The objective to teach Christianity is stated in the Swedish national syllabus since the very beginning of compulsory school. Initially, teaching proceeded from the Lutheran catechesis; a mission successively replaced by biblical studies and later developed into (Lutheran) Christianity as being part of non-confessional “Religious Studies” (Religionskunskap). However, the mission to pay certain weight to Christianity has survived, although in a new and secularized Swedish context. The privilege of Christianity is today instead motivated by its cultural position rather than from a religious rationale, and the ambition to conduct a cultural legacy. We will approach how Christianity is depicted in compulsory school by analysing currently used teaching books. This will be done within the frame of educational research, more specifically subject didactics. The purpose of our paper is to describe and problematize the depiction of Christianity in Swedish textbooks for Swedish compulsory Religious Studies.

Nine national and prominent textbooks for the lower secondary school has been selected. Using discourse analysis (Fairclough 2003; von der Lippe 2011), dominating patterns will be revealed and related to broader discourses in society, within and outside Sweden. Our preliminary analysis shows that Christian doctrines are highlighted without relating them to religious practice, resembling a teaching tradition of presenting doctrines as demarcated facts; Christianity is further presented foremost in terms of church history which relate to an idea of religions as old entities carried by traditions from the past; the teaching books also tends to connect the teaching of Jesus with modern, protestant liberal theology.