Making Sense Of Religion In America S Public Schools

In 1947, the United States Supreme Court took a sharp left turn in its interpretation of the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment to the United States Constitution as it was applied to public schools in America. Since then, students, teachers, school officials, parents, and local religious leaders have been struggling to understand the parameters of the Establishment Clause as it relates to religious expression in public schools. This resource is intended to help individuals understand their rights to exercise their faith in the public school arena. It is also designed to help families, students, teachers, school officials, and community leaders sort through the current legal maze of religious expression in America’s public schools.

The authors of Making Sense of Science and Religion believe that addressing interactions between science and religion is part of all science educators' collective job-- and that this is the book that will help you facilitate discussion when the topic of religion comes up. Designed for teachers at all grade levels, the book will help you anticipate and respond to students' questions-- and help students reconcile their religious beliefs even as you delve into topics such as evolution, geochronology, genetics, the origin of the universe, and climate change. The book is divided into three parts: 1.Historical and cultural context, plus a framework for addressing science-religion issues in a legal, constitutional manner. 2.Guidance on teaching specific scientific concepts at every grade level: elementary, middle, and high school science, as well as college and informal science settings. 3.Advice for engaging families, administrators, school boards, legislators and policy makers, and faith communities. The book' s authors are all personally and professionally invested in the subject. They are a mix of K- 12 teachers, college professors, and experts from organizations such as the American Association for the Advancement of Science and the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History. They know that teaching about the interaction between science and religion is not easy. But they also know that educators have an ethical obligation to minimize the perceived conflict between science and religion. As the authors write, " When students hear a consistent message during science instruction-- that they can learn science while maintaining their religious beliefs-- they are much more willing to learn regardless of messages to the contrary that they might hear outside of your classroom."

Scientific Challenges to Evolutionary Theory: How These Challenges Affect Religion addresses all aspects of the giant battle between two major belief systems…those that believe in a ‘naturalistic worldview’ and evolution, and those that believe in a miracle-performing God and the Creation of all things. On a trip to Mount St. Helens, some look at the catastrophic eruption of May 18, 1981 as a significant corroboration of the Creation event. Others, deniers of the possibilities of miracles, hold to the view that God’s creation cannot be taken seriously by the scientific community. At the Mount St. Helens book store, I asked about books for sale that gave a Christian view of the catastrophic eruption. The reply was, “I’m sorry, sir, but we only carry books by scientists.” It was time for the author, Jay Schabacker, to do a little scientific sleuthing. Join Jay Schabacker as you learn of the hundreds, even thousands, of Ph.D. scientists who repudiate the theory of evolution, but hold rather to the truth of the theory of Creation. Significant general information, likely new to most readers gives corroborative evidence from many sources, including: • From all over the ancient world, hundreds of accounts of a global flood • Well documented accounts of the Ark of Noah, indeed, located at the top of Mount Ararat • Ancient ‘Near East’ finds, inscribed on rock, told of the actual details covered in the Holy Bible Numerous scientific papers refute the naturalistic dogma forced on us the government, public schools, universities and media. You’ll find arguments that assert: • The earth’s geological features appear to have been fashioned by rapid catastrophic processes that affected the earth on a global scale. • Life on earth was suddenly created, not over billions of years. • The use of radiometric dating method is often grossly in error. • The fossil record shows that all present living kinds of animals and plants have remained fixed since creation. • Mutations and natural selection are insufficient to have brought about any emergence of living kinds from a simple primordial organism. • The universe has “obvious manifestations of an ordered, structural plan and design.” The universe and the solar system were suddenly created. If evolution is wrong why are our children being only taught it in our public schools? Numerous polls favored biology teachers teaching Darwin’s Theory of evolution, but also the scientific evidence against it. The final section of the book gets further into the “Action Plan” where church pastors and members, scientist groups, etc., could make an important difference if: • We all read about the subject and started the conversation; • We gave our views to the school boards and legislators who are the decision makers; • We initiate needed petitions in support needed legislation; and • We urge church pastors to create their own church schools and concerned families to start home schooling for their children.

Since September 11, 2001, the profile of religion's role in our global society has increased significantly. Religion has long been a force in people's lives as numerous studies and polls show, yet we continue to struggle with understanding differing religious traditions and what they mean for our common life. There are few places where Americans can meet together to learn about each other and to share in the common construction of our futures. One such place for many is public education. The purpose of this book is to illustrate the complexity of the social, cultural, and legal milieu of schooling in the United States in which the improvement of religious literacy and understanding must take place. Public education is the new commons.We must negotiate this commons in two meanings of that term: first, we must come to mutual understandings and agreement about how to proceed toward a common horizon of a religiously plural America; second, we must work our way through the obstacles in these settings in practical ways to achieve results that work.

The authors chart a middle course in our war over religion and public education, one that builds on a developing national consensus among educational and religious leaders. While it is not proper for schools to practice religion or proselytize, neither is it permissible to make them religion-free zones. Schools do not take religion seriously, as the authors' review of textbooks and the new national content standards makes clear. In Part One, they outline the civic, constitutional, and educational frameworks that should shape the treatment of religion in the curriculum and classroom.In Part Two, they explore major issues relating to religion in different domains of the curriculum in elementary education and in middle and high school courses in history, civics, economics, literature, and the sciences. They also discuss Bible courses and world religions courses and explore the relationship of religion to moral education and sex education.

Making Sense of the SecularCritical Perspectives from Europe to Asia; Copyright; Contents; Introduction: Making Sense of the Secular; Part I: Europe; 1 Formations of the Secular State and Islam in Britain Today; 2 The Evolution of French Secularism; 3 How Do You Say 'Secular' in Italian?; 4 Manifest Secularisation Processes in Turkey and Belgium; 5 Secularism in Eastern Europe; Part II: Asia; 6 The Truth about Secularism; 7 The Dark Hour of Secularism: Hindu Fundamentalism and Colonial Liberalism in Indi; 8 Elisions and Erasures: Science, Secularism and the State-The Cases of India and Pakistan9 Sacred Modernism or Secular Space: The Ornamental Politics of Religion in Sri Lanka; 10 When Will China Become More Religious?; 11 The Secular and the Spiritual in Contemporary Japanese Society; 12 Korea's Path of Secularisation; 13 Political Secularisation in Indonesia; 14 Secularism in Malaysia; Contributors; Index.- This book offers a wide range of critical perspectives on how secularism unfolds and has been made sense of across Europe and Asia. The book evaluates secularism as it exists today - its formations and discontents within contemporary discourses of power, terror, religion and cosmopolitanism - and the focus on these two continents gives critical attention to recent political and cultural developments where secularism and multiculturalism have impinged in deeply problematical ways, raising bristling ideological debates within the functioning of modern state bureaucracies. Examin.