In this book, Penny Thompson discusses the place of Christianity in Religious Education from 1963. She explores the reasons why the committed teaching of the Christian faith has been slowly undermined, and aims to show that the current state of both theory and practice is incoherent and unsustainable. Her arguments explore the debates and historical developments in this sector, over the past forty years, and convincingly propose that the way forward to is to recover the teaching of Christianity in an open and self-critical way. OFSTED reports that the level of unsatisfactory staffing in RE is...

The Effective Teaching of Religious Education provides an accessible yet intellectually rigorous resource for all those involved in the teaching of RE in schools today.

Written with the needs of specialist and non-specialist teachers in mind, in both the primary and secondary sectors, it successfully integrates theory and practice, encouraging debate and reflection on a broad range of issues in what is often regarded as a complex and often controversial subject area.

The second edition has been written with the collaboration of a new co-author, Penny Thompson and has...

Inspiring Faith in Schools addresses the privileging of secularism that appears to affect RE in countries influenced by modern western thought. The authors argue that a more engaging form of RE would emerge if religious life were to inhabit centre stage. Currently religious faith is made to hover in the wings awaiting the call to face the inquisitorial challenge of the modern day enquirer. The consequent relationship between pupil and the Divine as the purpose of study is then already intrinsically irreligious, as indicated in the Book of Job by putting God in the dock, whereas it is the...