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This research focused on discovering the most valued books in adult religious education through a survey of professors of adult religious education and in bibliographies of recent dissertations in adult religious education. Three groups of adult religious educators participated in the survey: the religious adult educators who are members of the adult sections of the Association of Professors and Researchers of Religious Education and North American Professors of Christian Education, and professors of adult religious education in Southern Baptist theological seminaries. In addition the author surveyed the adult religious education dissertation bibliographies for the period 1980-1995 to discover the most frequently cited adult religious education books. The author developed a listing of 312 adult religious education books published in English. Then a jury of three experts in the field choose seventy-seven books which they valued. From this list the three groups of professors choose books according to three criteria: textbooks they used in adult religious education courses, books they recommended as additional reading, and books they valued in the field.

This dissertation offers a conceptual analysis of Jewish and Islamic religious education in Palestine during the years of British military, civil and Mandatory control (1917-1948). It examines the policies toward religious education pursued by the Government of Palestine, as well as practices developed by Jewish and Muslim educators for use within Zionist and private Arab schools. Based on a combination of archival sources, school curricula, textbooks, memoirs and newspapers, this dissertation elucidates the tensions that characterized attempts on the part of colonial and "native" reformers to transform the structure, content and purpose of religious education in pursuit of their respective political goals. In order to situate the Department of Education's policies within Palestine's sectarian context, I chart how an understanding of religion as an apolitical source of individual ethics found reflection in a legal structure that tied educational freedom to the religious community. I further argue that the Department of Education promoted a novel version of religious education within both Jewish and Muslim communities as, somewhat paradoxically, a means of preserving the "traditional" order in which religious knowledge was separated from national politics. Therefore while secular studies were encouraged on an instrumental basis, administrators vigorously opposed the development of secularism as an ideological framework associated with moral discord and political upheaval. The second half of this project discusses educational initiatives among Zionist and Palestinian Muslim leaders in order to highlight the points of overlap and rupture with policies pursued by the Mandatory state. Notwithstanding a strong impetus within both groups to vilify customary forms of communal schooling, neither acquiesced to the colonial view of religious education as the source of "universal" values that transcended the realm of mass politics. In contrast, Jewish and Muslim leaders in Palestine offered alternative educational models in which control over religious knowledge was innately linked to the goals of their respective political movements. Rather than viewing religious education as a source of social continuity, modernists placed the reform of religious education at the center of a program that aimed at revolutionary change. Finally, by adapting a theoretical model borrowed from Bruno Latour, this project argues that the apparent differences between the Government of Palestine on one hand, and Jewish and Muslim educators on the other, were more discursive than material. Education functioned as a political tool within the schools maintained by each group; however, the link between pedagogy and politics was one that the Mandatory government refused to recognize. On the contrary, the Department of Education accused Jewish and Muslim leaders of transgressing the boundary meant to separate education as an exercise in character formation from education as a site of social conditioning and political mobilization. Battles over the content and purpose of religious education therefore constituted part of a larger conflict regarding the relationship between mass schooling and political engagement in modern Palestine.

Thesis (M.A.)--Wheaton College Graduate School, Wheaton, IL, 2003. / Abstract. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 46-49).

Thesis (M.A.)--Wheaton College Graduate School, 2003. / Abstract. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 46-49).

Thesis (M.A.)--Wheaton College Graduate School, Wheaton, IL, 2003. / Abstract. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 46-49).

Although numerous studies have shown that discrimination contributes to poorer mental health, the precise mechanisms underlying this association are not well understood. In this paper, we consider the possibility that the association between day-to-day discrimination (being disrespected, insulted, and harassed) and depressive symptoms is partially mediated by religious struggles (religious doubts and negative religious coping). To test our mediation model, we use data collected from the 2011 Miami-Dade Health Survey (n = 444) to estimate a series of multiple regression models assessing associations among day-to-day discrimination, religious struggles, and depressive symptoms. We find that day-to-day discrimination is positively associated with religious struggles and depressive symptoms, net of adjustments for general religious involvement, age, gender, race, ethnicity, immigrant status, interview language, education, employment, household income, financial strain, and marital status. We also observe that religious struggles are positively associated with depressive symptoms. Our mediation analyses confirm that day-to-day discrimination can contribute to depressive symptoms by stirring religious struggles. Our key finding is that religious struggles may serve as a maladaptive coping response to discrimination. Our analyses extend previous work by bridging research in the areas of discrimination, religious struggles, and mental health.

INTRODUCTION: The picture of the Sunday School teacher as presented In the Indiana Survey reveals the qualities of sincerity response to a strong sense of duty, and a religious attitude, but a sad deficiency in the matter of training and preparation for the delicate task of working with immortal souls. To draw into this great work those with special ability, and to encourage those already in to add training to their devotion, calls for the development of a professional spirit. By this spirit is meant the feeling that they are members of a great profession of teaching, with a pride in their calling and a sense of the worthwhileness of their task. They will realize that real teaching is one of the great enterprises of life, that it demands the best that is in a person, and calls for exercise- of his highest powers, for force, for originality and imagination equal to the powers of mind and spirit that bring to light the secrets of science, that produce the great inventions, and make the great discoveries. [TRUNCATED]

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