Arizona Civics Podcast

How Religious Literacy Builds Global Competence And Civic Skills

• The Center for American Civics • Season 3 • Episode 11

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In this episode of the Arizona Civics Podcast, host Liz Evans is joined by Dr. Tim Hall, educator and founder of Religion Matters, for a thoughtful conversation on religious literacy—what it is, why it matters, and how it can be taught responsibly in public schools.

Dr. Hall explains how religious literacy helps students better understand history, civic life, global affairs, and one another in a pluralistic democracy. The conversation explores constitutional guardrails, classroom strategies, and trusted resources for educators who want to approach religion academically, not devotionally.

What You’ll Learn

  • What religious literacy means in a public school context
  • Why religion is essential to understanding history, civics, and global issues
  • How religious literacy supports global competence and civic engagement
  • Constitutional guidelines for teaching about religion in K–12 classrooms
  • The Six-Point Framework and the “lived religion” approach
  • Why the Scopes Trial still matters nearly 100 years later
  • Trusted, classroom-ready resources for educators


Resources & Links Mentioned in the Episode

Core Religious Literacy & Civics Resources

  • National Council for the Social Studies (NCSS) – Religious Studies Companion to the C3 Framework
    https://www.socialstudies.org

  • First Amendment Center – Guidelines for Teaching About Religion
    https://www.freedomforum.org

  • American Academy of Religion (AAR) – Definition of Religious Literacy
    https://www.aarweb.org

  • Pew Research Center – Religion & Public Life
    https://www.pewresearch.org/religion

Teaching & Curriculum Resources

  • Tanbaum Center for Interreligious Understanding
    https://tanbaumcenter.org

  • Harvard Divinity School – Religion and Public Life
    https://rpl.hds.harvard.edu

  • Religion & Education Collaborative
    https://religionandeducationcollaborative.org

  • Religion Matters (Dr. Tim Hall)
    https://religionmatters.org

Global Competence Resources

Historical & Civic References

  • The Scopes Trial (1925) – Religion, science, and public education
  • Declaration of Independence – Religious influences on the Founders
  • First Amendment Religion Cases – Including cases related to the Pledge of Allegiance

The Arizona Constitution Project

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Liz Evans:

Welcome back to the Arizona Civics Podcast. I am super excited about our guest today because I have actually learned so much. I've been in this world for two decades. Um, and I've never actually heard the term religious literacy. So with us today, we have Dr. Tim Hall, who is a K-12 social studies instructional specialist, adjunct history, instructor, interim principal, and founder of Religious Matters, a platform dedicated to advancing religious literacy, diversity, and global competence in education. He has served as past president of the North Carolina Council for the Social Studies and coordinated Holocaust education for his county. Dr. Hall's work helps educators bring religion into the classroom in a ways that are academically sound, constitutionally appropriate, and culturally responsive, preparing students to better understand history and civic life and the diverse world that they live in. Dr. Hall, thank you so much for being here today. I am very excited to talk about this because I think sometimes when we say the word religion, educators get scared. So when we talk about religious literacy, what do we mean and why is it such an essential part of public education today?

Tim Hall:

Thank you for having me here. I'm very happy to be a part of this uh podcast and have this opportunity to talk about religious literacy. So religious literacy definitely scares uh a lot of teachers or makes teachers anxious. And you can see that across the nation in classrooms for sure. Um Religious literacy is fundamentally about understanding the ways religion intersects with social, political, and cultural life. The American Academy of Religion, which is religious studies scholars, it's about 10,000 strong, for uh, which is pretty large, defines it as the ability to discern and analyze those intersections, along with having the basic understanding of major traditions and the context that shape them. In public education today, this really matters because religion is one of the most powerful forces shaping human behavior. I mean, globally, and this is from 2012, um Pew Forum uh survey, more than 5.7 billion people out of 7.5 billion people identify with some religious tradition. I mean, that's a huge number. And so, what that means for students is we're going to live and work and collaborate with people whose world views are informed by a religious tradition. So, in a pluralistic democracy, religious literacy helps students interpret the world accurately and deeply while engaging respectfully across differences and avoiding those simplistic stereotypes and generalizations that often fuel conflict. It's not about promoting belief. Religious literacy is not about promoting belief, it's really about preparing young people to navigate the real world with intelligence and empathy.

Liz Evans:

So, how does religious literacy fit within the broader goal of preparing globally competent and civically engaged students?

Tim Hall:

That is a great question as well. I mean, so global competence involves several things. It involves examining local and global issues, understanding different perspectives, and then interacting respectfully with others and then taking responsible action. So religious literacy is one of the most direct pathways to building that capacity. When students learn how religious ideas shape culture, conflicts, social movements, and identity, then they really gain the tools that for, they really gain the tools for interpreting global events and local dynamics at the same time. So civically, religious literacy supports what scholars identify as civic, constitutional, and liberal education purposes for schooling. But it also teaches students to work across deep differences, grounds them in First Amendment principles, and strengthens their ability to participate in a diverse democracy. Global competence and religious literacy are two sides of the same coin, and they're mutually reinforcing. Both cultivate perspective taking, humility, and the capacity to hold complexity rather than collapse it into us versus them thinking.

Liz Evans:

So we talk about this, you know, in classrooms. What are some practical ways that teachers can responsibly include religion in the classroom, especially in an era of polarization and misunderstanding?

Tim Hall:

Very good question because that question comes up most in my conferences and workshops and my uh engagement with teachers on this issue. Um, so there are guidelines. And so the guidelines were produced by Charles Haynes back in 2001 and published by the First Amendment Center, and then later incorporated into several national documents. And so the guidelines are very clear and very workable. So, in general, and I won't read all the guidelines, but in general, the guidelines say teachers should be academic rather than devotional when they teach about religion. They should be focused on the awareness, not the acceptance of religions. And they should always be neutral among religions and between religion and non-religion. So, in practice, I mean, this can look like using primary sources, like, say, art, laws, literature, constitutional cases to show how religion shapes culture. Or it could mean incorporating multicultural literature that highlights lived experiences, not just doctrines that you find in textbooks. It could also mean using structured classroom tools, um, two of them in particular: bracketing, which means uh students learn to set aside their own personal beliefs, and then windows and mirrors, which helps students see others in what they are reading and themselves in the content. And then lastly, you discuss religion in relation to geography, politics, science, or history, rather than isolating as a single unit outside of regular experience, because it is a lived experience. So when teachers lean on these academic methods, then they really create the space for curiosity, nuance, and respectful dialogue, and even when communities are polarized.

Liz Evans:

So beyond teaching about religion responsibly and constitutionally, what does it look like for teachers to do so in a way that is rigorous and inclusive?

Tim Hall:

That is also a good question because um I'm gonna be quite honest with you. Early on in my career, I was not I was not rigorous with um teaching about religion. I was very much in a static mode of teaching about religion using graphic organizers, doctrines, and beliefs. But really, we need to use this lived religion lens. And that lived religion lens comes from the six-point framework. Uh, the six-point framework is located in the National Council for Social Studies, religious studies companion document to the C3 framework, which was published in 2017 as an appendix to the actual C3 framework. And I'll go over that more in a little while. But, anyways, that live um religion lens is much better because rather than reducing a tradition to charts of founders and doctrines and holidays, it really focuses on the rigorous teaching that engages the complexity of how people actually live out their religion in their daily lives. So the six-point framework encourages teachers to explore these uh items. First of all, um, there's the three B's belonging, behaviors, and beliefs. You know, um people uh in different religious traditions belong to these religious traditions and have communities and identities associated with that belonging. They also have behaviors, rituals, habits, and daily practices that are associated with that. And then finally, they have beliefs, which are ideas, meaning making, and theology. And all three belonging, behaviors, and beliefs, all influence each other uh mutually. So as people belong to a different community, then they uh the affects their behaviors and their beliefs as well. And then the other three points of that six-point framework are from the cultural studies method of learning about religion, which is, and they include internal diversity. So um we need to recognize and reject stereotypes that show um by showing a variety of internal diversity within a religious tradition. So all religious traditions have this internal diversity, so you can't say one religion all believed this, because that is not the case. In addition, uh another one is dynamic change. Um, so all religious traditions change over time. So if you're teaching about Islam in the seventh century, that looks very different than Islam today, or Christianity in the seventh century looks very different than Christianity in the 21st century. And then finally, this um idea of culture embeddedness, which means that religion always interacts with art, politics, science, economics, and public life. It it really influences cultures, but also is influenced by culture. So Christianity, say in America looks different than say Christianity in Africa a lot of times, because of the different cultures and the uh that that influx. So this uh approach, this um six-point framework really meets that constitutional bar while also honoring the real complexity of religion in people's lives. It widens the narrative beyond the isms, Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, and really kind of gives the students a rigorous and humane understanding of religious traditions in the world today.

Liz Evans:

And we will put all of the things that Dr. Hall is talking about. Our show notes are just going to be bursting with information. Um, and I appreciate that you talk about this because on our other podcast, Civics in the year, when we're going through the declaration, one of our scholars, Dr. Paul Careese, was talking about the influence of religion on the Declaration of Independence because that was the lived experiences of the founders. And you can't teach history or civics without understanding that. So one of the things we've written about was actually one of my very favorite things to teach in school, um, the scopes trial. So you've talked about that and its ongoing relevance. What does that moment in history teach us about how Americans debate religion, science, and education today?

Tim Hall:

There is a lot to the scopes trial. I love the scopes trial too, not just as a historical point of reference in 1925, but how you can take the scopes trial and say, here's what happened in 1925, but go to 2025 and you're saying, wait, there are some very similar uh things happening today. And so the scopes trial is really a powerful reminder that debates about religion and science are never black and white. You know, they're about identity, authority, and who gets to define public education. So in 1925 in Tennessee, the trial exposed the tensions between modern culture and traditional culture, you know, state control and academic freedom, scientific inquiry, and religious conviction. And so all those um different themes are in that trial. And so nearly a century later, you can still see echoes of those same dynamics in debates over evolution, climate change, book challenges, civic education, and how schools address other cultural war issues in the classroom. So the lesson is not the conflict is new, it's it's about how we equip students with the civic and intellectual tools to engage in these debates thoughtfully and respectfully. So religious literacy helps us to understand what's behind the arguments instead of reducing it to characters that you see in May history books of the Scoops trial today.

Liz Evans:

So if I'm a teacher, I'm I'm probably already teaching about religions because history you can't get away from it. But if they want to bring more of that religious literacy into their classroom in the manners that you've been talking about, where should they start? And what are some trusted resources providers you would recommend? And again, everything that you're listening to, listeners, we will make sure is in the show notes so you don't have to be writing quickly during this.

Tim Hall:

So that's a great question about resources. So there are a few entry points which are especially strong. So, first off, I would start with the religious studies companion document for the C3 framework by the National Council for Social Studies. Um, that document does a great job of aligning religious literacy with inquiry and standards. It provides that um those guidelines that I mentioned earlier while also providing that six-point framework that I mentioned earlier as well. So that is a great document to start with. And then there's the Tambaum Center for Interreligious Understanding. They focus more on religious diversity, but also religious literacy, but they provide a uh great resource of lesson plans and and materials for teachers to use in the classroom. Another group which has uh worked hard with um uh religious literacy is the Harvard Divinity School, Religion and Public Life. Uh, they uh focus in on the cultural studies method of teaching about religion, which is three of the six points of the six-point framework. And they have videos and uh source material for teachers in the classroom. Really great source. Another one is religion and education collaborative. That group uh brings together two groups that typically aren't together: K-12 uh teachers and religious literacy scholars. And they inform each other about religion and education in the classroom. And it's really a great group because it's it's two groups that really tend not to communicate back and forth, uh, but they have opportunities to really uh bridge those uh communication gaps there. Another one, of course, is my website, religionmatters.org. Um, on that website, we have curated resource lists um connected to the various presentations that I've done across the state and then across the nation. And then also we have a blog in which we invite teachers who are teaching about religion in the classroom to share their experiences and lesson plans with other teachers, providing teacher voice to this uh very important issue. And then for the global competence piece, let me mention World Savvy, Asia Society, and Project Zero. Great sources of global competence connections and resources and frameworks to be able to really look at global competence in the classroom. So for teachers, though, a good first step is really just simply integrating religious content into your existing units. I mean, look where things fit naturally and just are there, like quietly in the corner, you know? So culture, migration, human rights, revolutions, rather than treating religion as an isolated topic. And then once teachers see how deeply religion shapes human experience, it becomes an essential part of a good social studies curriculum and teaching in the classroom.

Liz Evans:

I think the thing I appreciate most about this is, you know, as you're talking, I was like, I did a lot of this in school and I just didn't have a name for it. And now that there's a name for it, I think that there's a lot of educators who are going to be listening and say, I do this and now I can sharpen it and make it even better because I have a name for it and I have extra resources. And, you know, this isn't like you said, it's not about pushing religion. You cannot separate religion from people because that's how it shapes us. We see it in the founding, we see it in Supreme Court cases. I'm even thinking of like, you know, Supreme Court cases surrounding the Pledge of Allegiance. They are actually First Amendment religion cases. And so I appreciate you because this isn't an extra thing. It's a thing that people are already doing that you're helping sharpen for the teachers and for the classrooms. We I cannot say how much I appreciate having you on. Please check the show notes because they will be full of everything that was talked about today.

Tim Hall:

Well, thank you for having me. I'm glad to be here and you have a great day.

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Liz Evans

Host
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Dr. Tim Hall

Guest

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