Educational Biblical Nationalism and the Project of the Modern Secular State

Abstract

Biblical Criticism, the historical study of Biblical texts, spread across the Europeanuniversities during the late 19th century, the same period when the European statesmodernized, and identifying state and nation became a political project. The newscientific view on the Bible became in this political reform context a topic of publicdebate: Should the national education systems under construction implementthe modern scientific understanding of the Bible, should school keep teaching theCatechism, or should religious instruction be separated from the school of the nationin order to become a ‘school for all’?Whereas the academic hotbeds of Biblical Criticism were not least the Germanspeakinguniversities and academic institutions in France, the popularization ofBiblical Criticism through education proved more successful in the Nordic states thanin e.g. Prussia and France. The article explores the gradual success of Biblical Criticismeducation reform efforts in the case of Denmark from the late 19th to mid-20th centuryin relation to the development of the state from an absolutist kingdom to a nationstate with constitutional monarchy and parliamentarism, and discusses on this basisthe relation between religion, secularization and educational nation-state crafting.Keywords: Biblical Criticism; Christian modernism; education reform; meso-levelactors; nation-state crafting.

Nationalism education in elementary school: A systematic literature review

“…No Methodology Country RQ Qualitative and quantitative method [59] Netherlands RQ 1 Analysis Study [60] China RQ 2 Qualitative [61] Belgium RQ 2 A systematic procedure for reviewing or evaluating documents [62] Vietnam RQ 3 Qualitative descriptive [63] Indonesia RQ 3 Qualitative descriptive [64] United States RQ 1 Qualitative descriptive [65] Sweden and USA RQ 3 Qualitative approach [66] Indonesia and Japan RQ 1 Quantitative and qualitative methods [67] Indonesia and Malaysia RQ 3 10 Qualitative approach [68] China RQ 1 11 Qualitative study [69] Indonesia RQ 3 12 Descriptive-analytic method [70] Indonesia RQ 1 13 Instruments development [71] Indonesia RQ 2 14 Mixed methods approach [72] Hong Kong RQ1 15 Qualitative study [73] Iceland and Finland RQ1 16 Research and Development [74] Indonesia RQ 3 17 Comparative (quasi-experimental approach) [75] Indonesia RQ 2 18 Qualitative method (content analysis) [76] Hong Kong RQ 2 19 Analyze the historical development [77] France RQ 2 20 Qualitative descriptive research [78] Indonesia RQ 1…”

“…The implementation of nationalism and nationality education is carried out through learning innovations in the form of Accountability, Nationalism, Public Ethics, Anti-Corruption (ANEKA), and Tri Hita Karana (THK), which are oriented toward building a spirit of love for the country [71]. Nationalism learning in France integrates the national education system through applying scientific and modern approaches to the Bible, incorporating Catechism learning, and integrating religion with the nation's schools to become a school for all [77]. Nationalism education in Israel is implemented through textbooks that apply the ethnonational model of nation-states to shape learners' commitment to the values of democracy, tolerance, and protection of minority rights [90].…”

The Nordic Model and the Educational Welfare State in a European Light

“…Neo-Protestant liberal university theologians-often, like Söderblom, young modern conservatives in a political sense-hence contributed to the compromise between, on the one hand, conservative church circles and revivalist circles who wanted to preserve the Catechism, and on the other hand, liberal and socialist criticism of religion striving to remove the Catechism from the school of the state. Here especially, the Social Democrat parties-the new state-bearing socialist parties in the Nordic states-became central partners of alliances (Moberger, 1961(Moberger, , 1962Tergel, 1969;Buchardt, 2013Buchardt, , 2015: in Sweden with the 1919 reform and in, for example, Denmark during the 1930s (Buchardt, 2020). The compromise meant further separation between the state church institution and the state school institution.…”

“…On the one hand, there was certain independence granted to these churches, and on the other hand, they were under parliamentary control and tied to democracy, "the people," and the nation. Where France divided religion and state, the Nordic states integrated and transformed religion into a national and cultural matter that worked toward "welfare nation-state" cohesion-to phrase it with a concept developed by political historian Pauli Kettunen (Kettunen, 2011b; see also Tröhler, 2020;Buchardt, 2020). Yet, in both cases the social and the religious questions were intersecting in education reform.…”