Survey data, despite limitations, offer the clearest window on the current state of global religiosity, showing the sharply divergent ways religious impulses and their absence have manifested in different nations and regions. After a discussion of religious literacy, we explore what cross-cultural survey research teaches about the global distribution of religious belief. Research suggests that atheism is rare, especially outside of Europe and a few industrialized countries. Beyond this, studies confirm that countries differ greatly in the prevalence of various religious beliefs, including belief in a personal God who intervenes in human affairs. Some careful projections also suggest that significant changes are coming over the next few decades in the relative sizes of different religious groups around the world. In the United States, survey data suggest that – despite some recent changes -- people continue to be relatively religious when compared with other highly industrialized and economically developed nations. The second half of the chapter looks at the empirical relationships between religiosity and education, intellect, thinking styles, gender, age, and personality.

The fact of religious pluralism is one of the most challenging questions for contemporary liberal democracies. Political theorists variously argue that religious belief and practice can be a support for prosocial morality, can cause social division, may prevent citizens from adopting important civic norms, or should simply be an area of civic competence. All of these positions carry significant consequences for democratic education. This chapter surveys a range of positions present in political theory and democratic education literature, drawing on historical and contemporary examples from Western democracies, particularly the American context. The chapter concludes by exploring the possibility that modern liberal democratic regimes are properly considered religious themselves, and by considering the implications of this notion for debates regarding democratic education.

Stefan Altmeyer and Johannes Kerbeck explore religious education as a means for enabling learners to build life-relevant knowledge and critical understanding. They argue that religious literacies are underpinned by an awareness of inter-religious views ranging from the neutral to critical and ultimately leading to positioning individual decisions and identities within religion-aware thinking. Learners are guided along a pathway from understanding ‘religious language’ to actively engaging in religious dialogue and using the ‘language of religion’ in appropriate, critical and reflective ways. Investigating the differences between subjective and objective positionality involves learners in facing changing perspectives that build on developing basic religious knowledge, applying their understanding to lived experiences and constructing critical yet relevant evaluations of arguments and counter-arguments. When these evaluations demonstrate appropriate use of the ‘correlative’ or ‘dialogic’ principle of religious learning, students exhibit deeper understanding. The learning episode focuses on a national initiative on global development featuring a video-streamed inter-religious panel discussion with experts from different creeds. Drawing on issues of diversity, empathy, solidarity and responsibility and using digital media, learners are invited to prepare for, actively participate in and connect personally with issues through deep reflection informed by religious literacies development.