Ten Commandments displays, prayer at football games, Bible in the curriculum, vouchers for tuition at religious schools, Pledge of Allegiance, wall of separation between church and state, among other hot button issues at the intersection of religion and education, generate a great deal of heat, but often light is sorely lacking. The Praeger Handbook of Religion and Education in the United States provides a unique source of light to educators, religious leaders, journalists, policy-makers, parents, and the general public as well as a useful resource for scholars interested in the impact of religion on the origins, development, and current shape of the American educational landscape.
Following an introductory essay that surveys the relationship of religion to elementary and secondary education from the 1600s to the present, this set offers 175 entries written by more than 40 scholars with national reputations that cover a wide range of topics related to religion and education, both in the past and the present. These jargon-free entries are cross-referenced and provide suggestions for further reading. Readers who want to know what is behind the heat in current debates will find entries on: United States Supreme Court decisions on religion and education, current controversies regarding religion in the public schools, religious, legal, and educational associations involved in these controversies, religion and the curriculum, religious schools, individuals and movements that have affected the role of religion in education, and religion and education developments in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. This one of a kind set also includes a convenient table summarizing all of the religious liberty decisions of the Supreme Court from 1815 to the present.

Preface
Religion and Education in the United States: An Introduction
List of Entries
The Handbook
Appendix: United States Supreme Court Religious Liberty Decisions
About the Editors and Contributors

James C. Carper is Professor of Social Foundations of Education at the University of South Carolina, where he has been a faculty member since 1989. His research interests include the history of American education, education and religion, and private schools. He has published in numerous journals, including Journal of Church and State, Kansas History, History of Education Quarterly, Educational Leadership, Register of the Kentucky Historical Society, Kappa Delta Pi Record, Educational Forum, and Educational Policy. The Dissenting Tradition in American Education (with Thomas C. Hunt) is his most recent book.
Thomas C. Hunt is Professor in the Department of Teacher Education at Dayton, where he was named Fellow in the Center for Catholic Education in 2007. In 2002, the University of Dayton bestowed upon him its Alumni Scholarship Award. He was previously a faculty member at Virginia Tech where he served in numerous leadership positions and received awards for teaching, research, and service, most notably, the most prestigious teaching award given by Virginia Tech. He has authored or edited sixteen books in the last twenty-three years, all but one on religion and education, with a majority of those on Catholic education. He served as co-editor of Catholic Education: A Journal of Inquiry and Practice, the only refereed journal on Catholic schools in the nation, from 1998 until 2008, and is a past-President of the Associates for Research on Private Education, a special interest group of the American Educational Research Association.