Religion in Schools - Religious Worlds of New York

This page will introduce you to academic research and policy debates about the role of religion in American education, including pedagogic and constitutional questions surrounding the study of religion in US public schools.

The first set of texts focuses on religious studies pedagogy. These aren’t exactly teachers’ guides, although most include practical discussions of curriculum development and classroom teaching, along with research and reflection on the importance of K-12 teaching about religious diversity. You can also click here for concise and downloadable teachers’ guides to the study of religion in K-12 schools. The second set of texts looks beyond the classroom, exploring debates over religious expression in public schools — including prayer in schools, Bible reading, holiday observance, and other heated issues.

For a deeper dive into current research on religion and education, you might also want to check out recent works published in the Routledge Research in Religion and Education scholarly book series.

K-12 Religious Studies Pedagogy

	W. Y. Alice Chan, Teaching Religious Literacy to Combat Religious Bullying: Insights from North American Secondary Schools, Routledge, 2023. Chan explores the phenomenon of religious bullying as it manifests in two North American contexts and theorizes religious literacy as a viable school-based intervention to promote understanding of religious and non-religious difference. Practical recommendations are made to combat overarching societal trends and religious discrimination within the classroom, and context is cited as key to an effective discussion on religious literacy more broadly.
	W. Y. Alice Chan and Emile Lester, Equipping Educators to Teach Religious Literacy: Lessons from a Teacher Education Program in the American South, Routledge, 2023. This volume provides a detailed evaluation of a unique education program implemented in secondary schools in Georgia to enhance teachers’ religious literacy and their ability to promote this in schools and classrooms. The text demonstrates that religious literacy can be proactively taught to students, while also highlighting key considerations and tensions around religious liberty in the American South.
	Adam Dinham, Religion and Belief Literacy: Reconnecting a Chain of Learning, Policy Press, 2020. This book presents a crisis of religion and belief literacy to which education at every level is challenged to respond. As understanding different religions, beliefs and influences becomes increasingly important, it fills a gap for a resource in bringing together the debates around religious literacy, from theoretical approaches to teaching and policy. This timely publication provides a clear pathway for engaging well with religion and belief diversity in public and shared settings.
	Charles Haynes (ed.), Teaching about Religion in the Social Studies Classroom, National Council for the Social Studies, 2019. The study of religion is critical for global citizenship in a diverse world. This book provides advice, recommendations, and resources to help social studies educators teach about religion effectively, creatively, and constitutionally. The contributors clarify the First Amendment issues that impact teachers in public schools, and emphasize that the academic study of religion is an essential part of a good education. Many of the essays also include extensive references to published and online sources for K-12 religious studies.
	Charles Haynes and Melissa Rogers (eds.), Teaching About Religion in Public Schools: Where Do We Go From Here?, Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life and the First Amendment Center, 2003. Conference report featuring reflections on pedagogic, civic, and constitutional issues from leading scholars, K-12 educators, policy makers, and faith community leaders. A rich conversation, and a great place to start in exploring these issues. Click the link above to download a free copy.
	James Holt, Religious Education in the Secondary School: An Introduction to Teaching, Learning and the World Religions, Routledge, 2022. A comprehensive, straightforward introduction to religious diversity education in the secondary school classroom. Holt's work speaks, most directly, to the British field of “Religion Education,” but his insights are also relevant to American schools. Holt shows how religion can be taught in a way that explores its impact on the lives of people and society, engaging pupils and preparing them to become individuals who celebrate and respect diversity.
	Robert Jackson, Rethinking Religious Education and Plurality: Issues in Diversity and Pedagogy, Routledge, 2004. An influential, theoretically sophisticated text by the director of the UK’s Warwick Religions and Education Research Unit. Jackson’s work speaks, most directly, to the British field of “Religion Education,” but his insights are also relevant to American schools. He argues that schools in multicultural societies must accommodate their students' diverse experiences of religious plurality, in order to devise approaches to teaching and learning that are fair and just to all.
	Emile Lester, Teaching about Religions: A Democratic Approach for Public Schools, University of Michigan Press, 2011. This provocative and timely book challenges Americans to rethink what it means to take both democracy and religious freedom seriously in public education. Focusing on the Modesto, CA school district's required course in World Religions, Lester argues that our public schools must include all voices in ways that prepare American citizens to engage one another with civility and respect.
	Diane Moore, Overcoming Religious Illiteracy: A Cultural Studies Approach to the Study of Religion in Secondary Education, Palgrave Macmillan, 2007. Written by a leading theorist and proponent of secondary school religious studies pedagogy, this important work shows how a cultural studies approach to the study of religion can invigorate our classrooms, enhance democratic discourse, and above all combat the widespread religious illiteracy that fuels our culture wars and promotes both religious and racial bigotry.
	Warren Nord, Does God Make a Difference? Taking Religion Seriously in Our Schools and Universities, Oxford University Press, 2010. In his latest work, Nord argues that public schools and universities leave the vast majority of students religiously illiterate. Such education, he argues, is not religiously neutral -- indeed it borders on an unconstitutional form of secular indoctrination when measured against the requirements of a good liberal education and the demands of critical thinking.
	Warren Nord, Religion and American Education: Rethinking a National Dilemma, The University of North Carolina Press, 1995. While our public schools and universities must not promote religious beliefs or practices, this seminal text argues — on ethical, political, and constitutional grounds — that public school students must learn about religion as a way of understanding the human experience. Nord's approach to these issues works to transcend the divide between religious conservatives who would restore religious practices to public education and secular liberals for whom religion is anathema to public education.
	Warren Nord and Charles Haynes, Taking Religion Seriously Across the Curriculum, Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development and the First Amendment Center, 1998. Nord and Haynes chart a middle course in debates over religion and public education -- one that has helped establish an enduring consensus among educational and religious leaders. While it is not permissible for public schools to promote religion, it is not permissible to make them "religion-free" zones either. Our public schools must take religion seriously as an academic subject. The authors flesh out their central arguments through concrete, practical discussions of the place of religion in social studies, literature, the arts, and other fields.
	Farideh Salili and Rumjahn Hoosain (eds.), Religion in Multicultural Education, Information Age Publishing, 2006. The field of multicultural education has developed invaluable insights into race, ethnicity, gender, sexuality, and other forms of collective identity and community. But it has all too often overlooked religion. This collection of essays explores a range of approaches to teaching about religious identity and difference, and thus begins to fill an important gap in contemporary discussions of multiculturalism.
	Linda K. Wertheimer, Faith Ed: Teaching about Religion in an Age of Intolerance. Beacon Press, 2015 A powerful, and often troubling, account of recent conflicts surrounding religious diversity education -- and especially education about Islam -- in U.S. public schools. Wertheimer captures the voices and perspectives of students, teachers, parents, community members, and political advocates, as they struggle to define appropriate pedagogies for the study of religion in our deeply divided society.

Policy Debates about Religion in Schools

	Joan DelFattore, The Fourth R: Conflicts Over Religion in America’s Public Schools, Yale University Press, 2004. DelFattore traces our school-prayer battles from the early 1800s -- when children were beaten or expelled for refusing to read the King James Bible -- to current disputes over prayer at public-school football games. Underlying these debates, she argues, is a struggle to balance two of the most fundamental tenets of American democracy: majority rule and individual rights.
	Vincent Biondo and Andrew Fiala (eds.), Civility, Religious Pluralism, and Education, Routledge, 2014. This book focuses on the problem of religious diversity, civil dialogue, and education in public schools, exploring the ways in which diverse religious and secular Americans come together in the public sphere, examining how civil discourse about religion fits within the ideals of the American political and pedagogical systems, and how religious studies education can help to foster civility and toleration.
	James Fraser, Between Church and State: Religion and Public Education in a Multicultural America, Saint Martin’s Press, 1999. Prayer in the classroom, the teaching of creationism, representations of sexuality, and efforts to teach morality -- these are just a few of the issues that have led to heated debates over the role of religion in public education. By looking at these difficult questions, Fraser attempts to reconcile private faith and public schooling in a diverse, multicultural society.
	Kent Greenawalt, Does God Belong in Public Schools?, Princeton University Press, 2007. In this book, one of America's leading constitutional scholars asks what role religion ought to play in our public schools. Greenawalt explores some of the most divisive issues in contemporary educational debates, including teaching about the origins of life, sex education, and when -- or whether -- students can opt out of instructional activities for religious reasons.
	Charles Haynes and Oliver Thomas (eds.), Finding Common Ground: A Guide to Religious Liberty in Public Schools, The First Amendment Center, 2001. This invaluable handbook provides a wide range of information and perspectives on religious expression and practices in schools, as well as broader discussions of religious liberty in American public life, analyses of relevant Supreme Court rulings, and much more. It also includes practical resources for students, teachers, and parents, to help them navigate what is often a complex, ambiguous terrain.
	Steven Jones and Eric Sheffield (eds), The Role of Religion in 21st Century Public Schools, Peter Lang Publishing, 2009. This collection's origins lie in the 2007 “Critical Questions in Education” conference at Missouri State University. The essays cover a broad range of topics, including timeless philosophical reflections on the place of religion in education, and timely debates over prayer in the public schools.
	Kevin O'Grady, Religious Education as a Dialogue with Difference: Fostering Democratic Citizenship Through the Study of Religions in Schools, Routledge, 2018. By presenting research on English secondary school pupils' motivation in religious education, this volume argues that religious education is best understood as a democratic dialogue with difference. The book offers empirical evidence for this claim, and it demonstrates how learners gain in religious literacy, both through the exercise of democratic citizenship in the classroom and towards the goal of life-long democratic citizenship.
	Michael Waggoner (ed.), Religion in the Public Schools: Negotiating the New Commons. Rowman & Littlefield, 2013. There are few places where religiously diverse Americans meet to learn about each other, and share in the construction of a common future. One such place is public education. The essays in this collection explore how Americans are negotiating the role of religion in public schools, in order to proceed toward the common horizon of a pluralistic society.