[Objective] The purpose of this study is to analyze the papers published over the past 30 years in the Korean Journal of Religious Education by the Korean Association for the Study of Religious Education. The study aims to review the characteristics of these studies, draw implications for religious education based on these findings, and provide suggestions for future research directions. [Contents] This study employed text mining techniques to analyze research trends in the papers published in the Journal of Religious Education Studies. Specifically, it analyzed the frequency of major keywords and N-gram connectivity in papers published over a 30-year period from 1995 to 2024. The papers were divided into early (1995-2004), middle (2005-2014), and late (2015-2024) periods to compare keyword TF-IDF for each period. Additionally, the study compared the relationships between keywords through N-gram analysis for early, middle, and late periods to identify the characteristics of each period. [Conclusions] The conclusions of this study are as follows: First, the analysis of research trends over 30 years revealed that “religious education” and “Buddhism” were major research topics. Research related to “Confucianism” and “Donghak” decreased over time, while studies on “character education” and the “Fourth Industrial Revolution” increased. Second, regarding the characteristics of each period, in the early period, various “religion-related educational content,” “home education,” and “human rights education” were important. In the middle period, “diversity in religious education,” “educational approaches,” and university-related research increased. In the late period, “religious education” and “technology convergence,” topics related to the “Fourth Industrial Revolution,” “character education,” and “public nature” were prominently addressed.