This article is a reflection on the teaching of public theology in two very different contexts: in a Protestant seminary in the US (1985-2019) and an underground seminary in Nazi Germany (1935-1937). The author analyzes her teaching career over years of change, both institutional and social, that challenged pedagogical methods to remain relevant…

A long tradition of both State and religious interest and support characterised provision for education on the island of Ireland from the 1700s. Following the partition of Ireland in the 1920s, the newly created political entities of the Irish Free State and Northern Ireland forged separate and distinct education policy trajectories that largely…

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…

Purpose: This paper explores religious education (RE) in South Australia from 1968-1980. It focuses especially on the collapse of the RE settlement from 1968-1972 and the controversial legislation and subsequent curricula emerging from changes to the Education Act in 1972. Design/methodology/approach: This paper draws upon archival materials,…

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…

This article details the work of the Birmingham Initiative, a Methodist inspired, ecumenical research project that operated in Birmingham, in the West Midlands of the United Kingdom between 1995 and 1999. As the Christian Education Development Officer employed by this project, the author undertook doctoral research among twenty-six inner-city,…