REA Annual Meeting 2019
Coexistence in Divided Societies:
Pedagogies of the Sacred, of Difference, and of Hope
1–3 November 2019, Toronto, Ontario
A growing chasm exists in democracies around the world today in which people of diverse religious and spiritual persuasions find it increasingly difficult to communicate across their differences in order to live together in a common civil society. These differences are often tied to political ideology, ethical orientation, moral proclivity, cultural identity, nationality, race, class, gender, sexual orientation, and more. Tensions between two trends in education for religious and spiritual affiliation, which are often conceived as more and less liberal, have contributed greatly to this chasm.
The theme of this year’s REA conference addresses varieties of religious and spiritual education that promote dialogue across these deep and apparently incommensurable divisions. Included among these educational approaches are ‘pedagogies of the sacred’ that initiate people into religious and spiritual traditions, from the inside, as it were, as well as ‘pedagogies of difference’ that teach from and about those traditions from the outside, so to say. Taken together they offer a pedagogy of hope that educates for peaceful coexistence across the chasm that currently plagues many democratic societies around the globe.
Please check back for more details soon!
Meeting updates
- Advisory Council summary 7 April 2020The newly re-constituted REA Advisory Council met at the end of the 2019 meeting, and here is the summary of their discussion.
- PPT from Tsafrir Goldberg 3 November 2019Tsafrir Goldberg from the University of Haifa in Israel graciously agreed to have us post his slides from the plenary presentation he made. You can find them here.
- Getting underway! 1 November 2019Our meeting is about to launch! A couple of quick notes to remember: our first plenary begins at 8:30 am (that is earlier than usual), and is given over to the Kairos Blanket Exercise. Please remember that you will be asked to remove your shoes to participate in this sacred grounding, embodied pedagogical process.
- Business Meeting preparation 29 October 2019Make sure to read all of the materials for the business meeting which will happen on Saturday evening, following the reception. This page will be updated regularly as new reports are prepared!
- Plenary 5: Science and religion education in divided societies 24 October 2019By way of evoking your interest, we are going to post brief abstracts of some of the plenary panelists for our upcoming meeting in Toronto. Here is a glimpse of what Dr. Sybrina Atwaters, Director, OMED: Educational Services, Georgia Tech Center for Student Diversity and Inclusion, and Chair of the Publications Committee of the REA ...
- Plenary 3: Disrupting the consequences of difficult histories through education 24 October 2019By way of evoking your interest, we are going to post brief abstracts of some of the plenary panelists for our upcoming meeting in Toronto. Here is a glimpse of what Dr. Magdalena Gross, Senior research associate, Center to Support Excellence in Teaching, Stanford University will be presenting. In a recent Economist article, the author of ...
- Plenary 3: Disrupting the consequences of difficult histories through education 24 October 2019By way of evoking your interest, we are going to post brief abstracts of some of the plenary panelists for our upcoming meeting in Toronto. Here is a glimpse of what Dr. Tsafrir Goldberg, in the Department. of Learning, Instruction and Teacher Education in the University of Haifa, Israel will be presenting. How do Jewish and ...
- Plenary 3: Disrupting the consequences of histories through education 24 October 2019By way of evoking your interest, we are going to post brief abstracts of some of the plenary panelists for our upcoming meeting in Toronto. Here is a glimpse of what Dr. Greer Anne Wenh-In Ng, Emerita professor of religious education, Emmanuel College in Victoria University in the University of Toronto, will be presenting. Complexities in ...
- Preparing for REA2019 24 October 2019Excitement is building as we approach REA Annual Meeting 2019, next week in Toronto. We have a number of things we’d like to share in advance. First, we extend love and prayers to our program chair, Dr. Hanan Alexander, who has had to have major heart surgery and will not be able to attend our meeting. ...
- Slate of nominees 24 October 2019Vice-President and 2021 Program Chair Patrick Reyes currently serves as Senior Director at the Forum for Theological Exploration, where his portfolio includes oversight of organizational thought leadership, research, and annual grant funding. In this role, he collaborates and works with leaders of institutions, foundations, and other para-academic organizations in theological and higher education to ...