By Lauren R. Kerby
This time of year, teachers and students alike may be in need of some light-hearted fun with an educational purpose. Our religious literacy-themed Scattergories game is here to help! In each round, students list as many terms as they can think of that start with the chosen letter and exemplify a key idea of religious literacy, such as internal diversity, change over time, or cultural embeddedness.
By Lauren R. Kerby and Mary Perez
When Amy Coney Barrett was nominated to the Supreme Court, her religious identity as a conservative, charismatic Catholic immediately became a subject of intense scrutiny. The public conversation about Barrett’s identity reveals the internal diversity of how American Catholics think about what it means to be a Catholic woman, mother, and even feminist. Drawing on a varied selection of recent news articles, this lesson offers an opportunity for students to 1) practice recognizing internal diversity and 2) ask new questions about a topic as a result.
By Nicholas Scrimenti
This lesson illustrates the key principles of internal diversity, historical change, and cultural embeddedness using Erik Braun’s article about Burmese meditation vis-à-vis British colonialism. The story of how British colonialism in Burma shaped the way meditation was taught and practiced in Burma, as well as its subsequent export to the United States, is a clear object-lesson in the tenets of religious literacy.
