From truth to practices. From secular to cultural. Religion and Religious Education in Finnish public education today

In this lecture I will focus on aspects that I have identified as the on-going secularist-culturalist transition in the handling of religions in Finnish public education. First I will briefly discuss how the secularist framework has been increasingly prevalent in how religion and religious education have been handled in policies and practices in Finnish public schools and discuss aspects that I interpret as the prevalent culturalist framework of religion. I will then proceed with discussing how the secularist and (multi)culturalist frameworks are applied to different cases (incl. “ethnoreligious” minorities, group identities and religious education) and what problems follow from this to religious education and public education in general.

Reference: Ubani, M. 2019. Religion and multiculturalism in Finnish public schools. The secularist – culturalist transition. In Ubani, M., Rissanen, I. & Poulter, S. (Eds.), Contextualising dialogue, pluralism and secularisation. Cases analyses on Finnish public education. Münster: Waxmann.

About the Speaker

Martin Ubani (PhD, M.Theol) is Professor of Religious Education at the University of Eastern Finland. His research interest concerns religious education in public education, religion and multiculturalism, and education, teacher education and spiritual education. Lately he has focused on religion and multiculturalism in public education and teacher education. Since 2016, he has been a visiting researcher at the Van Leer Institute, Jerusalem.

Profile: https://uefconnect.uef.fi/en/person/martin.ubani/

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The Lecture will be hosted by Professor Justin Dillon (Director of Research) and Professor Rob Freathy (Network Lead for the Religion, Spirituality & Education Network).