Mary Boys offers a new way of thinking about what it means to educate religiously. Utilizing the method of map-making to broaden the context of American religious education, Boys defines a process that incorporates each instructor's own experiences, perspectives, and analytical insights to develop more compelling teaching methods.
By placing both Protestant and Catholic religious education in both a historical and conceptual framework, Boys establishes a theological and educational basis for providing answers to central questions: What does it mean to educate in faith? What is the teacher's role? How much emphasis should be given to psychology, anthropology, and sociology? Toward what view of society is a theory of religious education oriented?
No one maps out where we've been, where we are and where we're going more clearly than Boys does here. . . . [She] demonstrates how a real master in the field keeps the transforming power of the tradition alive for the sake of a new future. -- Craig Dykstra
In the course of dealing with the history, methods, and possibilities of Christian education, [Boys] has actually given us a compendium of the main issues and trends across the whole theological spectrum. Anyone who wants to know how we have gotten to where we are today and -- more important still -- how we move ahead in the life of faith, will find this book essential reading. In its blending of graceful style and copious scholarship it sets a model. -- Robert McAfee Brown
Mary Boys's encyclopedic account of religious education in North America will be useful to anyone who educates in faith and seeks to place his or her own work in historical perspective. -- Sharon Parks
Mary Boys has emerged as one of the leading religious educators in North America. This comprehensive ?map of the field' will be welcomed by specialists and nonspecialists alike. -- Richard McBrien
Contents:
Part One: Mapmaking
1.Creating a Guidebook for Exploring
2.Surveying the Territory: Evangelism
3.Surveying the Territory: Religious Education
4.Surveying the Territory: Christian Education
5.Surveying the Territory: Catholic Education--Catechetics
6.Extending the Survey: Contemporary Modifications of Classic Expressions
Part Two: Visions
7.Movements on the Horizon
8.Marking Out the Boundaries: A Way of Thinking about Religious Education
Mary C. Boys teaches theology and religious education at Boston College. She is the author of Biblical Interpretation in Religious Education and editor of Ministry and Education in Conversation.
