Language of Hope in Europe

Journal of Christian Education in Korea Vol. 65(2021. 3. 30) : 29-54 DOI: 10.17968/jcek.2021..65.002 Language of Hope in Europe Monique van Dijk-Groeneboer (Professor, Tilburg University, The Netherlands) Michal Opatrny (Professor, South Bohemian University, Budojevice Czech Republic) Eva Escher (Professor, University of Erfurt, Germany) Abstract In Europe, the diversity in religions, cultures, languages and historical backgrounds is enormous. World War II and the Soviet Regime have played a large part in this and the flow of refugees from other continents in- creases the pluralism. How can religious education add to bridging between differences? The language across European countries is different, literally between countries, but also figuratively speaking and even inside individual countries. These differences occur in cultural sense and across age groups as well. Secondary education has the task to form young people to become firmly rooted people who can hold their own in society. It is essential that they learn to examine their own core values and their roots. Recognising their values should be a main focus of religious education. However, schools are currently accommodating increasing numbers of non-religious pupils. What role do religious values still play in this situation? How do pupils feel about active involvement in religious institutions, and about basing life choices on religious beliefs? Can other, non-religious values be detected which could form the basis for value-oriented personal formation? Research of these subjects has been ongoing in the Netherlands for more than twenty years and is currently being expanded to the Czech Republic 30 Journal of Christian Education in Korea and(former East) Germany. These are also secularized countries but have a very different history. Does the history and context of these countries play a role, and does this show in the values that are important to pupils? A comparative pilot study is being conducted as start of this broadening per- spective geared towards greater insight into the values of pupils in these three European countries. This information helps to design appropriate new forms of religious value-oriented worldview education. 《 Keywords 》 Europe, Refugees, Pluralism, Cultural sense, Secondary education, Core value, Religious beliefs, Worldview education I. Introduction Three countries first will be described, especially their religious and cultural developments in recent history. Our research questions are based on former research on religious values and will be presented at the end of this chapter. With answering them we hope to add to new forms of religious worldview education on denominational schools in secularized countries, taken into account the differences in culture and history (Ter Avest, 2020, 15). Like many Western European countries, the Netherlands is a pluralistic, multireligious and secularized country. Originally mainly Protestant and Roman Catholic, the Dutch society was char- acterised by verzuiling (pillarisation) from second half of the nine- teenth century up tot he 1960s. There was sharp segregation between the Protestant, Catholic, liberal and socialist sections of society, which was deliberately enforced by the elites at the Van Dijk-Groeneboer et al. ┃ Language of Hope in Europe 31 top of these four ‘pillars’. It was sustained by the churches, media, vocational corporations, political parties, schools, hos- pitals, and even universities, and provided the members of the ‘pillars’ with a strong sense of identity. The rapid dismantling of this system was caused by turbulent developments world- wide in the 1960s, but as such it also caused a wave of secu- larisation in the Netherlands. Nowadays, the Netherlands has low percentages of religious affiliation: 40% of the population call themselves Christians, and 49% non-affiliated. The expect- ation is that this decline will continue over the coming years. Hellemans has called this decline the third stage in the development of the main established churches: “far-reaching secu- larization and increasing marginalization of the main churches without the rise of new churches or groups to fill up the void” (Hellemans, 2012, 3). The place of young people in today’s Dutch society is not very different from that in the rest of Western Europe. Dutch researchers have studied the way young people in Western Europe currently experience faith, and have con- cluded that for most, faith is oriented towards family, friends, and themselves as individuals, which is defined as ‘immanent faith’. The Czech Republic is among the most secularized countries in Europe when it comes to belief in the basic elements of Christian doctrine. It has approximately 10.5million inhabitants. According to a 2011 census of persons, houses, and apartments, almost 1.1 million of these inhabitants are members of the Catholic Church. 51,000people stated that they were members of the second largest church, the Evangelical Church of Czech Brethren, and 39,000 that they belonged to the third largest church, the national Czechoslovak Hussite Church, which was founded in reaction to anti-modernist tendencies in the 32 Journal of Christian Education in Korea Catholic Church after the First World War. By contrast, more than 4.5million inhabitants did not answer the census question on religious affiliation at all. The question was optional and a part of the public manifested its disagreement with the other- wise obligatory census of persons, houses, and apartments by not answering the optional questions. But Christians were gen- erally encouraged by the churches to answer these questions, among other reasons because at that time census results still affected church financing. 3.6 million stated that they pro- fessed no religion, and 708,000 that they were believers but were not members of any church(ČSÚ, 2014). However, people who believe neither in God nor in any other supernatural power or phenomenon form an absolute minority in Czech society. In the 2008 ISSP enquiry, only 6% of the respondents re- sponded in these terms and can thus be labelled real atheists (Hamplová, 2013). In an extensive study which combines a religious studies approach and a historiographical approach, David Václavík(2010) has convincingly shown that the roots of the contemporary negation of ecclesial forms of Christianity and the associated skepticism with regard to anything formally or manifestly religious grew gradually and continuously in Czech history. Its be- ginnings must be sought at the latest in 1867 when the Austrian Empire was transformed into the Austrian-Hungarian monarchy. When official opposition politics against the Viennese government began, the Catholic Church, or practicing the Catholic faith, were rejected. The communist regime was thus merely an episode, albeit an important one, in the process of the Czech nation䪦 s breakaway from established forms of religiosity. In a way, the social processes of the 19th century, including those at the turn of the 19th and 20th century, and therefore also Van Dijk-Groeneboer et al. ┃ Language of Hope in Europe 33 the massive wave of defections from the Catholic Church after the First World War, appear to have been a greater influence on the Czechs’ breaking away from the Christian faith than the forty-year-long period of communist government(Hamplová – Nešpor, 2009). In the 1920s alone, approximately 2.5 million people left the Catholic Church. About half of these entered the national Czechoslovak Hussite Church; the other half re- mained without any religious affiliation. This movement of de- fection from the Catholic Church probably has no parallel in world history as to scale and speed. However, a “general religiosity”, calling for a renewal of the churches and demanding that religion serve humanity and national development, was al- ready apparent at that time. In addition, alternative religiosity was developing markedly in Bohemia, a phenomenon which only became widespread elsewhere in Europe at the end of the 20th century(Hamplová, 2013). We may conclude therefore that “the proverbial ‘Czech atheism 䪦 is anything but real atheism”(Nešpor, 2010). “Despite all changes that have occurred in the Czech religious scene in the course of the 20th century, it is possible to observe a long-term transition from ecclesial forms of religiosity to ‘alternative forms䪦 , to personally experienced and especially in extreme moments utilized transcendent anchoring”(Nešpor, 2016). Germany, in its turn, also has a peculiar history of its own. Article 4 of the constitution guarantees freedom of religion for the German people: the “Freiheit des Glaubens”, the “Gewissens” and the “Freiheit des religiösen und weltanschaulichen Bekenntnisses sind unverletzlich”. The separation of church and state was proclaimed in 1919. In 2002, approximately 34% of the population belonged to the Protestant, mainly Lutheran churches, and another 34% to the Roman Catholic Church; 3.7% belonged 34 Journal of Christian Education in Korea to the Islamic faith. In 1995, the Jewish community counted 72 communities with a total of nearly 54,000 members. In 1933, before Hitler came to power, the Jewish population in Germany came to about 530,000. The largest Jewish community is located in Berlin, followed by Frankfurt and Munich. Traditional Jewish communities in Leipzig and Dresden have been actively professing their faith, also since the German reunification. 18 Lutheran and Reformed( reformierte ) churches in West Germany are united in the Evangelische Kirche in Deutschland(EKD). In 1991, the EKD was merged with the Bund der Evangelischen Kirchen from the former GDR. The Evangelical churches in Germany belong to the World Council of Churches and there is close collaboration between them and the Roman Catholic Church. Protestant churches organize biennial national gather- ings: the so-called church days. Up to 1994, the Roman Catholic Church was divided into 23 dioceses, five of which were archdioceses. After a reorganiza- tion necessitated by reunification, Germany currently has 20 dioceses and seven archdioceses: Bamberg, Cologne, Freiburg, Munich and Freising, Paderborn, Hamburg(new), and Berlin.

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