Olivera Petrovich is Research Fellow at the University of Oxford in the Department of Experimental Psychology. Her research deals with the origin and development of natural religious understanding across different cultures.
A common objection to teaching about religious faith by parents and schools is that this implants ideas that children would otherwise lack. In this fascinating book, Olivera Petrovich explores the validity of this objection. Drawing on data from studies in a number of countries, Petrovich shows that children's questions about the physical world lead them to postulate causal agents which transcend the empirical domain. In other words, they behave much as natural theologians have always done. Petrovich's work has major implications for how we should teach about theology in schools and elsewhere. Professor Michael J Reiss, UCL Institute of Education