Cultivating a Religiously Literate Society: Challenges and Possibilities for America's Public Schools

This article presents a rationale as well as a proposal for a religious literacy curriculum in U.S. public high schools. Relying on the Religious Education curriculum currently in use in the United Kingdom, the authors sketch a religious literacy curriculum designed to help students thrive in a pluralistic and democratic society. In order to help young citizens develop the skills, dispositions, and knowledge to thrive in an increasingly global, pluralistic, and democratic society, they need to become religiously literate. For students to be religiously literate they must learn to respect the religious other as well as understand the role of religions in contributing to civic life.