Tomma kyrkbackar och MC-gudstjänster : En analys av högstadieläroböcker i religionskunskap från Finland och Sverige

Sammanfattning: This essay compares two series of RE-textbooks written for secondary school students in Finland and Sweden. The aim of the essay is to come to a greater understanding of the similarities and differences between confession based and non-confessional religious education. The essay answers two questions, how Protestantism, Catholicism and Orthodox Christianity is represented in the books and how the different Christian churches are described in relation to the Finnish and Swedish society today. The results show that the Swedish textbook series describes the churches differently compared to each other, while the books from Finland portraits them in a more similar way. The Swedish books also focus more on secularism, and mediate a picture of the Swedish society today as non-religious. The Finnish textbooks present a picture of a society with a changing, not decreasing, religiosity.