Teaching Orthodox religious education on the border

Abstract

In geographical areas bordering those of other states, the function of educational systems, as the means for states to foster their citizens, is challenged by ambiguities and tensions connected to intercultural experiences. In this article, I illustrate some of the findings from a project that studies religious education in four border areas around the Baltic Barents Sea, by bringing forward the case of a school teacher who teaches Orthodox religious education (ORE), in a town in Finland close to the border with Russia. Thus, the aim is to present and discuss ORE in Finland as well as to understand what implication the border situation can have on religious education.

Keywords:

• religious tradition
• Orthodox religious education
• Finland
• minority
• citizenship

Notes

1. The other border areas covered by this study are Norway–Russia, Poland–Germany, Estonia and Latvia.

2. See www.sh.se/tratebbb for more information about the project. The other participants in the project are Associate Professor Peter Strandbrink, Professor Thomas Lundén and Ph.D-candidate Johanna Pettersson.

3. The assistants required trilingual skills so as to be capable of conducting interviews on both side of the border and then conveying the results to the research group in English.

4. ‘Helena’ is obviously a pseudonym; her in-depth interview was conducted in English.

5. The matter of how to ‘transmit’ a religious tradition to the coming generation is considered one of the most important questions relative to the survival of a religious minority; but see (Berglund 2011) for a discussion regarding the use of the term ‘transmit’ in relation to religious traditions.

6. Not only did many Orthodox families lose their homes, but the Orthodox Church itself is also said to have lost 90% of its property.

7. A comparative example would be Islamic religious education (IRE) in Europe ( Aslan and Windisch 2012), including Sweden (Berglund 2010a).

8. There are thirteen registered curricula for religious education in Finland (Aikonen 2011, 44).

9. The national curriculum states that ‘the basic values of upper secondary school instruction are built on Finnish cultural history, which is part of Nordic and European cultural history’ (National Core Curriculum for Basic Education 2004, 12).

10. This notwithstanding, the Orthodox Church is nonetheless described as very active in comparison to other Christian congregations in the region (Research report nr 2).

11. Note that although the general public in Nordic countries commonly considers someone to be a Christian if she or he is a believer, it is nonetheless a characteristic of Nordic countries to ‘belong without believing,’ meaning that in the Nordic countries many nonbelievers continue to remain church members and to use their church for occasional offices (Davie 2007).

12. Here integrative means that all pupils are taught about religion in the same classroom (Alberts 2007). See also (Alberts 2007, Berglund 2010b, Löfstedt 2011) with regard to the Swedish approach and (Loya 2008) with regard to the teaching of religion in Russia.