Interculturalizing Religious Education—Mission Completed?

Abstract

In 1996 the German Länder started the ‘mission’ to interculturalize all subjects, including religious education (RE). Interculturalizing also applies for RE taught in conformity with the oldest model for RE. In so-called ‘confessional RE’ at state schools, it is the Catholic teacher who teaches children of several classes of the same year in one denominational RE group. The Protestant teacher teaches children whose parents ticked off “Protestant RE”. How this model came into existence is displayed in a historical introduction of this chapter. However, a newer model called ‘cooperative RE’ is gaining popularity. In various schools there is ecumenical education by both Catholic and Protestant staff or multireligious education by Jewish, Christian, or Muslim teachers. New publications on this latter model have a focus on organizational matters, but also shed a light on interreligious learning. However, in this chapter the focus is on how intercultural issues are dealt with in the classroom within the first model. After all, confessional RE is still the standard and most common model in Germany. Therefore, this article will focus on Protestant confessional RE that is not organized in cooperation with Islamic, Jewish, or Catholic colleagues.