REA Annual Meeting

The Religious Education Association is an incorporation of the venerable 100 year old association (REA) of persons who have gathered semi-annually, published and taught religious education during this past century and the Association of Professors and Researchers in Religious Education (APRRE), the group of professors, scholars and researchers who for the past 30 years have gathered annually as a guild of scholars building and sharing a body of theory and research.
Mission:
The mission of the Religious Education Association is to create opportunities for exploring and advancing the interconnected practices of scholarship, research, teaching, and leadership in faith communities, academic institutions, and the wider world community. The Association accomplishes its mission in four ways:
Through sharing, critiquing and encouraging publication of substantive research, probing scholarship and practical approaches to religious education (particularly through its journal Religious Education);
Through ecumenical, inter-religious, and cross-cultural, interdisciplinary and inter-professional dialogue that stimulates members to recall and examine historic traditions and explore fresh visions of religious education for the diverse and ever-changing human family in our complex world community;
Through creation of international networks of communication, cooperation and support in order to strengthen leaders in religious education, and religious education as a distinctive and vital field; and
Through interpreting the nature, purposes, and value of the field of religious education to the wider society and those preparing to become professors, researchers, or other leaders in religious education.

The Religious Education Association is an incorporation of the venerable 100 year old association (REA) of persons who have gathered semi-annually, published and taught religious education during this past century and the Association of Professors and Researchers in Religious Education (APRRE), the group of professors, scholars and researchers who for the past 30 years have gathered annually as a guild of scholars building and sharing a body of theory and research.

The mission of the Religious Education Association is to create opportunities for exploring and advancing the interconnected practices of scholarship, research, teaching, and leadership in faith communities, academic institutions, and the wider world community. The Association accomplishes its mission in four ways:

Through sharing, critiquing and encouraging publication of substantive research, probing scholarship and practical approaches to religious education (particularly through its journal Religious Education);

Through ecumenical, inter-religious, and cross-cultural, interdisciplinary and inter-professional dialogue that stimulates members to recall and examine historic traditions and explore fresh visions of religious education for the diverse and ever-changing human family in our complex world community;

Through creation of international networks of communication, cooperation and support in order to strengthen leaders in religious education, and religious education as a distinctive and vital field; and

Through interpreting the nature, purposes, and value of the field of religious education to the wider society and those preparing to become professors, researchers, or other leaders in religious education.

In the flow

Our theme for the 2010 annual meeting is “In the flow: Learning religion and religiously learning amongst global cultural flows.”  We won’t know the precise shape of our program for a few months yet, but here are some of the questions we hope to address.

What does religious education look like – and what could it look like – in a world of global cultural flows? What is “religious identity” when hybridization and bricolage are powerfully descriptive terms?

What do understandings of culture that emerge from cultural studies contribute to how we support learning about religion, and religiously learning (that is, sacred study, faith-ful engagement, spiritual attentiveness, etc.)? What do new understandings of media cultures contribute to such learning?

In a world in which political processes and media processes can seem to have more explanatory and persuasive power than religious processes, what does it mean to educate for faith and in faith? What kind of religious identity ought we be striving for in a world in which some forms of religious identity produce more, and more painfully stark, conflict? How do we understand religious traditions in the midst of global political shifts?

What does it mean to be religious in a world in which our prior assumptions may no longer work? What is the mission of religious education in faith communities that seem to be falling apart? What is trying to be birthed in our midst?

What kinds of learning community are needed for a mission of providing room and voice for spirit in a world of globalization?

How is religious education an umbrella for the variety of things going on? What is the academic trajectory of our field today?