Religious education in Zambia at fifty years of independence and beyond: achievements and challenges

Abstract

Religious Education (RE) as a school subject in Zambia owes much of what it is today to the Christian missionaries who arrived in the 19thcentury. Their evangelical efforts were significant in shaping the educational enterprise as a whole and the nature of RE in particular. This chapter traces the historical evolution of Religious Education in Zambia in order to provide an understanding of its changing faces in the past fifty years of independence. In the process, RE was transformed from an evangelical tool to an educational subject. In recording this history, we also provide an understanding of the place of religion and its value in the Zambian education system.