Religionskunskap - Ett ämne i tiden? : En studie av kristendomens roll i ämnet religionskunskap

Sammanfattning: Before the autumn term 2011 the Swedish compulsory school adopted new syllabuses in relation to, inter alia, religion. Changes within the religion topic have historically been a heavily debated issue among decision-makers, interest groups and the church, where the role of the Christianity has been particularly controversial. The main purpose of this study is therefore to investigate how the Swedish compulsory school’s teaching of Christianity has changed over the years. I have in order to conduct this study applied a descriptive method as well as a content analysis. The Swedish compulsory school’s current and historical syllabuses in religion have served as basis for this study. The outcome of this study clearly shows that the Christianity has received less influence to the benefit of other topics. At the same time the content of the Swedish school’s teaching has to a large extent changed and put currently more focus on the religion’s impact on the society as well as the society’s impact on the religion. However, from a globalization and secularization perspective the changes are to a large extent self-evident and not very surprising, due to the fact that the Christian influence over the Swedish society no longer is of same importance and that modern society allows different religions within the same national boundary.