Human Security and Citizenship in Finnish Religious Education: Rethinking Security Within the Human Rights Horizon

Abstract

This paper discusses citizenship in Finnish religious education (RE) in relation to human security. It traces the characteristics of human security that connect citizenship, religion, and education in Finnish policy documents. The article focuses on basic education (grades 7–9). Its data were analyzed employing qualitative content analysis (QCA). The findings indicate that citizenship in Finnish RE entails personal security concerns dealing with psychological and human rights issues. These are found to be essentially human security as conceptualized by the United Nations (UN). However, Finnish policy documents sparingly utilize human security in explicit terms. Finland rather emphasizes the practical applications of human security. Incorporation of explicit global citizen and human rights issues into RE in the new Finnish curriculum seems to project critical global citizenship. This is found to promote human security. Following Finland’s bid for practical application of human security, we recommend (but cautiously) that human security be explicitly integrated into the Finnish RE curriculum.