On Holy Ground ─ The Theory and Practice of Religious Education

For a diversity of reasons – the resurgence of religion in global governance, globalisation, concerns over social and community cohesion, the worldwide growth in religiously inspired extremism – religious education has in recent years, enjoyed an international renaissance.

Many theorists and practitioners have added to the debate with a great variety of perspectives. Most have only succeeded in providing a partial view of religion and thus a degraded vision of religion in education.

On Holy Ground offers a new approach to the theory and practice of religious education. It will be the only book of its kind to provide a systematic examination of how contemporary theory and pedagogy of religious education are covertly rooted in a variety of aesthetic, philosophical, phenomenological, psychological, scientific, theological, and related cognate disciplines.

A major critical review of religious education internationally, On Holy Ground provides an original contribution to the theory and practice of religious education, and a serious and significant challenge to teachers, theorists and researchers in religious education worldwide.

Professor Liam Gearon is Professor of Education at Oxford University. He taught religious education in schools in the northwest and southwest of England before, in 1996, leading the PGCE Religious Education at Roehampton, until 2003. Vice-Chair of the Association of University Lecturers in Religion and Education, a member of the editorial board of the British Journal of Religious Education, and peer-reviewer for many journals, Professor Gearon is guest editor of the International Journal of Children's Spirituality for a special 2006 issue on human rights. The author and editor of numerous books in literature and religion as well as education, some of his recent publications include Teaching Citizenship in the Secondary School (2002), Religion and Human Rights (2003), Citizenship through Secondary Religious Education (2004), and Freedom of Expression and Human Rights (2005). He is former Director of the Centre for Research in Human Rights.