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Artikeln tar avstamp i en debatt som initierats av en debattartikel vilken tar sin utgångspunkt i rapporten Kränkt för sin tro. Utifrån en problematisering av två debattartiklar och rapporter argumenteras för att de som är verksamma i skolan tar del av studier om religion och religionskunskap i skolan och att det samtidigt är viktigt att vara på sin vakt mot studier med bristfälligt vetenskapligt stöd samt påståenden om kris i svensk religionsundervisning.

This chapter addresses the methodological challenge of operationalizing religion through survey questions in religiously diverse and individualized societies. Social and religious changes in the form of religious diversity, individualization and non-religion call for questions that manage to account for variety and individuality – is that even possible in surveys, given the standardized format? This question serves as a point of departure for a critical assessment of a Swedish research project on youth and religion, ‘Religion as resource?’, directed to 16- to 24-year olds (n=1316).  We present three new survey questions through which settings for encountering religion and dimensions of personal religious identity factors are studied. By extending the level of measurement from nominal to ordinal scale, thus allowing respondents to provide responses in a more flexible way, and by combining experiences from qualitative research into the construction of questions and options, the chapter argues that social scientific research on religion can be of continued relevance in the exploration of individual attitudes on religion. The chapter concludes with a critical evaluation of how the survey questions presented should be developed further, in light of the findings.

This article compares student’s attitudes towards human rights in countries with different religious traditions, namely Lutheran dominated Scandinavian countries and Eastern Orthodox countries in the eastern part of Europe. The four countries involved in this study are Belarus, Romania, Norway and Sweden. Our focus is student’s attitudes towards questions related to the right to life, in this case abortion. The effect that religion and religiosity have on attitudes towards abortion is a central part of the analyses. In addition, we will look at the relationship between trust in institutions and support for certain human rights. Previous studies found that trust in institutions was positively correlated with values that stress stability, protection, and preservation of traditional practices, and negatively correlated with values that emphasize independent thought and change.  On this basis we expect  that trust in governmental institutions have different effects on attitudes in countries with democratic and authoritarian regimes.

Previous research among young people (Spini & Doise 1998, Doise & al 1999) has shown that attitudes toward human rights are influenced by perception of conflicts in society and experience of discrimination and that political affiliation as well as religion also may have effect. However interesting these results are for understanding what factors that may contribute to grassroots’ engagement in human rights, these studies have failed to consider important background variables such as gender and parents’ education level, but also to include a more nuanced operationalization of religion. Drawing on data gathered in Norwegian and Swedish metropolitan upper secondary schools (n=2044) this article therefore aims to replicate earlier research correcting for these research gaps. The analysis showed that while religion had a limited effect on attitudes toward political and judicial rights, controlled for background variables, the effect of experienced discrimination and perception of conflicts related to ethnicity seemed to add significantly to the models. It was also shown that Christians did not report more discrimination related to ideology and ethnicity than non-religious, but that Muslims on the other hand did report more discrimination both related to ideology and ethnicity than others. This study has shown that there is a relation between such perceived discrimination and attitudes toward political and human rights.

In several Western countries there is now a growing awareness that teaching RE may contribute to greater social cohesion in an increasingly diverse society. This chapter examines the relationship between the official aims and inten­tions of the Swedish state regarding RE and school students’ attitudes to this sub­ject. It argues that we must consider the cultural context in which such edu­cation takes place; in this case, Sweden has developed over a short period of time from a mono-cultural society with a Lutheran state church into a religiously and culturally diverse society, while the country can furthermore be seen as highly secularized on the individual level. The aims of RE are analyzed through the study of official documents. Students’ attitudes regarding RE and religious and cul­tu­ral diversity are monitored by a nationally representative classroom question­naire, and with observations drawn from focus group interviews with students aged 18–19 in upper secondary schools. The investigation presented in this chapter leads to the conclusion that there is currently a gap between the lofty intentions of the state regarding the teaching of RE and students’ attitudes to it. This reflects how Swedish society constructs itself as secular by depicting being religious as the “other.” An urgent task for future studies is, therefore, to identify how the teaching of RE could be further developed so as to better realize the current high aims for the subject in a society as increasingly diverse as the Swedish one.

Artikeln ingår i en årsbok för lärare i religionskunskap, och behandlar resultat från aktuell forskning om gymnasieelevers syn på religion och religionskunskap i samtidens Sverige.

Sweden can be characterized as one of the most secularized countries in the world. This chapter aims to explore the relationship between religion and human rights in Sweden, with a focus on the contemporary situation. The research question is how to understand the relation between religion and human rights in the light of the role of religion in the country. The contentious argumentation around the freedom of religion illustrates the ambiguous role that religion plays in contemporary Swedish social life. Starting out from cases where freedom of speech and freedom of religion have been contested, this chapter explicates that Swedish society often constructs religion as a private matter and use human rights discourse as a common denominator. Also empirical data on young people’s attitudes toward freedom of religion and religious diversity are used, underlining this ambiguous picture. Public discussions on human rights in Sweden follow three tracks:  consensus on human rights discourse in general, an awareness of the need for constant refinement regarding the application of human rights, and thirdly a rising awareness of the stigmatization of Muslims which can be seen as a sign of a lack of religious literacy.

This article unfolds patterns of pupils’ talk about religion and Religious Education in upper secondary school in Sweden (age 18-19). At the same time highly secularized and increasingly religiously diverse, Swedish society provides an interesting case for understanding better the role of religion in the contemporary world. A recent and nationally representative survey among pupils in upper secondary school demonstrated the role of the pupils’ religiosity along with background variables such as gender, study program, and parents’ educational level for the pupils’ attitudes towards both Religious Education and religious diversity in society. However, attitudes towards such a complex phenomenon as religion may hardly be fully captured by quantitative survey methodology. Therefore focus group interviews were conducted with in all 45 pupils representing a range of religious traditions and none. The composition of interview groups also catered for aspects such as gender, ethnicity, living region and study programme. Patterns emerging from the analysis suggest that central themes in the pupils’ understanding of religion involve framing themselves as reflexive agents, seeing themselves as free from structures which they argue would hinder them from leading fulfilled lives. This pattern was interestingly recurring both among pupils who saw themselves as religious or believers and among pupils who saw themselves as nonreligious. In their talk about the role of religion in society, in school, and for themselves it was just different things that were seen as obstacles and liberators. These ways of talking about religion reveals sociologically salient configurations regarding how religion is constructed in contemporary Sweden. In this paper findings are discussed using perspectives from post-colonial theory.