In this article, the author shares how Yoga can help make life easier for parents. The author started practicing with a Hatha Yoga teacher once a week at the local church community center. The breath (Pranayama) leads to self-discovery, Yoga poses (asanas) lead to quieting of the mind and self-connection. That was seven years ago, and since then,…

This article proposes that school communities are significant public places that help shape identity and can also contribute to social and emotional well-being. If school communities respond appropriately to crises and trauma that affect the young, learning becomes social and emotional as well as academic. School communities offer an opportunity…

The new National Framework for Religious Education (RE) suggests, for the first time in national advice on agreed syllabuses, that atheism can be included in the curriculum alongside world religions. This article counters objections to the inclusion of atheism in RE and argues that children and young people can learn from atheistic beliefs and…

In this article, the author argues for the necessity of civic literacy and responsibility, of educating students for citizenship. He urges educators to consider the visionary thoughts of James Moffett and others on spiritualizing teaching and learning--in particular, the idea of "serving ourselves through serving our communities and redefining…

Religious organizations offer a potentially rich pool of caring adults who are driven by their own spiritual commitments and a strong ethic to serve others. Indeed, more Americans volunteer through religious organizations than through any other venue. Religious organizations account for half of all volunteering, with an estimated 60 percent of the…

Service-learning, by its very nature, fosters young people's spiritual development, especially in experiencing a sense of interconnectedness with others and the rest of the world; opening one's heart; and expanding self-inquiry and self-knowledge. (Contains 7 notes.)

As the director of a new general-education program at the Roman Catholic university where he teaches, the author recently spent time introducing their curriculum to a variety of campus constituencies. On two occasions, members of their Board of Trustees asked him how the new courses would contribute to students' religious development and to the…

Spirituality and coping behaviors were measured in 85 individuals with visual impairments aged 23 to 97. A regression analysis indicated that the religious well-being subscale of the Spiritual Well-Being Scale is a significant predictor of adaptive coping behaviors, indicating that higher religious well-being facilitates adaptive coping. (Contains…

In this article, the author describes how throughout her academic career she has tried to answer the question "What should the appropriate place be for religion in the public schools of a liberal, pluralistic, democratic state?" The view the author embraces is that taking religion seriously in schools also means taking the purpose(s) of public…

In this age of dissatisfaction with our present, and unease about our future, science writer and strategic analyst Richard Eckersley challenges us to address the fundamental issue of "how we are to live"--an issue he places beyond the quantifiable and policy-based matters and into the wider realm of culture or "how we see the world…

The Christian family is a deeply rooted theological way of being in the world with others. It is a functional domain from where initial and life-long lessons emerge. In rich ways, it helps foster human identity, development, ethical formation, autonomy, and communal responsibility amid a greater understanding of Christ's actualizing presence in…

Christian Religious Education recognizes the crisis in perception caused by eroding cosmologies and engages persons in the reformulating of Christian stories that negate a limiting materialism perpetuating consumerism destructive to life. A course is developed for theological students in which they may become aware of cosmology and its New Story,…

In light of today's explosion of knowledge and the complexity of American culture, Pentecostal church leaders face the daunting challenge of effecting biblical change in their communities. Biblical truth reveals that true, lasting change begins by the power of God activated in a believer through faith and perseverance in Christ. To assure the…

Contemporary connotations of "teacher" don't do justice to Jesus' educating activity. "Worldview" understood as a comprehensive social environment helps us to perceive the scale of Jesus' struggle in his society and also Christian teachers' struggle in their settings. Jesus is Israel's teacher in a deeper way than we hear by…

Spirituals are religious folk songs that were created and sung by enslaved African Americans to express the emotions and thoughts of a people in bondage. The spiritual conveyed deep religious convictions and the desire for freedom brought on by two centuries' worth of oppression, as slavery was legal in the United States from approximately 1650…