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Today, issues of genders and sexualities are contested, in the Global South as well as the Global North.Being inextricably interwoven with cultural practices, social attitudes, political ideologies andreligious convictions, in education issues of genders and sexualities, needs clarification, critical examination and considered debates. Evidently, matters of genders and sexualities have strong repercussions on the perceived possibilities available for human beings’ identity formation, as well as other life opportunities. The issues at stake for work, education, community and love require our serious consideration as Religious Education researchers and educators. In many socio-cultural settings in which Religious Education is offered as a school subject, human sexuality and identifications of gender have become matters of human rights too with wider implications for schooling andsociety.Gender, sexuality, identity, and faith are words with varied and often highly disputed meanings connected to them. This is especially more so today, when digital technologies increasingly float meanings across cultures.

In the call for papers for this Special Issue, entitled Genders, Sexualities and Religious Education: Theory, Policy and Practice, we deliberately chose to put the concepts ‘genders’and ‘sexualities’ in the plural. Our intention in doing this was to give researchers freedom to address the issues in multifaceted ways. We wanted to allow for a richness of perspectives for researchers to demonstrate variations in terms of local conditions, culturally, politically, and religiously, for what can and is being done in Religious Education on these contested issues.The seven articles presented in this Special Issue do provide variations regarding theoretical perspectives, policy directions, practices, and geographical socio-cultural contexts, as well as raisingseveral matters of principle.