Skolegudstjeneste som religionspolitikk

Church services during school hours are a controversial practice in Norway. In Norwegian public debate various actors regularly call for a ban of the practice. Nonetheless, there is a broad political consensus in the Norwegian Parliament to facilitate them. Unlike previous research on Norwegian church services for school children, this article discusses the practice as an expression of a particular politics of religion within the framework of various models for politics of religion. Within a Norwegian context church services during school hours should be understood as a consequence of the establishment model, which can be considered as an ideal type for how the Norwegian state facilitates religion by granting certain privileges to one single church that, according to the constitution, must be established and economically sustained. Within this model, there is clearly room to implement more thoroughly a fundamental distinction between religious practice and secular education. A political dismantling of school religious services could be inspired by a separation model. Nevertheless, there may be good reasons to expand rather than prohibit the practice. If the Norwegian state moved away from the establishment model towards the pluralism model, Norwegian schools could more actively have facilitated the celebration of religious holidays by children from different faith communities during school hours and not just one of them. In either case, the facilitation should be based on a fundamental separation between state and religion. Key words: Politics of religion, church services during school hours, religious education, inclusion, human rights

Context (archaeology) · Faith · Norwegian · Parliament · Pluralism (philosophy) · Politics · Separation of church and state · Religion and Society Interactions · Religion, Spirituality, and Psychology · Religious Education and Schools