Från kristen fostran till belonging without believing: religionsläroböckers framställning av kristendomen under hundra år

Sammendrag

This article seeks to expand and deepen our understanding of the development of Christian and religious education in Swedish primary schools from the 1920s to the 2000s. Drawing on textbook analysis, it offers a historical explanation for the prevailing view that contemporary religious education operates within a secular framework. By integrating perspectives from both the history of education and church history, I argue that religious education continues to be shaped by an (often implicit) Christian heritage. Previous research has emphasized that this heritage is deeply rooted in Lutheran Protestantism and influenced by strands of liberal theology. While acknowledging these interpretations, I aim to refine them by arguing that religious education in Sweden has not been shaped solely by Lutheran or liberal theological traditions. From the 1960s onward, national curricula have contained no explicit references to Lutheranism. Rather than viewing contemporary religious education as a form of secularized Lutheranism, I suggest its lingering Christian influence should be understood as a legacy of a broader, culturally embedded form of Protestantism – what might be termed as a national Christianity of the people’s home (folkhemskristendom) Moreover, I contend that textbooks from the 1970s onward reveal a distinct ambiguity: while they promote critical engagement with Christianity’s truth claims, they simultaneously present Christian ethics as the foundation for pupils’ ethical and moral development.