Overview
The essays in this volume offer a groundbreaking comparative analysis of religious education, and state policies towards religious education in seven different countries and in the European Union as a whole. They pose a crucial question: can religious education contribute to a shared public sphere and foster solidarity across different ethnic and religious communities? In many traditional societies and even in what are largely secular European societies, our place in creation, the meaning of good and evil, and the definition of the good life, virtue, and moral action, are all primarily addressed in religious terms. It is in fact hard to come to grips with these issues without recourse to religious language, traditions, and frames of reference. Yet, religious languages and identities divide as much as unite, and provide a site of contestation and strife as much as a sense of peace and belonging Not surprisingly, different countries approach religious education in dramatically different ways. Religious Education and the Challenge of Pluralism addresses a pervasive problem: how can religious education provide a framework of meaning, replete with its language of inclusion and community, without at the same time drawing borders and so excluding certain individuals and communities from its terms of collective membership and belonging?The authors offer in-depth analysis of such pluralistic countries as Bulgaria, Israel, Malaysia, and Turkey, as well as Cyprus - a country split along lines of ethno-religious difference. They also examine the connection between religious education and the terms of citizenship in the EU, France, and the USA, illuminating the challenges of educating our citizenry in an age of religious resurgence and global politics.
Full Product Details
Author: Adam B. Seligman (Professor of Religion, Professor of Religion, Boston University)
Publisher: Oxford University Press Inc
Imprint: Oxford University Press Inc
Dimensions:
Width: 15.20cm
, Height: 1.80cm
, Length: 23.10cm
Weight: 0.340kg
ISBN: 9780199359486
ISBN 10: 0199359482
Pages: 256
Publication Date: 23 October 2014
Audience:
College/higher education
,
Professional and scholarly
,
Tertiary & Higher Education
,
Professional & Vocational
Format: Paperback
Publisher's Status: Active
Availability: To order
Stock availability from the supplier is unknown. We will order it for you and ship this item to you once it is received by us.
Reviews
If I were running a national education system...this book would be a precise tool in navigating some reefs of sectarian difference. For a foreign office education attache, it would certainly assist in evading many cultural faux pas across a curiously wide range of diplomatic postings. For university religious studies professors and education systems/policy researchers, this is a mustread. --International Journal of Christianity and Education This is an important collection of essays that juxtaposes religious education in countries rarely ever juxtaposed in this fashion. More than showcasing different countries, the juxtaposition offers significant, and at times even startling, insights about religious education as a particularly contested site, which in turn reveals the fluidity of identity across different facets of belonging, and community that don't always fit easily together. An impressive work that should be read by anyone interested in how education centrally features in current debates about law, religion, and politics. --Anver M. Emon, Faculty of Law, University of Toronto The case studies editor Seligman (Boston Univ.; founding director, Communities Engaging with Difference and Religion) has collected in this volume demonstrate the difficulties of education for citizenship in pluralist Europe, Cyprus, Bulgaria, France, Israel, Turkey, Malaysia, and the US. The authors also move past description to suggest a way beyond the separation of sacred and secular spheres: education for knowledge about one another for the purpose of common action in 'shared civil life.' --CHOICE This is an edited volume rich in analysis and written with authority... This is a book for anyone interested in the role of religion in culture and education, and one to which such readers might usefully return for reference, especially the continental studies of Europe and America. --Journal of Church and State
This is an important collection of essays that juxtaposes religious education in countries rarely ever juxtaposed in this fashion. More than showcasing different countries, the juxtaposition offers significant, and at times even startling, insights about religious education as a particularly contested site, which in turn reveals the fluidity of identity across different facets of belonging, and community that dont always fit easily together. An impressive work that should be read by anyone interested in how education centrally features in current debates about law, religion, and politics. Anver M. Emon, Faculty of Law, University of Toronto
Author Information
Adam B. Seligman is Professor of Religion at Boston University and Founding Director of CEDAR - Communities Engaging with Difference and Religion.
