Frequently Asked Questions

The Association of Professors and Researchers in Religious Education (APRRE)  was formed in 1970 from an earlier section of the National Council of Churches. For many years REA and APRRE would meet following each other in the same city on a biannual basis.

In 2003 the REA merged with the Association of Professors and Researchers in Religious Education. In order to preserve some sense of the two organizations, “APPRRE” was added to “REA” – with an additional “p” to denote professors and practitioners. REA is now an Association of Professors, Practitioners, and Researchers in Religious Education. We meet and work together to advance substantive research, probing scholarship and practical approaches to religious education, particularly through our journal Religious Education and our scholarly monograph series Horizons in Religious Education.

The REA is officially a “related scholarly organization” to the AAR, and as such holds at least one session each year at the AAR meeting. Many REA members are active in AAR.

The best place to start is at the association’s website: religiouseducation.net. There is also a Wikipedia entry, and a book was published in 1983 which traces its history (Schmidt, Stephen, History of the Religious Education Association. Birmingham, AL: Religious Education Press, 1983). Of course, the best place to find out more is by coming to one of our annual meetings.

Membership brings instant access to the journal Religious Education, including all of its archives. There are also travel grants available to students for the annual meeting; we publish a book series (Horizons) which is always seeking excellent scholarly monographs; there is a quarterly newsletter (eREACH) full of pragmatic resources; most of our conference plenary sessions are recorded and available in YouTube; our conference Proceedings are available online; and members are eligible to apply for the Wornom Innovation Grant.

The association has roughly 350 active members, who come from more than 20 different countries, although the REA has always had a predominately North American membership. We are seeking to diversify, and in 2014 and 2017 our presidents were European, our 2018 president was Turkish, and our 2019 program chair and 2020 president was on faculty of the University of Haifa. Our members come from a vast array of Christian faiths, as well as Judaism, Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, Jainism, and more. We also welcome members who are interested in questions of religious education but who do not hold any specifically religious views themselves.

You can join online – we have a secure process which works using Stripe (which accepts credit card payments). Joining online gives you immediate access to the journal. You can also mail or wire payments to our Executive Secretary at secretary [at] religiouseducation [dot] net. Our membership fee structure exists on a sliding scale, which relies on the integrity of members to choose the appropriate fee.

REA maintains at least some presence in Facebook, Twitter, and video. Our website includes a news blog to which you can subscribe using RSS. This is a relatively new arena for REA, and thus we are always eager to learn and grow there.

Members of the Board of Directors are elected for two year terms and any member is welcome to answer the call for candidates by nominating themselves or someone else. Their names are then introduced on a slate of nominees and prepared for the business meeting (held during the annual meeting) by the nominating committee and voted on by the membership at the Annual Meeting. Nominations may also be made from the floor of the business meeting. People normally serve for no more than two consecutive terms.

Work groups are members who agree to collaborate together on specific issues over a period of several years. They meet as part of the Annual Meeting, but they also conduct their work in a variety of ways during the year.  Presenters for the Work Group sessions at the Annual Meeting are chosen by each group or by conveners of the sessions.  New Working Groups may be initiated by request of members.

Standing committees are organized to help the REA sustain its focus on three major contexts for religious education, as delineated in the three committee titles:

Religious Education in Academic Disciplines & Institutions
Religious Education in Faith Communities
Religious Education in Public Life and the Global Community

Each Standing Committee has a chair who serves on the Board, and as many other members as are appropriate to the task (these are designated as such by the Board through its nominating committee).

The Standing Committees promote the effective functioning of the Association through their input on specific foci. Standing Committees may also organize national or regional events apart from the annual meeting.

eREACH is the association’s quarterly newsletter, which is sent out via email and is downloadable as a pdf. The newsletter began as “REACH” which stands for the “Religious Education Association Clearing House.” Now it is eREACH because it is done completely in electronic format. The newsletter contains information about members (publications and career transitions), highlights programs in religious education, and points to resources in the field. The newsletter also carries pertinent information about annual meetings.

The journal has been a part of REA nearly from the association’s founding. Members of the association serve on its Editorial Board, and the association pays the salary of the editor and review editor of the journal. That being said, papers are accepted for the journal using a double-blind peer review process, and regardless of membership in the association.

You can gain access to the journal by  joining the organization. Many libraries also keep the journal.

People become involved with the REA in a number of ways, but often the first step is by coming to a virtual, or in-person annual meeting, fall gathering or regional gathering.

If you’d like to step into deeper involvement, look for the various communities of practice and working groups. These are groups of people coming together to work on specific ideas or within specific contexts. They always welcome new participants, and often work on projects between annual meetings. If you are a student, you have a Board representative dedicated to supporting students in the association, and there are special events for students during the annual meeting. Once you’re more familiar with our organization, if you are interested in leadership opportunities, speak with someone on the nominations committee. This is the group which creates a slate of officers to stand for election each year during the annual business meeting. You can also nominate yourself, or someone else, from the floor during the business meeting. Still have questions? Please don’t hesitate to contact our executive secretary at secretary [at] religiouseducation [dot] net or our networking coordinator at nc [at] religiouseducation [dot] net

There are several ways to do this. One is to come to our annual meeting and ask people directly. Another is to pose a question to members via our quarterly newsletter. Yet another is to post something on our facebook page or tweet it to us. We also offer a membership directory to all members so that you may reach out electronically to members. There is, however, no guarantee that any of these routes will elicit an answer. We are a diverse and far flung group of people, and people answer as they feel moved to do so.

There are many different kinds of programs. We maintain a list that is as current as we can make it.

The scholarly field is in a state of some transition, however, so there are people studying questions of interest to this field in programs that are not formally listed as religious education. An example would be a fascinating dissertation published in 2014 on churches in the online environment SecondLife, which was written in the program on the history and philosophy of science at Georgia Tech. The field of religious education is broad, interdisciplinary and international in scope. Because of this nature, it tends to be more of a synthetic than analytic practice.

What an interesting question! People in our field hold myriad different kinds of positions. Some are faculty in universities, seminaries, and other institutions of higher education. Some are full time staff in national religious organizations. Others are consultants, filmmakers, chaplains, priests and pastors, high school teachers, writers, and so on. The field of religious education is capacious enough that many, many people claim it as part of their identity.

Follow the instructions on the website for that particular year. It is an electronic process requiring an abstract, outline and brief bibliography. Deadlines for submission are usually in early January, with acceptances of papers send out in mid-April, and final papers due in early June.

A “RIG” is a research interest group paper, which is a finished paper of publishable quality that is presented and discussed among a group of conference participants.

A “collaborative session” showcases emerging research, research-in-progress that may lead to a publishable paper, or current practices and programs that are presented to and discussed among a group of conference participants. This kind of session is proposed by a group of people, usually in the form of a set of papers given as a panel, or a shared workshop format.

A “poster presentation” is a presentation using words, graphs, charts and/or tables on a poster (space 90 cm wide and 120 cm high) for display and discussion during a particular time slot at the conference. Posters may use digital media presented on the author’s own laptop. Such a presentation allows the author to meet and speak informally with interested participants pertaining to research done, still continuing, or in preparation, thus stimulating the exchange of ideas and networking opportunities. This format offers an opportunity for both established and newer researchers. To facilitate conversation across levels of expertise, established members in the field and in the organization are usually invited to briefly respond to each of the posters.

Simply use the email you originally joined with, and request a new password. Alternatively, if you have your mobile phone number on your profile, you can log in by receiving a code via SMS.