DOES THE CHURCH REALLY WANT RELIGIOUS EDUCATION?
DOES THE CHURCH REALLY WANT
RELIGIOUS EDUCATION?
edited by Marlene Mayr
Summary: This a renewal book. Renowned religious education experts from the entire range of Christian faith groups offer a candid critique of the church's frequent past failures to commit itself wholeheartedly to religious education, and also provide positive guidelines for a new intensified commitment by the church to religious education. It gives concrete suggestions for remedying past defects and for creating a new and more vibrant religious education enterprise.
Spirit of the Book: The spirit of the book is prophetic, upbeat, and challenging. It is prophetic because it candidly gets religious educators to squarely face the church's past tepid support for religious education and despite this lukewarm church support forge a brighter future for the religious education enterprise. It is upbeat because it offers a whole panoply of complementary visions on how to place religious education at the center of the Church as Jesus told us to (Mt. 28:19-20). It is challenging because it bids religious educators to ratchet up even further their efforts to renew religious education all across the board.
What this Book Gives You: This book gives you the vision, the understanding, and the tools to improve religious education both in the larger church and in the here-and-now concrete situation in which the religious educator is working. The vision shows the grand perspective of what has to be done to make religious education effective. The understand- ing reveals why productive religious education changes have to be made. The tools provide the wherewithal to transform the vision into reality.
Distinctiveness: Why this Book is Special: The distinctiveness of this book is that for the first time in a major volume, leading religious education experts from the whole range of Christian faith groups share their experience and their insights on the past failures and the possible bright future of religious education. The highly beneficial result of this pluralistic approach is that it significantly broadens one's own particular denominational perspective on problems and solutions. It helps every religious educator to see how other faith groups handle similar problems and devise workable solutions to these difficulties.
Major Features:. Major features of this truly eye-opening book include: (1) an ecumenical look at the past problems and future opportunities so as to significantly improve religious education; (2) broadening of one's perspective on religious education by exposure to views of experts from the whole range of Christian faith groups; (3) a grand vision plus concrete suggestions for improving religious education.
Chapters
1. Of a Kind and To a Degree:
A Roman Catholic Perspective
2. Catechesis Sometimes, Religious Instruction
Always: Another Roman Catholic Perspective
3. Taste and See; An Eastern
Orthodox Perspective
4. If You Really Love Us, Then Show us: A Lutheran
Perspective
5. Religious Education? Yes Indeed!: A Presbyterian
Perspective
6. Challenges Facing the Churches: What Would Happen If...?: An
Episcopal Perspective
7. A Plea for Authentic Religious Education: A Southern
Baptist Perspective
8. The Context of Wanting; A Methodist Perspective
9.
Seeking a Biblical Base: An Evangelical Protestant Perspective
10. From
Participation to Transformation to Consummation: A Black Perspective
Contributors: The contributors to this power-packed book include some of the foremost religious education authorities within their respective Christian faith traditions: Gabriel Moran, Ellis Nelson, Warren Benson, James Michael Lee, Grant Schockley, Locke Bowman Jr., Nancy Foltz, Constance Tarasar, Timothy Arthur Lines, and Robert Conrad..
Praise for this Book:. This book has received international as well as national recognition.
A review in ORIENTAMENTI PEDAGOGICI (Italy) states that this book "merits attention on the part of those who are interested in both the theory and the practice of catechesis and religious education."
A review in CATECHIST says that "the complementary nature of the chapters ins not only interesting but also helpful in gaining fresh insights about how problems are addressed or avoided in other denominations."
Price and
Such:
267 pages List Price:
$22.95 ISBN 0-89135-062-4