INTERRELIGIOUS DIALOGUE AND RELIGIOUS EDUCATION FROM A SWEDISH PERSPECTIVE

I want to make a contribution to understanding the relation between interreligious dialogue and Religious Education based on my own experience of teaching non-confessional Religious Education in Swedish schools, training teachers in Swedish universities for such Religious Education and sharing in Sweden dialogues, rejoicing and disappointment with friends of religious background other than my own, i.e. Bosnian Muslims. I show how our way of teaching, at least in Sweden, often diminishes the readiness for and interest in true dialogue among our students. One reason is that information about religions and religious traditions tends to “make” religions static and non-relational, not showing that lived religion is a life process during which you change and are expected to mature. Another reason is based on the effects of hegemonic discourses within which students interpret our teaching. I discuss which of them are present in Swedish classrooms nowadays, how they determine the identity-discourse of second generation immigrants, and what we can do to help students to understand how these discourses work and to widen them.