Clergy have historically been represented as figures of authority, wielding great influence over our society. During certain periods of American history, members of the clergy were nearly ever-present in public life. But men and women of the clergy are not born that way, they are made. And therefore, the matter of their education is a question of fundamental public importance. In Clergy Education in America, Larry Golemon shows not only how our conception of professionalism in religious life has changed over time, but also how the education of religious leaders have influenced American culture. Tracing the history of clergy education in America from the Early Republic through the first decades of the twentieth century, Golemon tracks how the clergy has become increasingly diversified in terms of race, gender, and class in part because of this engagement with public life. At the same time, he demonstrates that as theological education became increasingly intertwined with academia the clergy's sphere of influence shrank significantly, marking a turn away from public life and a decline in their cultural influence. Clergy Education in America offers a sweeping look at an oft-overlooked but critically important aspect of American public life.

In Between Tradition and Innovation, Ad Meskens traces the profound influence of a group of Flemish Jesuits on the course of mathematics in the seventeenth century. Using manuscript evidence, this book argues that one of the Flemish mathematics school's professors, Gregorio a San Vicente (1584-1667), had developed a logically sound integration method more than a decade before the Italian mathematician Bonaventura Cavalieri. Although San Vincente's superiors refused to grant him permission to publish his results, his methods went on to influence numerous other mathematicians through his students, many of whom became famous mathematicians in their own right. By carefully tracing their careers and outlining their biographies, Meskens convincingly shows that they made a number of ground-breaking contributions to fields ranging from mathematics and mechanics to optics and architecture.

There is a dire need today to create spaces in which people can make meaning of their existence in the world, abiding by cultural frameworks and practices that acknowledge and validate a meaningful existence for all. People are not just isolated individuals but are connected in diverse ways with other persons within our natural and social environment which is part of the whole universe. The African philosophy of uBuntu or humaneness is re-emerging for its timely relevance and potential as indispensable in our quest for global citizenship, peace, and mutual understanding in securing sustainable human development in the broader ecosystem. Comparative educationists have the challenge to devise theoretical frameworks, epistemological and pedagogical constructs as well as pragmatic, useful and effective ways of promoting the virtues of compassion and recognition of our common humanity in eliminating the ills of domination and control that are guided by greed, hatred, jealousy, and intolerance. Comparative Education for Global Citizenship, Peace and Shared Living through Ubuntu paves the way for a better understanding of the critical importance of the collective search and endeavor towards achieving the virtues of nonviolence, peace, shared values of living together, global citizenship, improved quality of life for all and a better appreciation of the positive implications of interdependence.

Whose job is it to teach the public about sex? Parents? The churches? The schools? And what should they be taught? These questions have sparked some of the most heated political debates in recent American history, most recently the battle between proponents of comprehensive sex education and those in favor of an "abstinence-only" curriculum. Kristy Slominski shows that these questions have a long, complex, and surprising history. Teaching Moral Sex is the first comprehensive study of the role of religion in the history of public sex education in the United States. The field of sex education, Slominski shows, was created through a collaboration between religious sex educators-primarily liberal Protestants, along with some Catholics and Reform Jews-and "men of science"-namely physicians, biology professors, and social scientists. She argues that the work of early religious sex educators laid the foundation for both sides of contemporary controversies that are now often treated as disputes between "religious" and "secular" Americans. Slominski examines the religious contributions to national sex education organizations from the late nineteenth century to the early twenty-first. Far from being a barrier to sex education, she demonstrates, religion has been deeply embedded in the history of sex education, and its legacy has shaped the terms of current debates. Focusing on religion uncovers an under-recognized cast of characters-including Quaker and Unitarian social purity reformers, military chaplains, and the Young Men's Christian Association- who, Slominski deftly shows, worked to make sex education more acceptable to the public through a strategic combination of progressive and restrictive approaches to sexuality. Teaching Moral Sex highlights the essential contributions of religious actors to the movement for sex education in the United States and reveals where their influence can still be felt today.