Drawing on interviews with hundreds of university professors, co-curricular educators, administrators, and students from public and private colleges and universities across the United States, Douglas and Rhonda Hustedt Jacobsen demonstrate that religion is central to the work of higher education in the twenty-first century. Religion Matters begins with an examination of the history of religion in American society and higher education, from Protestant establishment to secular dominance to the much more complex and pluralistic dynamics of the culture today. The authors define religion carefully, identifying three different modes of faith: historic religion, public religion, and personal religion. The second half of the volume explores six educational topics where religion intersects with the core goals and purposes of college/university education: religious literacy, interfaith etiquette, framing knowledge, civic engagement, convictions, and character and vocation. The authors pose key questions: What should an educated person know about the world's religions? What does it mean to interact appropriately with members of other faiths? What assumptions and rationalities, secular or religious, shape the way we think? What values and practices, secular or religious, guide civic engagement? How do personal beliefs interact with the teaching and learning process? How might colleges and universities point students toward lives of purpose and meaning? This volume shows that by paying careful and nuanced attention to the role of religion, educators can enhance intellectual life in any college or university.

About the Author
DJ: Distinguished Professor Church History and Theology, Messiah College; RHJ: Professor of Psychology and Director of Faculty Development, Messiah College

Reviews
No Longer Invisible opens a comprehensive window into a decades worth of debates and experiments about whether and how to integrate religion into college life. The reader will find an excellent synthesis of current thinking among higher education scholars over the role of religion in higher education, and they may glean insights from its description of the novel programs that some universities are undertaking to engage with religion more fully. * Damon Mayrl, Sociology of Religion *
The Jorgensen's overall treatment is sophisticated and well informed; their assessments for the future of university religion are realistic, plural and optimistic. Far from being a narrow, denominationally focused account of a limited set of Christian traditions in a limited variety of campus engagements, theirs is a serious, wide-ranging contribution to religion and the university debates. * Peter Hampson, Theology *
I highly recommend this book. It is remarkably inclusive, elegantly and persuasively written, and eminently practical. * Jonathan P. Hill, Journal of Contemporary Religion, *
it makes for a solid contribution to the growing body of literature on the increasing significance of religion in higher education. * Wesley Null, Journal of Church & State *



Book Information
ISBN 9780199844739
Author Rhonda Hustedt Jacobsen
Format Hardback
Page Count 208
Imprint Oxford University Press Inc
Publisher Oxford University Press Inc
Weight(grams) 399g
Dimensions(mm) 152mm * 236mm * 23mm