How will educators in the upcoming school year make sense of the recent Supreme Court ruling on public school prayer? As longtime First Amendment scholar Charles C. Haynes told me for my commentary for the Boston Globe Magazine, the Kennedy v. Bremerton ruling has blurred the lines separating church from state. Continue reading
Greeting, Faith Ed subscribers! I know it’s been a long time – perhaps nearly two years – since I’ve sent out a newsletter. I thought this was a good time to reconnect, given the state of our world and continued concerns about a rise in religious bigotry and racism in America.Faith Ed turns six years old this summer, and I still hear from new readers who have discovered the book and want to learn more about how religion is taught in the … Continue reading
November 3, 2018 Like Jews around the world, I spent Friday night at services at my temple last night, surrounded by family, friends and non-Jews who wanted to show their solidarity with us at the first Shabbat services since 11 Jews were murdered in a Pittsburgh synagogue.
I sat in between my husband and my 10-year-old son. We wanted to be there with our Jewish community last night. We often go to Shabbat services, anyway, but there was a pull to show our Jewishness in a very visible way by being … Continue reading
The need for improving religious literacy is higher than it’s ever been, given frequent reports of acts of religious bigotry, whether they’re aimed at Jews, Muslims, Sikhs or others, in the United States.
The Boston suburb of Reading recently had a rally against hate in response to swastikas found in the town’s high school. Someone had drawn them on a science table. This was just the latest in a … Continue reading
Our stories were different, and yet Ossama, Sahar, Haroon and I had a commonality in our experiences. We all were religious minorities in America. Each of us had dealt with being stereotyped or maligned because we were not Christian and because those around us knew so little about our faiths. We knew too of incidents that had affected Muslims, Jews and other religious minorities in our own communities or nearby towns. Continue reading
In the aftermath of the 2016 election and the rise in Islamophobic rhetoric, many educators have become well aware that they have to work even harder to educate themselves and the communities they serve about why they teach about world religions and how they’re doing it. Using Faith Ed and the reporting trips I did around the country, I prove some tips on how to avoid landing in controversy when teaching about religion, especially when Islam is on the lesson plan.
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Church/state battles rage on in America, and last week, author Linda K. Wertheimer spoke about religion and public schools on Primetime Justice with Ashleigh Banfield. Read more Faith Ed related news in the newsletter. Continue reading
Greetings to new and old subscribers,
When you don’t hear for me for quite a while, it’s usually because I’m busily writing this and that. Our country’s polarization has made me even more determined to write commentaries and articles that will provoke thought and ideally, prompt change in some way. That’s not that unusual, I guess, for a long-time journalist, but these times make the job of a writer more urgent.
In the past few weeks, I’ve published a few pieces. One continues the themes I wrote about in Faith … Continue reading
As I write this, K-12 schools are wrapping up classes or may have already finished them for winter breaks. In elementary schools, no doubt, many teachers have felt compelled to mention Christmas and Hanukkah in some way.
Look at the photo above, though. First-grade teacher Debbie Fagg at the Minneha Core Knowledge Magnet Elementary School in Wichita, KS, is teaching about Hanukkah in early November as part of a multi-week unit on three monotheistic religions, Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. She … Continue reading
Faith Ed wins a national religion book award and the author’s reflections on a national religion writing conference. Continue reading
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