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Religious education and intercultural understanding: examining the role of religiosity for upper secondary students’ attitudes towards RE

Recent studies show that religious education (RE) may play an important role for teaching intercultural understanding in many Western societies facing increased cultural and religious pluralism. Quantitative and qualitative research have however failed to examine what role the religiosity of the students plays in their attitudes towards RE. A nationally representative Swedish sample of 1850 students answered a classroom questionnaire. The main result was that, when controlling for background variables such as gender, foreign background, parents’ education level and study programme, the students’ religiosity had a significant effect on their attitudes towards (a) existential issues, (b) preferences on what to study in RE as well as (c) incentives for studying RE. Regression analyses demonstrated that by entering individuals’ religiosity into the model the effect of foreign background was suspended in 11 out of 14 cases. In order to understand the attitude towards RE, it is useful to include the students’ religiosity. As a consequence, this article argues that in order to reach the citizenship goals of educating for intercultural understanding in RE, the subject should be developed to reach male students, students with parents with lower levels of education, students in vocational study programmes and students who are not religious.