There is No Sacrum in it Any More: Revisiting Formalist Statehood and Religious/Civic Education on Baltic–Barents Borders

ABSTRACT

Even under globalised and hyper-diverse cultural and social conditions, representative liberal democracy conceives of itself as non-involved in issues to do with ethics, faith and belief. Drawing on a formalist systemic state identity it advocates a neutralist, secularist, generalist and non-biased approach to education in state schools. Building on a current research project on religious/civic education in the Baltic–Barents area, this article argues that this self-image is flawed and that representative liberal democracy cannot avoid being ethically biased. There is thus, the article argues, a need to better frame our understanding of different modes of religious/civic education as well as the logic of ethical neutralism characteristic of contemporary democratic statehood.

Notes

¹ Compare the argument by Willaime (2009, p. 24) that laïcité is a European value (and not merely a French constitutional/institutional arrangement), mirroring Causascelli’s view. Compare also Skeie (2006, p. 20) who, following Eriksen, questions whether the religious-secular question is closed. Instead it is suggested that Europe faces an inevitable choice between promoting secularism or Christian values.

² These critics include myself: see Strandbrink (1999); Strandbrink and Åkerström (2010, pp. 40–41).

³ Compare Kallioniemi (2011, p. 29) who remarks that religion is ‘a central pillar of people’s regional identity [and that globalisation] has increased the significance of religious identity’.

⁴ The fact that the book by Duffy Toft, Philpott and Shah is dedicated to the memory of Samuel P. Huntington indicates its orientation.

⁵ See Casuscelli (2010, p. 131), who, pace Silvio Ferrari, points to the ‘increasingly widespread interconnection in recent years’ between religion, culture, ethics and politics. Compare Critchley’s (2008, p. 5) crisp statement that we ‘are living through a chronic re-theologization of politics’. Apparently, the field is open for different interpretations of the current connections between religion and statehood. Again, I would not be prepared to concur totally with the often-held notion that religion is at the forefront of contemporary politics, but rather claim that, even for representative democracy, formalist and secular as it imagines itself to be, there is still a stratum of deeply normatively contested issues to do with faith, religion and belief that states cannot refrain from somehow dealing with. See Skeie’s argument (2006, p. 28) that ‘the politics of difference are often linked with the politics of religion, and politics of religion in Europe are closely related to the varied arrangements of religious education’. The cogent question therefore seems to be not whether this normative field is activated, but how. As Pike even notes (2009, p. 133), the default agenda promoted by schooling in liberal democracy is very much in tune with the values and ethical requirements of a liberal democratic kind of society.

⁶ I admit that this argument is not original. See, for instance, Pike’s (2008, p. 113) view that ‘citizenship education entails far more than the acquisition of knowledge’. See also Pike (2009, p. 134). Generally speaking, the argument that wants making thus seems to be that this should be acknowledged and without active efforts it will not be. See the broader, stark argument by Ghosh and Abdi (2004, p. 6) that in western societies ‘the traditional goal of education has been the transmission of the dominant culture, involving assimilation for those who were different’. In this mainly critical context, the assertion by Miedema and Bertram-Troost (2008, p. 129) that formative civic identity construction ought to be accomplished through well-grounded religious education sums up a radically different, old-school normative view.

⁷ As succinctly formulated by Ghosh and Abdi (2004, p. 44): ‘How we come to know, and what we know, defines our position in the world.’

⁸ One cogent formulation of the uncomfortable relationship between secularist/formalist liberal democratic citizenry/citizenship and substantivist categories of faith is the title of Pike’s (2008) article ‘Faith in citizenship? On teaching children to believe in liberal democracy’.

⁹ There is an abundance of models categorising religious education (RE). Even as these categories are my own, they partly overlap with those of Cush (2007, p. 219), who proposes three kinds of political–educational responses to religious plurality: ‘secularist’, ‘confessional’, and ‘non-confessional multi-faith’; and perhaps even more with the differentiation by Alberts (2010, p. 276) between ‘integrative’ and ‘separative’ RE. See also the distinctions made by Kallioniemi (2011, p. 23, pace Skeie) between ‘uniform/strong’ and ‘multiform/weak’ RE solutions and by Valk (2011, p. 61, pace Schreiner) between ‘denominational’ and ‘confessional’ RE.

¹⁰ See the remark by Valk (2011, p. 39) that in an Estonian RE context everything ‘connected with religion was sentenced to be eradicated from Soviet society’.

¹¹ I thus in principle concur with the view of Buruma (2010, p. 5) that relations ‘between church and state, or religious and secular authority, cannot be explained as abstractions’.

¹² The title of the project is ‘Teaching Religion and Thinking Education on the Baltic-Barent Brim’ (TRATEBBB); it is funded by the Swedish Foundation for Baltic and East European Studies (Östersjöstiftelsen) for the years 2010–2013; Södertörn University is the host institution; and it engages scholars from Sweden, Norway, Russia, Finland, Estonia, Latvia, Poland and Germany. The core group consists of myself, Professor Thomas Lundén, Associate Professor Jenny Berglund and PhD student Johanna Pettersson. Stine Karisari, Lyudmila Dvoinikova, Yekaterina Tamistova, Jaana Vilkman, Albert Kampe, Felix Münch and Gaja Kolodziej have performed invaluable field work. The four cases (and eight sites) are: Kirkenes-Zapolyarny, Imatra-Svetogorsk, Valga-Valka, and Ahlbeck/Heringsdorf-Świnoujście.

¹³ All these empirical field reports are archived with the core research group.

¹⁴ As noted by Fuess (2007, p. 221), until 1997 a strictly Lutheran RE syllabus was in effect in Norwegian schools; see also Skeie (2006, pp. 21–23). Ventura (2010, p. 185) goes so far as to suggest that the Northern European countries are ‘most likely to represent in the immediate future, as they did in the past, a key laboratory of church and state issues and solutions whose significance will be experienced well beyond the region’. Compare Cush (2007, p. 219), who on the contrary points to the unusual and somewhat vanguard yet globally not very visible or influential North-Western European approach to RE.

¹⁵ I use the abbreviation RE instead of RLE throughout the text for two reasons: because it is standard usage in the scientific literature and because there is a need for a concept applicable in all empirical cases, not only Norway. As Johannessen (2011b, passim) points out, however, the political and legislative evolution in Norway from the traditional teaching of Christianity to the current RLE model has been stormy and passed through courts all the way from the local through the regional, national, European and global levels.

¹⁶ At the same time the Norwegian debate on RE and the place of religion in society has been fierce over the last decade, indicating more heat than is visible in the Kirkenes report.

¹⁷ The verdict that ‘there are no ethnic groups’ by one of our interviewees is thus perhaps slightly overstated (Zapolyarny, 2011, p. 15).

¹⁸ As Kozyrev and ter Avest (2007) indicate, during the last decade Russian educational politics has not been overly comfortable with a complete absence of teachings on ‘religious’ and/or ‘Orthodox’ culture in schools. The problem of how to ‘enculturate’ the young thus seems to keep being strongly felt in Russian society. In this context, Kozyrev and ter Avest point to the role played by ‘culturology’. Within this framework ‘culture’ is seen as directly opposed to ‘state’ and ‘ideology’. ‘The culturological approach’, they argue, ‘opposes the use of religion as a tool of fostering loyalty to the state and [sic!] the church’ (Kozyrev and ter Avest, 2007, p. 246) Our informants also used the concept of ‘culturology’ to describe religious/civic education. Compare the argument by Willems (2007, p. 241) that the culturological approach tends to be remarkably imbued with Orthodox enculturative content. See, further, the assessment by Codevilla (2008, p. 116) that the current church–state relationship in Russia seems ‘to be just a continuation of a centuries-long tradition of confessionalism in Russia and, in a different way, in the Soviet Union, where the Communist Party embodied the Truth and manifested itself as a pseudo-church, and legislation reduced the ROC [Russian Orthodox Church] to the role of an instrument furthering Soviet policy interests and the survival of its own persecutor.’

¹⁹ Compare the official educational programme adopted by the Ministry of Education of the Russian Federation in 2001 that moral education in schools should be patriotic: ‘Civic and patriotic upbringing constitutes one of the most important elements in the state’s education policy’ (quoted in Glanzer, 2005, p. 213). A more recent attempt to introduce ‘spiritual–moral content into schools’ is the 2010–12 comprehensive pilot course ‘The Basics of Religious Culture and Secular Ethics’ in the country’s middle schools (see Gogin, 2011, p. 2). There is currently a range of experiments on how to reframe and revitalise ‘post-RE’ ethical and civic education in Russian state education.

²⁰ A similar phrasing occurs later in the report when one interviewee stated that although ‘we don’t have religious education in our school … it would be good to introduce to pupils basics of orthodox belief because they are moral and can change pupils for the better’ (Zapolyarny, 2011, p. 23).

²¹ This quote and some others from the empirical reports have been marginally corrected.

²² Kallioniemi (2011, p. 25) refers to the aim of the Finnish 1994 RE framework that all pupils are ‘to attain religious literacy’. The current Finnish RE model offers thirteen different curricula.

²³ Following the argument by Alberts (2010, p. 284), we might say that the muddled state of the RE/non-RE issue demonstrated here has general roots and connotations: ‘There is no “middle way” between a secular and a religious approach to RE. If RE is to be integrative and obligatory, the aim of the subject cannot be to provide children with faith or spirituality’.

²⁴ On a similar note, Buruma (2010, p. 9) asserts that there are always dire consequences ‘when the state claims to be the source of absolute truth. Such claims, when backed with force, are always lethal, whether they are enforced by commissars or priests’. Compare the claim by Pike (2008, p. 119), which although given in an English context would perhaps be equally appropriate here, that ‘if citizenship education becomes the “new RE” it would appear to be of the distinctly confessional variety’.

²⁵ In this vein and directly to the contrary, Codevilla (2008, p. 120) argues that both legally and in terms of ‘the practice established in recent years’ a system is being restored ‘which is the opposite of a secular state, in which religious freedom is granted only to some religions and religious toleration to the rest’. Even President Medvedev recognised the extreme importance in the Russian educational sphere of the relationship between church and state in a 2009 address to religious leaders: see Gogin (2011, p. 2). Gogin further refers to ‘the clericalization of the state and the statization of the church as important processes that are now combining in Russia’ (2011, p. 3). This points to a not very secular ethical state.

²⁶ One interviewee stated that ‘in recent years the issue about religious fanaticism was difficult, but not anymore. And pupils have accepted that [the] Bible has a place in the history of literature’ (Valga, 2011, p. 59). Apparently Valga has experienced certain trepidations and sociopolitical commotion along the religious–secular axis. The Catholic priest even told us that ‘if someone is religious in Estonia then they are considered to be fanatics and not given many opportunities to speak’ (Valga, 2011, p. 38). The backdrop is possibly what Valk sees as Estonia’s ‘very specific place in Europe. It is probably’, she argues, citing European value investigations ‘one of the most secularized countries in Europe’ (Valk, 2011, p. 43).

²⁷ More generally, Schihalejev (2009, p. 287) notes that ‘Estonian education [overall] is in a state of transition’.

²⁸ Compare Schweitzer (2007, p. 93): ‘there seems to be no reason for assuming that we might witness serious conflicts between Protestants and Catholics in Germany again’.

²⁹ Some confusion concerning the role of the school and principal remains on this count. Given that the syllabi are designed nationally (written by ‘priests – educated experts of teaching religion, and approved by the minister of education’ (Świnoujście, 2011, p. 16)), one would assume that the correspondence between curriculum and syllabus is already ratified by the state. The choice to be made is further specified by the RE teacher (the selection is done ‘from a few [syllabi] prepared by well educated people in catechetic teams in a diocese’ (Świnoujście, 2011, p. 19)); but at the same time RE teachers are considered completely sovereign in deciding how to organise teaching (Świnoujście, 2011, p. 20). It is a challenge to match and combine these different organisational and cognitive positions.

³⁰ To qualify as an ethics teacher one needs a master’s degree in philosophy or postgraduate studies in philosophy or ethics (Świnoujście, 2011, p. 19).

³¹ The RE teacher seemed ambivalent regarding the ‘neutralisation’ of religious education. He conceded, somewhat sadly, that pupils ‘think of it as a normal course. There is no sacrum in it anymore’ (Świnoujście, 2011, p. 25). Valk’s argument (2007, p. 274) that in secular society ‘nothing rouses the interest of educators and parents more than the issue whether and how religion ought to be taught in the schools’ is thus not obviously right – or at least inconclusive.

³² See Cristoffersen (2008, p. 126): ‘Poles also appear to feel that to be a Pole is to be a Catholic’.

³³ To turn a Popperian phrase: even if political-educational practices vary, the going neutralist context of justification does not, which indicates the strength of the current ideational régime.

³⁴ I use the term ‘unitarianism’ in a literal sense here, that is, without denominational connotations.

³⁵ As Underkuffler, however, points out (2001, p. 588): ‘In any society in which religious diversity [exists] the balance that is struck among religious freedom, parental rights, and state educational objectives will necessarily be an uneasy one’. Following Johannessen’s (2011a, p. 86) argument, the number of modern societies fitting this diversity tab is: all.

³⁶ Ghosh and Abdi (2004, p. 11) assert that in ‘increasingly multicultural Western societies … there is no alternative to the ideals as well as the possible practices of multiculturalism and multicultural education’. Much as I appreciate and agree with their contextualisation of educational systems, I am not certain that the diagnosis is correct. Politically, there are many ways for states to achieve many things in education and not all of them are particularly progressive or culturally sensitive, regardless of context and ideals.

³⁷ Pike interestingly argues (2009, p. 138) that this is not the only possible misconception of secular liberal neutralism: in the British ‘debate around faith schooling, for example, it is not always recognised that a common school may have less discursive status than a good faith school if the common school operates on the assumption of the neutrality of liberalism, and does not question democratic values, and the faith school encourages children to be aware of their “bias” or the lens through which they “read”. In such a case the faith school could prove more liberating than the narrowly secular one.’ Compare l’Anson’s argument (2010, p. 106) that even the concept ‘neutrality’ is polyvalent.

³⁸ The optimistic educationalist contention by Ghosh and Abdi (2004, p. 163) that globalisation ‘is a fully accepted fact’ is thus hardly correct.

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Peter Strandbrink

Peter Strandbrink is an associate professor in Political Science at Södertörn University in southern Stockholm (www.sh.se/statsvetenskap). He is a former dean of the Faculty for Educational Studies and Teacher Training and former director of the European Studies Programme. His main current research interests include democratic theory, civic/ethical/religious education and knowledge and value formation in ethically and culturally diversifying societies. Among his recent publications are: Strandbrink et al. (eds) (2011), Tvära Möten: om utbildning och kritiskt lärande (Cross Encounters: on Education and Critical Learning) (Södertörn Studies in Education 1, Södertörn University); Strandbrink (2011), ‘Statsvetenskap, språk och teoretiskt tänkande’ (‘Political science, language and theoretical thinking), Statsvetenskaplig tidskrift, 112, 4; Strandbrink and Åkerström (2010), Goda medborgare och onda tider? (Good Citizens and Evil Times?) (Umeå, h:ström); Strandbrink (2009), ‘Expertvälde’ (‘Expert rule’), in Mörkenstam and Beckman (eds), Politisk Teori (Political Theory) (Malmö, Liber). Email: [email protected]