Religious Education in Out-of-School Settings

[Page 652]In this entry, religious education in out-of-school settings refers broadly to all educational efforts that take place outside compulsory schooling and either operate under religious auspices or facilitate explicitly religious commitments. Every religious community has its own network of institutions and its own history of educational endeavors, the majority of which were crafted to supplement the efforts of families and congregations as the primary sites for religious learning and socialization into religious communities. The forms these institutions take vary greatly from the highly formalized to the largely unstructured, including everything from overnight youth camps to religious pilgrimages, catechism, confirmation, and most congregationally based programs for K–12 students.

Over the centuries, religious schools, such as the eastern European Jewish yeshiva, the Islamic madrasa, the Protestant seminary, ...