Editorial: Religious Education for Such a Time as This: Keeping Our (Journal) Borders Open

Religious Education long has been a vehicle for international and multi-religious exchange of ideas at the intersections of religion and education. Indeed, in the very first volume year of this journal one can find articles such as “The Religious Education of Girls in Turkey” (Allen 1906). In past times when political events made attention to international and multi-religious engagement less popular, Religious Education continued to assert the value of both. For instance, in 1914, as the First World War began in Europe, an editorial entitled “Religious Education and International Good Will” (Wilson 1914) signaled the desire to situate religious education in relation to the pressing needs of a world in which good will among nations was in increasingly short supply. And again, in 1943 amid the Second World War, the journal's editorial committee planned future issues to address “ethical challenges to religious education presented by world events” (Hartshorne 1942). Across various historical instances of global instability, our Association and this journal have attended to events in the life of the world constituting the broad global context for religious education.

Today, we find ourselves amid growing international turmoil yet again. Massive global migration caused by war, fears of terrorism, and increasingly protectionist policies by more powerful nations all contribute. Recent elections in various parts of the globe—the Philippines, England, Korea, and the U.S., to name a few examples—bring unconventional leaders and policies to the foreground that stir up anxieties within these countries, unsettle longstanding relations between allies, and further antagonize relations between nations already experiencing strained bonds.

In such a time as this, religious educators continue to do our work. It may be tempting to believe that academic journals like this one, and religious education as a practice and a scholarly field, have little impact on the larger context of global instability. If by “impact” one means that global leaders are calling us up and asking for our advice, well then, it is probably true that we have relatively little impact. If, on the other hand, impact is about the ability of our work to inform communal practices “on the ground,” where people live out their everyday lives, where worldviews and perspectives about how best to relate across differences are shaped, then the potential impact of our work is vast. If impact refers to our abilities to use available public platforms to speak a more nuanced, informed understanding of religion into present day discourse, then we have that opportunity. In such a time as this, we cannot remain oblivious to the current international dis-ease facing the world, but instead must create perspectives and practices for religious education that speak to the difficult times in which we find ourselves today. Accordingly, I offer the following as guiding principles for the ongoing work of this journal in a time in which retrenchment into religious identity-enclaves and nationalistic xenophobia threaten our interests in being a space for the free international, multi-religious exchange of knowledge:

1.	We will keep our journal's borders open, continuing to seek the wisdom of persons from diverse global contexts who contribute to the partial perspectives our knowledge inevitably will become without their work.
2.	We will remain attentive to the insidious power of social forces such as racism, classism, and sexism, alongside political rhetoric, to draw fences around intellectual work and to build walls of exclusion based not on the merits of scholarship and practice in our field but on political ill will and bias.
3.	We will choose a stance of curiosity and interest, instead of fear and guardedness, about the pluriform practices found in diverse faith traditions. We will continually seek inclusion of articles by writers addressing religion and education from a multiplicity of religious contexts.

This issue of Religious Education embodies such commitments, bringing together authors from a variety of international and religious contexts. Jeffrey Michael Horner inquires about evangelical Christian perspectives on religious education as he creates a conversation between unusual dialogue partners, Lev Vygotsky and John Calvin. Arniika Kuusisto, Saila Poulter, and Arto Kallioniemi provide data and analysis on religious education in Finland's schools today from the perspectives of Finnish students. Birgit Pfeifer and Ruard Ganzevoort take up the question of the “existential concerns” of school shooters, in an article that looks at this form of school violence through the statements of the shooters themselves. Eric Rackley uses a transactional theory of reading to consider how Methodist youth engage scripture. David Resnick considers a modern parable that is an “educational reworking of the Adam story,” toward a communitarian approach to moral education. Eliezar Schnall and David Schnall bring insights from positive psychology to address education in Jewish schools and synagogues. Jacomijn C. van der Kooij, Doret J. de Ruyter, and Siebren Miedema argue that “worldview” offers a more encompassing term than religion and is therefore needed in religious education. Book reviews by Cynthia L. Cameron, Tanya Marie Eustace, Mehmet Gultekin, and Mary E. Hess finish off the issue.