Abstract
In the invitation to contribute to this volume on “religious education in a post-secular age”, the editors, with reference to the introduction in Sweden in the 1960s of a non-confessional and in that way ‘secular’ religious education (RE), express the opinion that the then ‘intellectual space’, ‘cultural situation’ and ‘intellectual fundament’ has been, as good as, totally eroded.
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Notes
- 1.
As can be glanced from the references, I, for one, have produced numerous articles over the past 30 or so years trying to promote a study-of-religion(s) based RE. Though, hopefully, some arguments have been added, and some refined and qualified, by and large they are the same because I think the raison d’être is the same.
- 2.
There at limits as to my ingenuity in terms of trying to say the same but in other words. Consequently, some redundancy cannot be avoided. In this contríbution the following pages render almost verbatim my most recent effort (Jensen 2019) to give a ‘programmatic summary’ of what I find the fundamentals in regard to the propagation of a study-of-religion(s) RE.
- 3.
I use, indiscriminately ‘scientific (academic, secular) study of religion(s)’ or just ‘study of religion(s)’ as umbrella term for what the International Association for the History of Religion (IAHR) (despite its name) sees as the kind of the academic studies of religion(s) that it promotes, namely a wide range of historical, comparative, critical-analytical, sociological, psychological etc approaches to religion, as a human phenomenon (and theoretical object), and to religions as more or less observable historical, social and cultural traditions.
- 4.
I have argued elsewhere (e.g. Jensen 2019, 39–41) in favour of distinctive departments for the study of religion(s), but let me repeat with special regard to the theme of this article: hundred years or more of focused historical and comparative research and reflection on religion and how to study it has taken place at departments for precisely that kind of studies. That has produced a valuable reservoir of knowledge, theories, methods, including self-criticism, including sincere efforts to constructively deconstruct the notion of religion and thus emancipate the study of religion from e.g. religious notions of religion(s). Scholars of religion working at these departments, have managed to move forward and change the scientific study of religion(s); some have been first movers in critically rethinking religion and the study of religion(s). True, there are no doubt more to be done, a lot to improve, and I agree with part of the criticism aimed at certain study-of-religion(s) department by e.g. Luther Martin and Donald Wiebe (2012a, b). There are, no doubt, departments around the world with ‘religion appreciation’ and the promotion of social cohesion, peace and understanding may have taken the place of teaching about and practicing a scientific study of religion. And, cognitive constraints may, as claimed by the two, add to the difficulties linked to emancipation from religious and theological ways of thinking. But, there are, as also written by e.g. Hubert Seiwert (2012) more to the story about the state of art at study-of-religions departments. There is no alternative to study-of-religion(s) departments when it comes to the education of RE teachers and the secular, scientific basis for RE.
- 5.
I have also argued elsewhere (most recently ever so briefly in Jensen 2019, 43) in favor of having a distinctive RE school subject rather than, as is the case in France, having teaching about religion taking place within the framework of subjects like History, Literature, et al. A key argument for this is the fact that teachers who are not educated in the study of religion(s) generally simply do not master teaching about religion(s) in as qualified a way as those who are. Besides: when was a teacher educated within Literature supposed to also master History, or vice versa?
- 6.
I do, of course, know that study programs in study-of-religion(s) departments differ from each other, and that the study programs at Danish universities, including my own, at the University of Denmark cannot be seen as neither exemplifying what is going on all over the world in departments that carry that or a similar name, nor as exemplary. However, I actually think that the programs in place in Denmark may serve as sort of good examples not least because they have, for almost a century, served as the place for the education of Upper-Secondary school RE teachers, and their programs strike a balance between what is needed for ‘production’ of future scholars and future RE teachers. See Jensen (1994, 2008, 2009, 2013, 2015), Jensen and Geertz (2015), Jensen and Kjeldsen (2014a).
- 7.
I cannot list all works of all relevant scholars who have been key movers in regard to discussions and deconstructions of religion and ‘religion’. Readers are referred here only to the works listed in the references by Fitzgerald and McCutcheon, especially their most recent works where readers can find references to earlier work and most other relevant literature.
- 8.
See the (very) few titles by Armin W. Geertz (2013, 2016) as well as the Festschrift edited in his honour by Anders Klostergaard Petersen et al. (2019) for introductions and references to the massive output of important scholarly works on religion, cognition and evolution, including e.g.recent theories linking evolution and history of religion to the so-called ‘axial age’.
- 9.
For theories and analyses of religion(s) and ‘religion’ as a dimension/marker/classifier of e.g. social formation, authorisation, hierarchy and power, identity construction, etc. readers are referred to, apart from classical works of e.g. Durkheim (and his Paris ‘equipe’), to more recent and highly influential books and articles by religion scholars like e.g. Burton Mack, Jonathan Z. Smith, Bruce Lincoln, Russell T. McCutcheon, Timothy Fitzgerald, to mention but a few. In this article explicit references are not given to all relevant works of these or other authors. McCutcheon (2019) is highly recommended as it revisits and updates earlier work of McCutcheon as well as provides the reader with most if not all relevant references to other scholars of religion and earlier works of McCutcheon himself.
- 10.
- 11.
Göran Larsson, in a highly recommendable ‘pixi-like’ book on Human Science as yet another of the sciences, pages 21–22, lists several basic criteria for what it takes for something to be scientific rather than ‘commonsensical’, and Larsson, in an very down to earth way thus also distances himself from any ‘anything goes’ approach to the academic study of religion(s) (Larsson 2019).
- 12.
See Alberts (2019, 57). T. Jensen & K. Kjeldsen first introduced the category ‘small “c” confessional’ (drawing on Donald Wiebe’s classifications of differents kinds of theology) in an article in Temenos in 2013.
- 13.
I adhere to the definition given by D.E. Smith: “The secular state is a state which guarantees individual and corporative freedom of religion, deals with the individual as a citizen irrespective of his religion, is not constitutionally connected to a particular religion nor does it seek either to promote or interfere with religion” (Smith 1963, 4).
- 14.
See https://www.ft.dk/da/dokumenter/bestil-publikationer/publikationer/grundloven/danmarks-riges-grundlov. In particular §§ 4, 6, 66–70. (Last accessed February 1, 2020)
- 15.
Apart from my own work, readers are adviced to consult other scholars and their (different) approaches and views asregards what has been called the ‘religion model’. See e.g. Christoffersen et al. (2012).
- 16.
See http://www.hoejesteret.dk/hoejesteret/nyheder/pressemeddelelser/Pages/Foedselsregistreringogstatstilskudtilfolkekirken.aspx (Last accessed February 1, 2020)
- 17.
The editors (W. Sullivan et al. 2011) of After Secular Law, did not chose the image of the crucified Christ inserted in the late 1990s in the passports of alle Danish citizens for the cover of their book in order to give an example of something ‘post-secular’ but in order to indicate the entanglement of the secular and not-secular in a state and country they and others otherwise looked at as exemplary in regard to secularization and secularity. And, of course, to ‘shock’ American readers used to a discourse about a ‘wall of separation’.
- 18.
- 19.
- 20.
See statistics at http://www.km.dk/folkekirken/kirkestatistik/. (Last accessed February 1, 2020). As for weddings and blessings numbers are not equally impressive, and I do not have a percentage. As for the decrease in membership over the past decades, see same statistics showing that in 1990 the percentage of paying members was 89.3%.
- 21.
The summary of my analysis here presented in all haste still owes a lot to my past analyses, e.g. Jensen (1998, 115–159). On Christianity in Denmark, with special regard to elementary-school RE representations, curricula and textbooks see Kjeldsen (2019a), and for a study-of-religion(s) based textbook for upper-secondary school, see Hvithamar (2007).
- 22.
See my ‘response’ to Bertel Haarder, the Minister in question, in my essay (kronik) in the Danish newspaper Politiken as of March 10. 2005: https://politiken.dk/debat/kroniken/art5694509/Religion-p%C3%A5-skemaet (Last accessed February 1, 2020)
- 23.
- 24.
Most of my articles also deal with the reasons why a secular study-of-religion(s) based RE is not just embraced by everybody and every country. One reason, of course, is that politicians and the public at large cannot conceive of religion and ‘religion’ in a secular, non-religious way. I have argued that one ought consider adding to the list of criteria for a ‘secular state’ the criterium of having a non-religious RE in public schools. Alberts (2019) also notes that most European states have a problem with being secular when it comes to RE.
- 25.
Again: space prevents me from giving a detailed argument. Suffice it to say that I contend that there are good reasons for why why some buildings, actions, people, thoughts, some ways of eating and being together, some ways of having sex, dressing etc. may ‘stand out’ as not just or only profane, non-religious (they are of course always also that) but as something that may be termed ‘religious’. I tend to subscribe to (operational) definitions of religion as a cultural (sub-)system that differs from other such by way of a reference to a postulated more than human and more than natural something (´power, ‘being’, ‘scripture’, etc.). My favorite more detailed definition, and pupils should be told about the one guiding the teacher, is the one by Bruce Lincoln, briefly rendered in Lincoln (2000b), later explicated in greater detail in Lincoln (2003). Lincoln (2003) develops, moreover, the useful notions of ‘minimalist’, respectively ‘maximalist’ stances among insiders.
- 26.
Nongbri (2013) in my opinion is somewhat overestimated. It was a matter of course back in the 70s when I was student of the history of religions in Copenhagen that the Greeks as well as indigenous people did not have religion (or morals for that matter) as ‘we’ had it. I also want to refer readers to the interview I with others conducted with late JZ Smith (Smith et al. 2014). During the interview Smith is asked about what has almost become his most famos ‘dictum’ (from Imagining Religion) that there is ‘no data for religion’. Smith replies: “If I had a nickel for every time that sentence has been quoted I could have retired forty years ago. But i have to say that sometimes the way the quote is used is de-familiar tio me.” (p. 67). Later on the doorbell rings. Smith gets up and walks to look out the window but does not open the door but comes back exclaiming: “Hah! It’s Jehovah’s Witnesses. That’s our data at the door.” (p. 72). There is data for religion. Sometimes, as said, also theologians are data for religion and for the scholar of religion.
- 27.
See for one of the most important arguments in favor of comparative religigion, Sinding Jensen (2003). For a more modest up-date on a post-Eliadean ‘phenomenology’ or comparatrive study of religion, see Jensen and Podemann Sørensen (2015).
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Jensen, T. (2021). A Study-of-Religion(s) Based RE: A Must for All Times—Post-modern, Post-secular or Not!. In: Franck, O., Thalén, P. (eds) Religious Education in a Post-Secular Age. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-47503-1_10
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