Table Of ContentCrossings and Crosses
Religion and Society
Edited by
Gustavo Benavides, Kocku von Stuckrad
and Winnifred Fallers Sullivan
Volume 63
Crossings
and Crosses
Borders, Educations, and Religions
in Northern Europe
Edited by Jenny Berglund, Thomas Lundén
and Peter Strandbrink
ISBN 978-1-61451-754-2
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ISSN 1437-5370
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Preface
Crossings and crosses – teaching religion in
border communities
This anthologyhas its roots in aproject startedat Södertörn University in Hud-
dinge, Stockholm, in 2009. Scholars from several academic disciplines—the
studyof religion,political science, human geography, and education—came to-
gethertodiscusstheinhibitingbordersofeachdiscipline.Disciplinaryoverlaps
as well as tensions exist (sometimes causing territorial disputes). Clearly, each
discipline hasitsownsetofrules;drawsonindependenttheoreticalandmeth-
odologicaldiscourses;phrasesresearchfociandthinksofepistemologicalboun-
dariesdifferently;andalignsempiricalsubjectmatterfrompartlynon-commen-
surable positions. As other interdisciplinary work, the present volume is thus
facedwiththechallengeofdrawingonandopposingresearchcanonsanddom-
inantmeta-narrativesatthesametime;whichmeansthatinterdisciplinaryanal-
yses have to keep two (potentiallyopposing) analytical modes alive in tandem.
Eventhoughthesameisnotrequiredofmonodisciplinarywork,thereisaclear
upside to this quandary: namely that it creates better purview over and condi-
tions for assessment of complex reality. In the tradeoff between parsimony
and complexity there are epistemic advantages to coming down stronger on
the side of the latter, as we do here.
Borders, territories, and overlapping are physical realities but also meta-
phors for cognitive and ontological areas. The group found it interesting to
test the possibility of interdisciplinarity on a real case of physical boundaries.
Through the generous support of the Foundation for Baltic and East European
Studies (Östersjöstiftelsen),we were given a grant for a research project called
Teaching Religion and Thinking Education on the Baltic-Barents Brim (dnr
A051–09) on September 22, 2009, led by Associate Professor (Docent) Peter
Strandbrink.Thenameofthefoundationsuggeststhespatialscopeofresearch,
with the Baltic Sea area and Eastern Europe in focus.
ThepointoftheinterdisciplinaryTRATEBBBresearchprojectwastoinvesti-
gatethepolitics,didactics,ideas,andspatialsettingsofreligious(andbyexten-
sion civic) education in the Baltic-Barents area. Four sites were included in the
project,each studying religious and civic education in apairof twin cities/mu-
nicipalities across four state borders. These four liminal sites (and eight local
cases) are: Kirkenes-Zapolyarnye, Imatra-Svetogorsk, Valga-Valka, and Ahl-
beck/Heringsdorf-Świnoujście. The project thus operated empirically in seven
countries: Norway, Russia, Finland, Estonia, Latvia, Poland, and Germany, re-
VI PrefaceCrossingsandcrosses–teachingreligioninbordercommunities
spectively. The project’s preliminary phase (2010) consisted of getting TRA-
TEBBB’speopleandorganisationinplace,i.e.,engagingonepost-graduatestu-
dent; finalising an extensive general research manual; initiating fieldwork;
building adequate academic networks for the task ahead; and identifying, en-
gaging, and—at an initial workshop in Stockholm in October 2010—educating
sevenmultilingualresearchassistantsandpreparingthemtoconductsolidfield-
workatthefoursites,assistedbyacademicmentorsatcollaboratinguniversities
and research institutes at the local sites as well as by members of the core re-
search group.The project’s first phase (2010—11) was completed with the sub-
mission of eight identically structured case reports with qualitative raw data in
English on religious and civic education—divided according to a basic state-
city-school logic—at a second Stockholm workshop in May 2011. The project’s
secondphase(2011—12)wasdedicatedtoanalysing,elaboratingon,andadding
to the submitted data according to each core group member’s analytical priori-
ties. Approaches from political science and educational studies were combined
with the studyof religions, religious didactics, and human geography. Some of
thethemesidentifiedasrelevantfortheprojectaremodesofteaching,religious
education (RE) governance, state policy, liminal identity, border symbolics and
rhetorics, educational thinking and ethical content, construction of citizens
and nations, logics of democracy, and comparisons between sites and cases.
Some of the contributions in this anthology are directly related to the TRA-
TEBBB project. Others are related to research on at least two of the main con-
cepts of the project; namely borders, educations, and religions. The spatial
scope focuses on areas within or very near the Baltic Sea, and the academic
fields of the authors vary from anthropology to theology.
Anoteonthetitleofthisanthology:‘crossings’obviouslyreferstothetheme
ofbordertransgressionaddressedinmostcontributions.‘Crosses’isasymbolic
metaphor for the religion(s) that dominate the area covered in this book, but a
cross is in itself an overlappingof two divergent directions, and thus also, in a
way, a transgression.
ApartfromthefinancialsupportoftheFoundationforBalticandEastEuro-
peanStudies,weareindebtedtotheassistantswhogaveinvaluablehelptoour
researchaswellastoprincipals,teachers,andadministratorsintheschoolsand
localities studied in the project.We would also like to thank our colleagues in
Estonia,Finland,Germany,Poland,andRussiafortheircontributionstothisan-
thology. We hope this book will provide some insight into the undisciplined
world of teaching religion and ethics on the brim.
Jenny Berglund,Thomas Lundén, Peter Strandbrink
Table of Contents
Preface Crossings and crosses – teaching religion in border
communities V
Peter Strandbrink
Introduction: On crossings and crosses 1
Per-Arne Bodin
The Russian Orthodox Church, its domains and borders 15
Laura Assmuth
Intertwining identities: The politics of language and nationality in the
Estonian-Russian borderlands 29
Agnieszka Pasieka
Multireligious and multiethnic public schooling in the Polish-Ukrainian
borderland 47
Małgorzata Flaga and Kamila Łucjan
Visible conflicts on invisible borders: Religious antagonisms in the eastern
borderland of Poland 63
Olga Schihalejev
Shifting borders in religious education in Estonia 85
Jenny Berglund
Religious education on the borders 105
Marianna Shakhnovich
Religion in contemporary public education in Russia 123
Peter Schreiner
Religious education in the European context 139
Peter Strandbrink
Unpacking postnormativity in religious and civiceducation: Coming to an
early end? 155
VIII TableofContents
Thomas Lundén
Society, proximity, and education on the border 171
Thomas Lundén
The spatiality of religion 191
Tim Jensen
Religious education (RE) in other kinds of bordertowns: Denmark as an
extreme and exemplary case 213
Index 239
Peter Strandbrink
Introduction: On crossings and crosses
1 Crossings and crosses in a socially and
normatively multiplying world
Inanageofincreasingdifferentiation,disaggregation,multiplication,andrecon-
figuration of political, religious, and ethical spaces and allegiances, there is
growing concern amongst states, churches, and other influential organisations
that identity-affirming agendas and tensions will complicate relationships be-
tween populations, citizens, groups, minorities, and social movements within
and across state territories. In Eastern and Central Europe, this development
hasbeenevolvingeversincethefalloftheBerlinWallandthebreakdownofSo-
viet hegemony some twenty-five years ago. Even today, there is clearly insuffi-
cient agreement on how to properly define and delimit the political authority
andreachofmanyformercommuniststates,notleastintermsofspatialandre-
ligiousboundaries.Religiouslyframed claims for recognition andpolicyreform
inthepost-Sovietsphereclearlychallengetheintegrityofarangeofterritorially
bounded states.
Furthermore,thevalueofthedefaultwesternsystemofneutralist/secularist
liberal and pluralist democracy is – to the bewilderment of many analysts and
politicians–farfromenthusiasticallyembracedby,forinstance,Russian,Serbi-
an,orHungariangovernments.ThepoliticalandethicalconvergenceofallEuro-
peandemocracies–oldandnew–inthissense(cfSzakács2013)appearstobe
put on hold (if,that is,we go along with the idea that convergence was indeed
what was happening before;cf Garratt & Piper’s [2010] more criticalview).The
main trend seems tobe about increasing multiplicityand diversity,thus requir-
ingstates,societies,andstakeholderstomakehardchoicesbetweenconflicting
societalends.Acoreissueforgovernmentsthatrecognisethesetrendsishowto
identifyrelevantclaimsforallegiance,andconsequently,morespecifically,how
topassonthedesired,‘proper’conceptionsofnationalidentityandcommunity
tothenextgeneration;thisisagoalonlyaccomplishablethroughnationaledu-
cational systems (cf Triandafyllidou et al 2012b; Miller et al 2013b; Baumann
2004; Miedema 2007; cf also Glanzer’s 2008 contention that the default post-
communistsolutionforreligiouseducationhasbeentoimitateWesternEurope-
an models).
A number of dimensions are interesting in this context. Are established re-
lationshipsbetweenstatesandreligiousactorschanging?Inarecentstudy,Her-
2 PeterStrandbrink
bert&Fras(2009:94)concludethat“religiousinfluenceincreasedbetween1989
and2007”inasetofinvestigatedEasternEuropeanpost-communistsocieties.Is
thesetupandalignmentofreligiousoptionsandethicaldispositionsinEurope-
ansocietymovinginnewdirections?Toputitmorebluntly:Istheageof ‘toler-
ance’comingtoanend?¹Orarethetimesnotchangingverymuch,despitesug-
gestions that new configurations of state-church relationships are emerging to
copewithdiversifyingidentityandconfessionalpatternsforEuropeancommun-
itybuilding? Additionally,willthe liberal democratic statehave tobe redefined
and the modernist tenets driving it reinterpreted? As the secularist miniature
continent par excellence, the balance between‘rationalism’ and ‘theology’ is a
core aspect of the European social and political legacy; that has of course
never been settled in a final way, but has always remained close to the centre
of the European political imagination.
2 Pairing and unpairing East and West
In the post-Soviet political, intellectual, and geographical space, two elements
collude.First,liberalisationanddemocratisationinarangeofformerSovietre-
publics and regions have activated new roles and areas for churches and have
affected available moral arrangements, with oftentimes far-reaching ramifica-
tionsforpolitical-institutional-legalframeworks.Second,thedemiseofthecom-
munist state and the return of the religious in post-Soviet space have tilted the
scalesacrosstheentiretyofEurope,asnewlinesofconflictandareasofcontest-
ationhaveunfolded.Inasense,thisstill-emergingsituationisofteninterpreted
as a return not only of ‘the religious’ but also of generic European normative
framesofreferencethatwerefor alongtimeovershadowedbythosereinforced
bythedominanteast-westdivision(cfKonopacki2013).Togetafixonthenature
of these changes in different individual nation-states across the vastlycomplex
European political, denominational, territorial, and educational space is chal-
lenging.There are clearly bare knowledge deficits.
Addingtothisproblem,however,isthefactthatnation-states–thelevelon
which the primary discursive struggles and political renegotiations with regard
to legacies, balances, institutional settings, and social power relationships
takesplace–necessarilyborderonothernation-states,andthatpatternsofbe-
Moodod & Meer (2012:43) even imply in their table of political regime types thatonly the
liberalstateisinclinedtostriveforreligiousandethicalneutrality–whichbegsthequestion
whetheritmightbetheageof ‘liberalism,’ifanything,thatiscomingtoanend.
