This article examines the relationship between state-provided religious education and support for Islamists. It first provides a historical overview of this debate in the Egyptian context. It then examines a survey of young adults from post-Arab-Spring Egypt, the largest education market in the Middle East and North Africa region. The findings show that recipients of state-provided Islamic education, Azharites, are more likely to hold favorable views of Islamists. This is likely attributed to the ideological alignment between Azharites and Islamists, since both favor a bigger public role of religion and stricter adherence to conservative social norms. However, the analysis does not support the notion that Azharites view Islamists as competitors in the religious market for followers. These results inform policy debates on Islamic education in Muslim countries and illustrate the limitations of mass indoctrination in authoritarian settings.

Religious education is probably one of the most attractive topics in law and religious studies – a truly bottomless pit which, every now and then, reveals new questions and new challenges. The most recent judgment of the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) concerning this matter is the one delivered on 31 October 2019 in the case of Papageorgiou and others. The judgment only became final at the end of January 2020, under Article 44(2) of the European Convention of Human Rights (ECHR), so as yet it has not received much scholarly attention. However, it should be expected that there will be no lack of such attention, as the judgment deserves it for at least two reasons.

The prosperity of theology at Universities in this country is, for better or worse, linked to the prosperity or otherwise of Religious Education in the nation's schools where pupils first learn the grammar and vocabulary of belief. Yet despite one of the aspirations of recent reforms of the subject being to harmonize student transition from secondary to tertiary level, other voices have been raised which question the validity of that project. This article considers why religious education is currently such a contested pedagogical space, what kind of alternatives are being proposed and why Newman's Idea of a University and an ‘inclusive’ understanding of Theology might inform a coherent Catholic response.

In Article 7, paragraph 3, the German Constitution provides that religious education shall be a part of the curriculum of public school. This is one of the three approaches of dealing with religious education existing today. Originally, religious education as a regular subject at public schools in Germany was only offered by the two Christian Churches—Catholic and Protestant. As the number of Christians decreased and the number of Muslims increased, the demand for Islamic religious education at public schools grew. Therefore, the question arose whether the constitutional law concerning religion is capable of facing the new challenges of religious diversity. This Article tries to answer this question with regard to the introduction of Islamic religious education as a measure of adaptiveness. In the first step, the requirements of Article 7, paragraph 3 of the Constitution posed to religious education will be outlined in order to be able to examine in the second step whether Islamic religious education may be introduced at public schools as a regular subject. In this regard, the issue of the qualification of an umbrella association as a religious society and the constitutionality of the advisory board model will be discussed.

The systematic proselytisation of Catholic children institutionalised under the New Poor Law of 1834 was felt by the Catholic community as a very serious grievance. The legislation was framed so as to make the ministrations of the state church an integral part of the workhouse regime, while providing safeguards for the religious rights of non-Anglicans, both adults and children, through a conscience clause which however was not envisaged as applicable to children perceived as having no meaningful family connections. Loose wording allowed locally elected poor law bodies to frustrate the intentions of Parliament, and nullify all efforts of relatives and others to secure appropriate religious upbringing for Catholic children. The problem was particularly acute in the London area. Earlier lobbying initiatives came to nothing, but a fresh campaign begun in 1859, waged with the participation of Catholics at all levels of society, and persisting in the face of repeated setbacks, succeeded in 1868 in bringing about a change in the law, whereby procedures were established to enable the transfer of all poor law children of proven Catholic background to voluntary institutions under Catholic management, with funding for their maintenance paid from the poor rates.

Why do similar modern nations accord religion different roles in their public institutions? This paper engages this question by examining trends in religious instruction in the public schools of the United States and Australia from 1850 to 1950. I find that American education secularized farther and faster than Australian education because of its decentralized system of educational administration. In the United States, decentralized educational administration facilitated challenges to religious exercises by religious minorities, fostered professional development among educators, and allowed novel educational practices oriented in new educational theories rather than religion to spread. In Australia, by contrast, centralized state control over education insulated majoritarian religious exercises from minority criticism, suppressed professional development, and helped maintain traditional educational practices that sustained religious instruction. The state thus has both mediating and constitutive effects on secularization, a finding which opens new directions for research into the dynamics of secularization.

This paper examines the development of religious education policy in the government schools of New South Wales (Australia) since 1960. The New South Wales religious education curriculum features three components: (1) teacher-led “general religious education” (gre); (2) right-of-entry denominational instruction provided by visiting clergy (“special religious education”, or sre); and (3) occasional additional devotional exercises such as hymns and prayers. Between 1960 and 1980, this system underwent a partial secularization. gre was transformed from a straightforward course in Christianity built around government-produced Scripture readers to a flexible curricular component built around the academic study of multiple religions. At the same time, sre was strengthened and had its position in the curriculum secured; and devotional exercises were allowed to continue only in those settings where they formed an “appropriate” match with the community. I find that “secularizing” reforms were most consistently driven by teachers and administrators with practical motives: avoiding controversy, improving working conditions, and facilitating class management. This finding both challenges and complements recent works that interpret secularization as a political process driven by politicians and professionals primarily interested in enhancing their power or prestige at the expense of religious actors.

It is popular nowadays to claim not only that narrative is the most effective way to communicate religious knowledge but also that narrative provides the framework within which religious lifestyles and practices are meaningful. However, many today lack familiarity with the narratives of traditional religions. In other words, they suffer from ‘religious illiteracy’. This article considers the problem of how religion can become meaningful to such people. The view that religion can be divested of its outdated cultural accoutrements and presented in a form that resonates with postmodern secular culture is considered and found to be problematic. If acquiring a religion is like acquiring a culture, or a language, it seems unlikely that a deeper appreciation of a religious tradition will be facilitated by divesting it of its traditional cultural expressions. Moreover, the view that religious lifestyles should be emphasised rather than religious belief seems to be more a symptom of the problem of ‘religious illiteracy’ than a solution to it. The article concludes that both of these responses fail to provide a solution to the problem and that an alternative strategy is urgently required.