This book examines and reports the findings regarding the level of satisfaction by students, teachers and parents with an innovative senior secondary Religious Education curriculum ‘Religion, Meaning and Life’ (RML). The stimulus for RML is found in the changing profile of students within faith-based schools and the motivation of school authorities to be inclusive and responsive to changing needs and priorities of students and families. Curriculum practices typically mirror this continuing renewal as community expectations give rise to innovation in curriculum practice. This concept of continuity and discontinuity is evidenced in the field of Religious Education,, which recognizes religious plurality while giving preference to an imagination centred on inclusion, hospitality and respectful dialogue. In this context, new pathways are being explored as the reality and significance of Religious Education in faith-based school remain a priority for Christian organizations in Australia. Mindful of the diversity of expectations within the Catholic school, the curriculum initiative of RML was developed, supported and implemented. The La Salle Academy of the Australian Catholic University reviewed this senior secondary curriculum across three years and presents in this book an independent, evaluative report of the findings, together with insights for implementation at scale and associated applications across Christian faith-based institutions.

This book brings together new thinking and research on religious education’s complex and evolving role in the multicultural, diverse postmodern era. It facilitates new realism and understanding of the current situation from empirical and reflective accounts relating to a variety of countries and political contexts, as well as providing innovative methodological approaches to the study of education and religion. In different contexts around the world, at different levels of education, and from different theoretical lenses, religious education occupies a contested space. The ongoing, changing nature of the world due to increasing secularization, rapid technological change, mass immigration, globalization processes, conflict and challenging security issues, from inter to intra state levels, and with shifting geopolitical power balances, generates the need to reconceptualize where religious education is positioned. It claims that religious education on its own can be an agent of moral, social and spiritual transformation are disputed. There is significant controversy about whether special religious education, that is in-faith education, still has a role within the post-modern world.

This book is an arresting interdisciplinary publication on Christian education, comprising works by leading scholars, professionals and practitioners from around the globe. It focuses on the integrated approaches to Christian education that are both theoretically sound and practically beneficial, and identifies innovative pedagogical methods and tools that have been field-tested and practice-approved. It discusses topics such as exploring programmes and courses through different lenses; learning challenges and opportunities within organisational management; theology of business; Christian models of teaching in different contexts; job preparedness; developing different interpretive or meaning-making frameworks for working with social justice, people with disability, non-profit community organisations and in developing country contexts. It offers graduate students, teachers, school administrators, organisational leaders, theologians, researchers and education practitioners a fresh and inspiring reimagining of Christian education perspectives and practices and the ramifications of their application to life-long learning.

Re-Imagining Christian Higher Education takes a fresh and critical look at the challenges facing Christian colleges and universities and provides concrete recommendations for university leaders, faculty, and staff to implement in their daily work. Chapters in this book address leadership and diversity challenges, issues of affordability and sustainability, and ways of maintaining the distinguishing features of a Christ-centered liberal arts education. A vivid and compelling picture of the Christian university of the future is painted by these authors as they highlight the importance of embracing our Christian identity while being willing to engage a pluralistic and fragmented world. Firmly rooted in a missional identity of faithful learning that is committed to the intellectual, personal, and spiritual development of our students, Christian colleges and universities are encouraged to reclaim and revitalize the breadth and depth of the Christian tradition in order to move forward. The chapters in this book were originally published as a special issue of Christian Higher Education.

This is a book about Christianity in one particular region in Kenya. It walks into churches, listens to sermons, dances to music, and interviews the people sitting in the pews, all with the aim of understanding how spiritual power enables these churches to function as agents within their contemporary society. Ecclesiastical communities in Africa draw upon divine power in order to engage in modernity-related topics. Humans are not unresponsive to global flows of meaning; they are integrative agents who fashion their world by living in it. The kind of modernity arising from these churches does not blindly follow Western forms, but flows from its own internal logic in which spiritual power occupies central hermeneutical function. Theological resources contribute to the formation of sociological expressions. Divine power pertains directly to human constructs, which then allows the churches to actively "image" God for the development of unique forms of modernity arising on the continent.

This proceeding is an effort from various academics and practitioners in the midst of modern society to find the meaning and re-imagine Theology, Religion, Culture, and Humanities Studies for Public Life. From discussions on how religion can reshape our world to become a better world, to re-imagining the foundation of human life that believes in God in the midst of local culture and an increasingly advanced and modern world, even looking back at the history of women, evangelization, and places of worship as a means for humans to find God in the world. In the end, all of these writings are a form of academic reflection of the authors who seek to find God in the midst of today's world.

The early 21st century has seen an unexpected rise of new or rediscovered ways of reading the Bible, both in academic circles and in churches, with surprising results. These ancient texts appear to have a message that resonates with discussions in society at large. This textbook seeks to reclaim the Bible for a Christianity that is open to society and keen on participating in conversation about today's major issues; a Christianity that is relevant to the personal spirituality of people who aren't too sure what to believe and how to exercise faith.

The need to reimagine religion and belief is precipitated by their greater visibility in public life. Meanwhile, social policy responses often see them from a problem-based, rather than an asset-based, approach. However, with growing diversity of religion and belief in every sector comes the potential for new dialogues across previously impermeable policy and disciplinary silos. This volume brings together leading international authors to critically consider these challenges within legal and policy frameworks, including security and cohesion, welfare, law, health and social care, inequality, cohesion, extremism, migration and abuse. It challenges policy makers to re-imagine religion and belief as an integral part of public life that contains resources, practices, forms of knowledge and experience that are essential to a coherent policy approach to diversity, enhanced democracy and participation.

Society for Educational Studies Annual Book Prize winner: 2nd Prize This ground-breaking volume draws upon a rich and variegated range of methodologies to understand more fully the practices, policies and resources available in and to religious education in British schools. The descriptions, explanations and analyses undertaken here draw on an innovative combination of policy work, ethnography, Delphi methods, Actor Network Theory, questionnaires, textual analysis as well as theological and philosophical insight. It traces the evolution of religious education in a post-religious age from the creation of policy to the everyday experiences of teachers and students in the classroom. It begins by analysing the way in which policy has evolved since the 1970s with an examination of the social forces that have shaped curriculum development. It goes on to explore the impact and intentions of a diverse group of stakeholders with sometimes competing accounts of the purposes of religious educations. It then examines the manner in which policy is, or is not, enacted in the classroom. Finally, it explores contradictions and confusions, successes and failures, and the ways in which wider public debates enter the classroom. The book also exposes the challenge religious education teachers have in using the language of religion.