Book Review: The Role of Religion in 21st-Century Public Schools

Excerpt: Jones and Sheffield have collected essays that speak to a broad range of interests surrounding the topic of religion in public schools. From Jones’s commentary on the emotional underpinnings and historical context of the role of God in classrooms of children, to an account of the limitations of the establishment clause, and past a couple of reports on prayer in schools, the work takes readers through a course of chapters that touch upon many of the themes most popular in arguments about religion in school. Twelve unique chapters written by a diverse group of scholars grant the collection a plurality of perspectives that often eludes books centering on the most personal part of our existence that structures our view of all we hold sacred. Clearly, arguments in favor of or opposed to the inclusion of religion in our educational system involve passion not often matched in other debates, but Jones and Sheffield have amassed and presented work that represents mostly solid thinking on the role of religion in our schools