It is just that religion has such a pervasive presence within history, arts, literature, culture and the world’s values’ systems that ignorance of religion usually spells ignorance of the human condition.

Moreover, study of religion is not merely a museum walk through anachronistic ideas and artifacts: a professional engaged in counseling or psychiatry, sales or education, health care or financial management needs to appreciate the religious moorings of clients.

Sadly, when it comes to most school education today, we have two opposing tendencies: teach religion in order to make or keep adherents on the one hand; or treat all religion as "superstitious baggage" on the other. Neither approach helps advance a sound understanding of religion.

People of faith need to study religion in public schools and universities because that is probably the only way they will learn about religions other than their own. On the flip side, atheistic education seems to easily fall into the trap of using dismissive slogans like “religion is the chief cause of war,” or “modern science has completely refuted the basic tenets of religion,” or “the cosmonaut flew into outer space and God wasn’t there.”

I do not see how “faith in non-religion” as a substitute for “faith in religion” produces an educated world view. I can see that AFTER adequate education in religion a person may decide to believe in atheism, but that person should be supplied with the necessary evidence for making this decision rather than having it imposed by elitist faculty or anti-religious school boards. (Turn that premise 180° for my opinion about hyper-religious colleges and school boards.)

The problem in teaching religion is that it is virtually impossible to avoid introducing one’s own judgments into the classroom. I come to this conclusion from my experience, which despite 26 years of professional engagement, is neither complete nor perfect. It requires great personal discipline, a measure of humility, a rigorously logical methodology and an openness to truth just to survive a semester teaching religion in the classroom.

Fortunately, religion is not the only subject encountering such pitfalls. How, for instance, teach about slavery or the Holocaust without introducing personal judgments?

Thus, despite the difficulties in teaching religion efficiently, the positive results delivered for a well-rounded education outweigh the negatives. We need to support teachers of religion as they go about acquiring skills not found among those teaching mathematics or chemistry, just as we do for teachers of art or gymnastics.

I am not speaking out of the clouds of utopia. There are some positive things happening at the grass roots. For instance, at my son’s former New Jersey high school, St. Joseph’s in Metuchen, the religion department employed a rabbi to teach the Old Testament and offered a world religion’s course that covered Buddhism and Hinduism. Non-Christian students at that Catholic school were allowed a concentration that did not focus on Jesus and the Gospels, while Christians were given equal freedom to pursue their faith in depth.

In my course at Brooklyn College, I taught the Abrahamic religions of Judaism, Christianity and Islam as three variations of the same faith. This encouraged class discussions in which students tried to prove differences by citing specific practices or beliefs – only to find a rapid answer to the effect, “We do that too.” While differences were not swept under a politically correct rug, the general result was a student perception that they had more in common with each other that at first supposed.

It is always essential to differentiate between religion as an institution and religion as a motivating, personal faith. With that distinction in mind, one can trace historically when an institution makes decisions to strengthen social control and when it makes decisions based on faith beliefs that actually weaken the institution. Thus, the history of religions becomes a history of the world.

Very little in theology is not also reflected in philosophy. Changes in social structure like urbanization or commerce have huge impacts on religion, often leading to both greater skepticism and more intense faith. While the scientific and commercial worlds forge ahead, religion usually provides some cautionary messages about those left behind. This is as true in the ancient, medieval or renaissance worlds as it in modern times.

Good history and social science require an examination of the functions of religions in facing such challenges and when taught properly, students discover patterns of adaptation, resistance and renewal. These elements frame the ongoing relevance of religion for the future. As was once said, refusal to learn from the past dooms one to repeat the same mistakes in the future.

Even though religion has my support, I am not sure about making it mandatory. It's not that I doubt the utility of religious study: it's just that I wonder if as yet we have enough qualified teachers for such a demanding task. This is one instance in which it is better to do nothing than to do it badly.

Although I confess to being unsure of what the future holds, I hope most people will join me in recognizing the important role of religion in history and contemporary society. If they don’t, well then, perhaps it is because they have not yet been fully educated.