This book presents a crisis of religion and belief literacy to which education at every level is challenged to respond. As understanding different religions, beliefs and influences becomes increasingly important, the book fills a gap for a resource in bringing together the debates around religious literacy, from theoretical approaches to teaching and policy. The book begins with an overview of religion and belief literacy. Religion and belief literacy is both socialised and learnt. While treated in schools as a discrete and marginalised subject for children, it overlaps with citizenship and se ... More

This book presents a crisis of religion and belief literacy to which education at every level is challenged to respond. As understanding different religions, beliefs and influences becomes increasingly important, the book fills a gap for a resource in bringing together the debates around religious literacy, from theoretical approaches to teaching and policy. The book begins with an overview of religion and belief literacy. Religion and belief literacy is both socialised and learnt. While treated in schools as a discrete and marginalised subject for children, it overlaps with citizenship and sex education. Thus, it will be experienced primarily in those ways rather than engaged with more openly as lived experiences around the world. The book shows that learning about religion and belief is a lifelong process. Crucially, learning happens in different combinations, in different orders, with different modes, for different purposes, and at different paces for each individual. This reflects the importance of connecting the chain of learning across all the spaces through which people pass in everyday life so that the fullest range of thinking and contestations about religion and belief landscapes are more or less consistently revealed in their complexity and by recognising the boundaries and competitions between ideas. The book provides a clear pathway for engaging well with religion and belief diversity in public and shared settings.