Chapter 10: Religious Values in The History Classroom: Promoting Civic Competence, Tolerance, and Social Justice

History teachers who infuse their curricula with religion and religious example encourage their students’ moral development and understandings of important social ideas and concepts such as tolerance, personal responsibility, and justice. Religious example, as it is called here, refers to teacher-initiated connections between curricula and planned, intense, constructive, fair and balanced focus on the contributions of the world’s religions. Use of religious example allows the teacher to engage students by providing them with an enriched and inclusive picture of our collective social history. Authors review recent research on this topic, discuss challenges to employing religious example, and propose suggestions for effective uses of religious history and concepts within the secondary social studies classroom. When used appropriately, religious studies enrich history curriculum by introducing dialogue about civic competence, good decision making, and social justice while combating religious apathy and antipathy among students. The answer, authors say, is more religion in schools, not less.