This article reports on research into the influence of teachers' religious beliefs in religious education. Drawing on accounts from eleven teachers in Controlled Schools in Northern Ireland, it shows the contested space many of them occupy in relation to handling personal beliefs, teaching about diverse religions and articulating a public…

This article reflects on the place of RE in a pillarised education context, taking into account the fact of religious diversity and pluralisation among the school population on the one hand, and the freedom of religion and education of faith-based schools on the other. Particular attention will be given to Belgium and the Netherlands, which do not…

In Ireland primary RE is a fractured, contested, complex and changing territory devoid of a common language and characterised by a proliferation of syllabi and curricula generated for increasingly diverse school types. For centuries the dynamic decolonising process has led to a questioning of former orthodoxies and an attempted de-linking of the…

United States Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, writing for a plurality of the Court in "Mitchell v. Helms" in 2000, advanced the idea that state constitutional prohibitions against public funding of religious schools were manifestations of anti-Catholic bigotry in the late 19th century. Thomas's reading of history and law led him to believe…