Between Christianity and secular hegemony : A knowledge overview regarding the ideal of objectivity in religious education

In this knowledge overview, I aim to compile and analyze currently available research regarding the ideal of objectivity in the subject of religious studies in Sweden. I chose this topic after reading an article that criticized Sweden’s religious education. The article made me want to investigate whether the subject of religious studies is objective, as it is claimed to be, or if there is cause for criticism. The question at issue in this knowledge overview is as follows: what does research say about how the formulations regarding non-denominationalism and objectivity in Sweden's policy documents are interpreted and implemented in the subject of religious studies, and what consequences this has for education in a multicultural classroom? To answer my chosen question, I began the process of searching for scientific studies regarding the objectivity of Sweden’s religious education and students’ experiences of the subject. I used the databases Swepub and Education Research Complete (ERC) to find 10 useful sources. All sources are peer-reviewed, written from 2011 onwards, and are centered around upper secondary school. In the chapter “Method and material” all sources are presented and examined. In “Results and discussion” I discuss the content and results of each source thematically, through three different sections. The first one, “Religious education in a secular society”, examines what research says about whether Sweden's secular society influences religious education. In “The influence of Christianity”, I examine what research says about how Sweden’s history of Christianity affects religious education today. Finally, in “Consequences and students experiences”, I present studies on how students experience religious education. In the final chapter “Conclusions”, I summarize the results from the previous chapter and present my conclusions. I conclude that there is evidence of a secular discourse in the subject of religious studies. There is overwhelming evidence of a widespread belief that a secular teaching approach is neutral when in reality, it leads to stigmatization of religious people and thus religious students. By extension, many students who identify with traditional religions choose to hide their identity. Research has shown that teacher students hold secular values to a large extent, which leads me to conclude that teachers' own values affect how they interpret policy documents. The presented research also leads me to conclude that Christianity has a continuing influence over how other religions are presented. Religions are defined through “faith”, reflecting the country’s long history of Protestant domination. Finally, I state that there is a lack of sufficient research on the subject to draw definite conclusions and I therefore call for further research. I argue that it would be relevant to investigate how teachers interpret the formulations regarding objectivity and non-denominationalism in the policy documents. I would then have pupils answer surveys before and after they have attended the course “religious studies 1b”, to examine whether their attitudes towards religion are affected by their teacher's approach. Another suggestion for further research is to analyze teaching materials, to see if these are characterized by secularism and Lutheran Protestantism in a comparable way