This book will attempt, through an in-depth investigation of eight private schools, representing a wide variety of traditions (including non-sectarian as well as sectarian schools), to show how schools are telling reflections of the changing religious landscape of our country. It will also seek to demonstrate that these schools are important guideposts in the process of understanding that landscape, and how institutions with a clear commitment can embrace a pluralistic constituency. The degree to which they are able to balance both tradition and contemporary reality can teach us a great deal about not only how to be more fluent in our religious literacy, but how to be better citizens in an increasingly complex world.

The second edition of What Schools Teach Us About Religious Life continues to explore the ways in which private education in the United States mirrors the growing complexity and fluidity of religious life in the United States. Through the study of ten different private schools—representing a wide variety of religious traditions as well as some secular institutions—a picture of contemporary culture, and the place of religious belief within the culture, emerges. Each chapter of this second edition of What Schools Teach Us About Religious Life contains a different picture of how individual schools then address that culture.