitative). Author institutional affiliation, religious identity, position, geographic location, and number of contributions were also computed. Implications for the Journal and the field of religious education are discussed.     

Religion in child sexual abuse forensic interviews

Religion is an under-studied factor affecting children’s sexual victimization and their willingness to discuss such experiences. In this qualitative study, 39 child forensic interviewers and child advocacy center (CAC) directors in the United States discussed religious influences on children’s sexual abuse experiences, their relationships to CACs, and their disclosures in the forensic setting. Participants reported both harmonious and dissonant interactions between religiously observant children and families on one hand and child advocacy centers on the other. Themes emerged related to abuse in religious contexts and religious justifications for abuse; clergy and religious supports for disclosures as well as suppression of disclosures; and the ways CACS accommodate religious diversity and forge collaborations with clergy. Participants discussed a wide range of religions. Recommendations for practice and research are included.     

PERCEPTIONS OF THE PURPOSES OF EDUCATION AMONG RELIGIOUS TEACHER EDUCATION STUDENTS IN ISRAEL

This research examines the purposes of education perceived by teacher education students preparing for a career in Israeli public religious schools. Participants were 164 men and 364 women in their first or final year of teacher education. They responded to questionnaires that explored educational purposes in four ways. Twenty-four students also were interviewed. Major results indicate that: 1) universal and religious purposes of education are considered highly important; 2) men attribute greater importance than women to religious- Torah purposes; 3) academic-intellectual growth is not considered an important educational purpose. Implications of these and other findings are considered for educational policy and practice in public religious schools.     

THE CORRELATION OF THE SUNDAY SCHOOL TO THE WORK OF THE LOCAL CHURCH

This article reports the ways five leaders situated within academic institutions widened the imagination of the role of religious education. From their own contexts and evolving vocations, they led a conversation hosted by the Forum on Religious Education and Academic Institutions. As they shared challenges and opportunities they see, they also showed how their lives prototyped diverse roles for religious educators. In so doing, they create multiple pathways for others to imagine new ways of adapting the field. The author ends with her own conclusions about how robust conversations such as this—across multiple religious traditions and diverse contexts of practice—might contribute meaningfully to the vocational identities of individual religious educators and to new, adaptive networks that may express collective vocations evolving within the field.     

A DIALOGICAL APPROACH TO CRITICAL BIBLE STUDY: THE USE OF SCHWABIAN DELIBERATION TO INTEGRATE THE WORK OF BIBLE SCHOLARS WITH EDUCATIONAL PHILOSOPHY

This article uses analytic tools provided by Joseph Schwab to address a “practical” problem faced by many liberal religious educational institutions: the tension between historical-critical study of the Bible and an affective connection to it. This problem is painted in broad strokes; then two contemporary Bible scholars, Jeffrey Tigay and Yair Zakovitch, are analyzed for the “principles of enquiry” used in their disciplinary orientations. This analysis is merged with a dialogical hermeneutics approach to text, using the work of Kepnes, Buber, and Gadamer. The article concludes by considering how this study might inform Bible curricula in liberal religious educational contexts.     

The religious educational legacy of Mordechai (Motti) Bar-Lev: scholar and visionary

The aim of this article is to analyse the educational and spiritual legacy of Mordechai (Motti) Bar-Lev, one of the pillars of religious education research in Israel. We first analyse the ideological–theoretical foundations that underlay his thought and provided inspiration for his scientific writing. Next, we analyse the principal dilemmas on which he focused in his research, and finally we attempt to consider the special nature of his work and its contribution to religious education research. Bar-Lev’s quantitative and qualitative research dealt with the elite of religious Zionism who grappled with traditionalism and modernity, and principally with its habitat – state religious education. Bar-Lev will be remembered not only as having informed the field of religious education in Israel, but, most of all, as the researcher who shaped its future.     

THE MISREPRESENTATION OF RELIGION IN MODERN BRITISH (RELIGIOUS) EDUCATION

ABSTRACT:  The purpose of this paper is to articulate a new perspective on British multi-faith religious education that both complements and, in part, subsumes existing critiques. My argument, while controversial, is straightforward: it is that British religious education has misrepresented the nature of religion in efforts to commend itself as contributing to the social aims of education, as these are typically framed in liberal democratic societies. Contemporary multi-faith religious education is placed in context and its underlying theological and philosophical commitments identified and criticised. It is concluded that current representations of religion in British religious education are limited in their capacity to challenge racism and religious intolerance, chiefly because they are conceptually ill equipped to develop respect for difference.     

THE TEACHING OF ENGLISH IN SECONDARY SCHOOLS

Most research into religious education has concentrated upon older children, but this paper reports findings obtained from the teachers of junior (seven to II years old) school children. From the content of religious education lessons and the overall religious sub‐cultures of classroom and school, conclusions are drawn about the religious socialization process of the child. A distinction is made between the child's own religious quest for meaning and the Christian culture which is generally accepted in Britain and taught in school. The child's religion is divided into the cognitive and the emotive while the socialization process is treated as cognitive, explicit and implicit. The general conclusion reached is that religious education lessons do not respond to the child's own cognitive level and are thus likely to confuse, whereas the religious life of classroom and school leads to an emotive affinity with Christianity. Thus ambivalence towards the Christian religion is produced in the child.     

THE PARENTS COUNCIL

The aim of this article is to consider the psychological mechanisms that may prevent individuals from achieving religious tolerance and religious pluralism. After defining these concepts and explaining why they are desirable outcomes, four psychological obstacles to the achievement of religious tolerance and religious pluralism will be explored by considering both research in psychology and the literature on religious education. The aim of identifying these obstacles is to enable us to suggest how they might be overcome through education, and what the implications for religious education are.     

ANNUAL REPORT OF THE GENERAL SECRETARY

The purpose of this column is to keep religious educators abreast of the relevant significant research in the general field of psychology. Its implications for methods and materials in religious education are clear. Religious educators may well take advantage of every new finding in scientific research.

Each abstract or group is preceded by an evaluation and interpretative comment, which aims to guide the reader in understanding the research reported.

All of these abstracts are from PSYCHOLOGICAL ABSTRACTS, and used by permission of that periodical. The abstract number is Volume 29, Number 2, April, 1955.     

INTERPRETING THE EXPERIENCES OF CHRISTIANS,MUSLIMS, AND JEWS ENGAGED IN INTERRELIGIOUS DIALOGUE: A COLLABORATIVE RESEARCH STUDY

This article describes preliminary findings of a doctoral research project undertaken within the doctoral program in adult and continuing education at National-Louis University in Chicago. The project, inspired by the authors' own experiences of interreligious dialogue with each other as well as their encounter with the work of Boys and Lee (1996), investigates the experiences of particular Muslims, Christians, and Jews, who have engaged in interreligious dialogue for at least one year. The authors, a Muslim and a Jewish adult and religious educator, are two of the twenty participants in the study.     

Acculturation and religion in schools: the views of young people from minority belief backgrounds

This paper aims to explore the relationship between religious identity, acculturation strategies and perceptions of acculturation orientation in the school context amongst young people from minority belief backgrounds. Based on a qualitative study including interviews with 26 young people from religious minority belief backgrounds in Northern Ireland, it is argued that acculturation theory provides a useful lens for understanding how young people from religious minority belief backgrounds navigate majority religious school contexts. Using a qualitative approach to explore acculturation theory enables an in‐depth understanding of the inter‐relationship between minority belief youth's acculturation strategies and their respective school contexts. Similar to previous research, integrationist attitudes generally prevailed amongst minority belief young people in this study. The findings highlight how young people negotiate their religious identities in a complex web of inter‐relationships between their minority religious belief community and the mainstream school culture as represented through peer and staff attitudes, school ethos and practices and religious education. Young people demonstrated differentiated understandings of acculturation orientations within the school context, which they evaluated on the basis of complex perceptions of educational policy, interpersonal relationships and individuals' motivations. Findings are discussed in view of acculturation tensions, which arose particularly in relation to the religious education curriculum and their implications for opt‐out provision as stipulated by human rights law.     

THE THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY THE LABORATORY METHOD IN THE DEPARTMENT OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION

This article attempts to develop a practical theology of resistance for religious education. It is inspired by the struggle of indigenous people in Guatemala in their memorialization of the Rio Negro Massacre in Guatemala, celebrations of International Women's Day, and the creation of a school for survivors of the violence surrounding Rio Negro. Remembrance, relationship-building, and reclaiming space will be suggested as practices to be employed by religious education. This article proposes that these three interrelated elements are integral to religious education. It concludes that a theology of resistance equipped with these three aspects promotes and deepens a practice of faith, emunah, to nourish.     

THE RELIGIOUS BASIS OF WORLD ORGANIZATION

The purpose of this column is to keep religious educators abreast of relevant significant research in the general field of psychology. Its implications for methods and materials in religious education are clear. Religious educators may well take advantage of every new finding in scientific research

Each abstract or group is preceded by an evaluation and interpretive comment, which aims to guide the reader in understanding the research reported

All of these abstracts are from PSYCHOLOGICAL ABSTRACTS, and used by permission of that periodical. The abstract numbers are from Volume 23, 1949

The literature in developmental psychology grows at an overwhelming rate     

THE THEOLOGICAL ANTHROPOLOGY OF THOMAS GROOME

Theological anthropology in the work of Thomas Groome can be understood by exploring the relationship between subjectivity and knowledge in his major works. This relationship is constituted by five fundamental elements: the knowing subject in religious education as existential, liberational, pedagogical, theological, and critical. A comprehension of this constitutive core of his theological anthropology affords a map for understanding the logic of his contribution to religious education.     

肃北蒙古人的宗教信仰特征

肃北蒙古人的先民大约从18世纪60年代起就陆续进入了今天的肃北地区。在特定的社会历史环境中，他们借鉴吸收了周围诸多民族的文化元素，不断适应新的社会文化环境，形成了自己独具风格的文化特征。为了进一步认识扣了解肃北蒙古人文化在社会转型中的现状尤其是宗教文化的现状，笔者对甘肃省肃北蒙古族自治县进行过扎实的田野调查。经调查发现当今肃北蒙古人社会生活中大量残存古老萨满教信仰习俗。并部分习俗与现令的佛教信仰交融为一体；除此肃北蒙古人佛教信仰的独具特色之处是其僧俗不分现象；另外如今肃北蒙古人信仰出现了多样化扣弱势化趋势便构成了他们宗教信仰的特征。     

Faith,Work, and Praxis: A Process Model of Integration for Christian Student Affairs Administrators

The scholarship regarding faith integration practice has largely focused on faculty work; however, the field faces a paucity of data-supported approaches to understanding faith integration in the work lives of administrators. In this qualitative study, we developed a conceptual model that employs the concept of praxis to analyze the process by which mid-level student affairs administrators integrate their faith in their professional work lives. Findings show that the praxis model illuminates the sources of religious commitment that student affairs administrators drew upon when merging their faith commitments with their work lives. The model also highlights the introspective nature of faith integration, the power dynamics inherent in their interactions with students and superiors, and the individual and systemic change that resulted. Participants' religious habitus, reflective of personal experience as well as professional socialization, were both unconsidered and deliberate. Despite participants' claims that integration occurred organically and reflexively, intentionality before, during, and after integration situations was a hallmark of these exemplars' professional practice. The praxis model may be a valuable professional development tool for individuals, institutions, and graduate programs.     

Student Constructions of Fit: Narratives About Incongruence at a Faith-Based University

Decades of student persistence and retention literature has brought to light factors of social, academic, and religious fit that influence a student's decision to remain at or depart from an institution. At Christian institutions, increasing student pluralism raises the likelihood that students will not fit religiously. This qualitative study of 21 first-time, full-time students contributes to the existing literature by exploring how students who already feel they do not fit for religious reasons work at constructing a sense of fit at a Christian research university. Many participants coped with religious discontinuity by redefining specifically Christian practices and teachings in terms that were personally palatable: as either general moral lessons that would help them to be a better person or as cultural insights that would benefit them social and professionally in the future. In many cases, university staff were instrumental. Finally, participants worked to construct an acceptable level of fit, or fit threshold, through various combinations of social fit, academic fit, and religious fit, often compensating for one with others. As Christian institutions increasingly invite students from diverse religious backgrounds into their campus community, understanding ways that these students attempt to adapt to religious incongruence will be paramount.