Contextualising religious education – Different understandings of teaching in Sami confirmation courses

Johan Runemark Brydsten

doi:10.4102/hts.v76i1.5827

Abstract

For the last 30 years, the Church of Sweden, along with other institutions, has offered special confirmation courses for the church’s young Sami members. The organisers and teachers involved with these Sami confirmation courses all stress the necessity of adapting their teaching to fit Sami contexts. Their views are supported by various steering documents, but the wording of these documents leaves room for differing interpretations, which has resulted in multiple understandings of what concrete adjustments should be implemented in the teaching.The overarching aim of this article is to analyse the differing views of how to adapt the teaching in Sami confirmation courses so as to better fit the Sami contexts. In particular, I examine whether these different views can be traced to differing understandings of what contextualising Religious Education entails.Ten interviews with people involved in teaching or organising the courses were analysed, along with archival material, using qualitative content analysis and theories regarding contextual theology, religious education and indigenous education.To capture these different theoretical perspectives, I suggest the concept of contextualised religious education and three central analytical questions: (1) ‘who is the teacher?’, (2) ‘how is the teaching organised?’ and (3) ‘what is the content of the teaching?’My in-depth analysis of the interviews and archival material, the sorting of the different views voiced in this material (based on the three questions above), together with inspiration from models of contextual theology, resulted in three new categories: dialogical contextual religious education, context-driven contextual religious education and faith-driven contextual religious education.

Highlights

Sami people are the indigenous people of northern Sweden; they reside in Norway, Finland and north-western Russia
My in-depth analysis of the interviews and archival material, and the sorting of different views voiced in this material, together with inspiration from mostly Bevans’s models of contextual theology and theoretical perspectives from religious education and indigenous education, resulted in three new categories of contextual religious education
In dialogue with theories from religious education, indigenous education and contextual theology, the differences have been concretised into three different understandings: faith-driven contextual religious education, dialogical contextual religious education and context-driven contextual religious education

Summary

Introduction

Sami people are the indigenous people of northern Sweden; they reside in Norway, Finland and north-western Russia. This is the land of the Sami, called Sápmi. The Sami are a minority population, with the exception of the inland area of the Norwegian county of Finnmark, and certain parts of northern Sweden and Finland (Haetta 1996:10–12). Sami culture is a part of circumpolar cultures. Reindeer are extremely important to a large proportion of the Sami population, mainly as a cultural symbol, reindeer herding is still an important Sami occupation (Haetta 1996:13–15)

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