Most approaches to religious literacy focus on beliefs, practices, and traditions. This work matters, but it is incomplete. Drawing on Calvary, this piece explores what happens when religion is encountered as lived experience—shaped by trust, trauma, and moral complexity—and what that means for how we prepare students to understand religion in the real world.
Social Studies
What We Leave Out: Lived Religion and the Limits of Religious Literacy
Most approaches to religious literacy focus on beliefs, practices, and traditions. This work matters, but it is incomplete. Drawing on Calvary, this piece explores what happens when religion is encountered as lived experience—shaped by trust, trauma, and moral complexity—and what that means for how we prepare students to understand religion in the real world.
Beyond Compliance: Supporting Religious Expression in Public Schools
Post: Tim Hall, Ph.D., Executive Director, Religion Matters When the Law Speaks, Educators Still Must Teach Last month, the U.S. Department of Education released updated guidance on constitutionally protected prayer and religious expression in public schools. As expected, the response has been wide-ranging, with some seeing clarity and others uncertainty. That range itself [...]
Time Lost: What The Time Machine Reveals About Disciplinary Literacy and Public Education
Post: Tim Hall, Ph.D., Executive Director, Religion Matters There is no intelligence where there is no change and no need of change. —H.G. Wells, The Time Machine When I first read The Time Machine years ago, I was struck less by its vision of the future than by how that future arrives. H.G. Wells does [...]
✍️ A Resolution for Dialogue: Centering Religious Literacy in Civic Education
Post: Tim Hall, Ph.D., Executive Director, Religion Matters When religion enters the classroom, fear often follows. But it doesn’t have to. For many educators, religion feels like a boundary line they’d rather not cross: too controversial, too personal, too risky. But the truth is that religion is already present in our classrooms in history, geography, [...]
