Starting Topics

This blog began as a conversation among professionals in the field of Religious Education. They identified a number of issues that call for further attention. These issues can be divided into a number of categories. I include a brief list here and ask those concerned to post fuller treatments of the issues that concern them the most.

1. That many people stopped getting formal religious education when they were children or adolescents thus never acquiring an adult understanding of the faith tradition they were born into. Related issues include:

• parents ill-equipped to teach the faith to their children
• creating a culture of life-long religious learning
• adults at different life stages ask different religious questions
  
• infra-structure for adult religious learning
• adults who self-identify as spiritual but not religious
  

2. Even within a given faith tradition or denomination there are myriad elements of the tradition that could be shared with adults: sacred texts, theology, doctrine, practices and rituals, spirituality, history. Related issues include:

• how to educate adults from particularized contexts with diverse interests
  
• adult motivation to learn about a faith tradition

3. We live in an electronically mediated, globalized, secular age in which educated people ask hard questions of religion, especially in the face of sin, suffering, and science.

• educators may feel ill -prepared to respond to the questions adults ask
• institutional religion is structured to reach only those who show up at a particular place (e.g., church, mosque, synagogue, or temple) at a particular time

If you have thoughts on these or other topics, add a blog post or a comment.