Religion, education and dialogue for non-discrimination in Finland

Dear friends,

I am grateful for this opportunity to speak about the role of inter-faith relations and education, particularly religious education, in promoting and strengthening non-discrimination.

When multiple major crisis – the climate disaster or the new world disorder – are shaking the foundations of our world as we knew it, people tend to seek simple explanations in order to cope with complex changes. This development offers a fertile soil for polarization of societies and for fragmentation of communities. Under these circumstances, dialogue and other means of learning to know one another better play a crucial counterbalancing role.

Although the conference is dealing with the topic of dialogue and non-discrimination in general, I will approach it primarily from the perspective of Finnish society. In order for you to understand this context better, allow me to give a brief introduction to the Finnish religious landscape.

One of the key factors is the fact that for centuries Finnish society was defined and developed by a Lutheran majority culture until very recent decades. The Lutheran Reformation arrived in the Swedish Kingdom, including its eastern parts, now known as Finland, as early as in 1527. It continued to hold sway even after Finland was incorporated into Russia in early 19th century. At the same time, Orthodox Christians, Muslims and Jews began to settle in increasing numbers in the Finnish region. As the nationalistic aspirations began to rise among the Finns in the second half of the 19th century, Lutheranism became one of the defining characteristics of being a Finn, as one of the ways of distinguishing Lutheran Finland from Orthodox Russia.

In practice Lutheranism remained a strong part of the Finnish religious landscape until the end of the millenium even though the number of those affiliated in the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Finland declined and has continued to decline. At the beginning of the millennium, 85% of the population belonged to the Lutheran Church. At the end of 2024, the corresponding figure was just over 62%.

About 1% of the population are Orthodox Christians. Here, it important to understand that the Finnish Orthodox Church has since 1923 been an autonomous Orthodox Church under the jurisdiction of Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople. That is, it is not affiliated to the Russian Orthodox Church.

The Catholic Church in Finland is a small but growing community, especially through immigration. It has between 15 000 and 30 000 members, depending on methods of calculation. The Muslim community in Finland is fragmented. The total number of Muslims affiliated in one of the 60 registered Islamic communities is about 24 000. However, the actual number of Muslims is estimated at 140 000. The Finnish Jewish community and its two congregations have a total of 1500 members. And finally, around 34% of the population have today no religious affiliation.

Now, moving from almost mono-cultural to a multireligious and multicultural society, has not been just a constructive process in Finland. Growing polarization and populism has under these circumstances attracted rise to counter-reactions: racism, anti-Semitism and Islamophobia. The same developments that we see taking place all over Europe and beyond.

At the same time, religion ja religious plurality has become more visible in the public sphere in an unprecedented way. People have become more aware of and more curious towards religion in general. Various very recent research show that today children and young people in particular – whether they have a religious belief or not – consider religion as something positive, something that can be practiced as part of everyday life and that can be discussed in the same way as other important dimensions in life.

Under these circumstances, schools and many other places that bring young people together have become new unofficial platforms of inter-faith dialogue. And this is something we should take into consideration when organizing religious education to develop it towards “official platform for interfaith dialogue”.

Here in Finland, religious education or ethics is part of the regular curricula of the public, that is state funded, schools. Both in basic education and in general upper secondary education RE has been provided “according to one’s own religion”, and it is compulsory in both levels, that is for children and youth between 7-15 years. The model is defined in the Basic Education Act as follows: the instruction of religion is arranged in conformity with the religious community of the pupils as instruction of the religion to which the pupil belongs in accordance with separate syllabi”.

Those pupils who are not members of any denomination or religious community are provided instruction in ethics. Most pupils take part in Lutheran religious education. The aim of the RE for all groups is to familiarize the pupil with their own religious background, Finnish spiritual tradition, the world religions as well as cultural and the ethical dimensions of religion and life in general.

Schools have a great potential not just to remain unofficial but become also official platforms of religious dialogue. And indeed, some teachers have brought different teaching groups of religious education together at some point in order to increase dialogue between their pupils.

Creating this kind of multi world view groups. Brining offers an opportunity to practice two important civic skills: dialogue skills and religious literacy. It is difficult to think of another topic that would suit better for learning dialogue skills that religious education! – At least it is difficult to imagine that it could take place, let´s say, in a mathematics class…

While school should promote all this, it is at least as important that religious communities themselves also support the development of dialogue skills and that of religious literacy, both among their own members and in society at large – and that this is done in the spirit of open and friendly curiosity towards other religious and world views. There are important actors in Finland bringing together different religion – but I am not going more into this as I believe that you will hear shortly more about it from Ms Yvonne Westerlund’.

Finally, it is important to understand that religious literacy is not only for those who identify themselves with a religion or has a religious affiliation, but it is an important civic or professional skill for all. Understanding religion and its influence in the life of both individuals and communities is particularly important today in the field of policy-making, law, journalism and in various educational institutions.

And it is only through dialogue that we can build a society that is non-discriminatory and just for all – that is, more resilient against and in times of crisis.