Secularizing the Religious? : A Look at Sweden’s Political Secularist Discourse and Its Implications for Christian Schools

Abstract: The relationship between Sweden and religion serves as a case of how its secular mode of governance has become an increasingly pervasive ideology that is not only encroaching on the rights of its religious community but is also on a mission to produce a homogenous civic nation, rather than allowing for plurality. Through its increased regulation of religion, particularly evident within the area of education, the case is made by focusing on Christianity and its differing values. A discourse analysis of the two most authoritative documents, the Education Act 2010 and the National Curriculum of Compulsory Schools 2011 is conducted. Based on the theoretical assumptions of social constructionism, this research seeks to make the case that through the state’s authoritative power, its ideologies and values are the most dominant in directing, determining, and maintaining the discriminatory and oppressive structural and social context.  Through critical discourse analysis (CDA), which posits that language and discourse are not ‘neutral’, this research finds there is a deliberate project on the state’s part to bring about the secularization of its faith-schools. The texts sustain a social system that ‘others’ the religious and discriminates against their ways of life and thought. The analysis of the Education Act 2010 and the National Curriculum display a very strong bias toward secular thought that is not accommodative of religious beliefs, values and practices. These documents display through its restrictions, allowances, its inclusions and exclusions, an attempt on the part of the state to create an education context which is devoid of religion and enforces one worldview, that of secular liberal thought and seeks to socialise students in this way. This, in its essence is in fact ‘illiberal’