Religious Education and National Identity

Abstract

The author analyses the place and role of religious education in British, French and German state schools since the Second World War. She shows that changes brought to syllabi with regard to the teaching of religion are linked to the prevailing political atmosphere and the relationship between state and church in each of the countries considered. Major events in these societies in the late 1980s—the 1980 (Scottish) and the 1988 (England and Wales) Education Acts, the Affaire du Foulard in France (1989) and the unification of Germany in 1990—have led to a reconsideration of religion as a school topic, and to a revision of the educational policies that regulate it. Finally, is the place given to religious education in state schools symptomatic of political agendas, and is religion used as a tool for building national identity?