Between belief and disbelief, between religion and secularity: introducing non-doxasticism and semi-secularity in worldview education

ABSTRACT

In order to include all outlooks and perspectives on the world prevalent in contemporary society, countries like Sweden have replaced traditional religious education with worldview education. However, current worldview theory fails to make justice to two important facts concerning the contemporary religious landscape. Firstly, a great many people are semi-secular rather than traditional believers or atheists. Secondly, many have non-doxastic attitudes such as hope or acceptance instead of belief. We therefore suggest that worldview education needs to include semi-secularity, and that it needs to clearly separate the content of a worldview from the variety of epistemic attitudes a person might have towards that content.

KEYWORDS:

• Worldview education
• semi-secularity
• non-doxasticism, Sweden

1. Introduction

Most countries in Northern Europe¹ have introduced some kind of worldview education to replace or complement religious education. The primary reason for doing so is that the concept of ‘worldview’ supposedly covers all religious and secular² outlooks and perspectives common in contemporary society. As put by Robert Jackson, the concept ‘worldview’ is ‘potentially workable for covering both religious ways of life and non-religious convictions’ (Jackson 2014, 75). It has also been claimed that ‘everyone has a worldview’ (See e.g. Commission of Religious Education 2018, 72 and; Stenmark 2021, 44), in which case it follows that no individual nor group is to be excluded when working with a worldview perspective (Jackson 2014).³

We very much endorse the aim of inclusiveness which permeates worldview education, but we are doubtful whether worldview theory⁴ can in fact deliver on this promise. The way worldviews are standardly conceptualised in worldview theory tends to exclude a range of relevant, contemporary alternatives. First, it is common in worldview studies to distinguish between secular and religious worldviews (Stenmark 2022).⁵ This is problematic since, according to recent sociological research, a significant part of the population in Northern Europe is neither secular nor religious in the traditional sense, but instead what we call ‘semi-secular’.⁶ In this rather diverse group, we find, for example, vague views about ‘something more’ beyond the physical world or spirituality connected to experiences in nature.

Second, and perhaps even more importantly, worldview theory standardly builds on an implicit doxastic assumption that the only relevant attitude one can have towards a worldview is belief. However, on closer inspection, we find that many people relate to the content of their favoured worldview(−s) in a non-doxastic manner. That is, they view their worldviews (or parts thereof) as important and desirable possibilities which might just be true, but which they still find too unlikely to believe. Instead, they adopt non-doxastic attitudes, like hope, acceptance, or assumption. As far as we understand, non-doxasticism is especially prevalent when it comes to semi-secularity, and it therefore seems that the two problems are intimately connected.

The aim of this paper is to suggest how these oversights of current worldview theory might be rectified, by introducing semi-secularity and non-doxasticism, and to make explicit the impact of such rectification for worldview education.

While it might seem obvious that worldview education must include semi-secular views since they are highly prevalent in contemporary society, it might not be equally obvious why non-doxasticism is important. Does it really matter if adherents to some worldview assume, accept or hope rather than believe? The answer is that it matters greatly for questions of rationality. The rational requirements for non-doxastic attitudes are much more relaxed in comparison with the requirements for rational belief. Questions of rationality are important in worldview education. The pupils need to comprehend how worldviews can be rationally held, or else the education will not be as relevant for them in relation to their own lives and views⁷ – failure to understand how a religious view can be rationally held has been shown to be a dominant reason for rejecting that view (Mercandante 2014). Besides, worldview education is often understood as fostering tolerance and respect (Brömsssen 2022), and it is surely easier to respect people whom you regard as rational.

To keep the discussion manageable, we focus on the Swedish context. We have three major reasons for doing so. The first is that the Swedish syllabus for religious education (or ‘religionskunskap’, literally ‘knowledge of religion’) has a clear worldview perspective aimed at inclusion. The second reason is that Swedish academia has its own long-standing tradition of worldview studies.⁸ The third, and most important, is that semi-secularity is especially prevalent in Sweden. It has even been called Sweden’s new religious mainstream, since this diverse group now is estimated to constitute as much as 75% of the population (Willander 2020, 37–38).

Even though the focus lies on Sweden, our discussion should be relevant for all countries with large groups of semi-secular ‘nones’. As already mentioned, this includes most of Northern Europe, and it also includes North America (Burton 2020; Mercandante 2014) and Australia (Singleton et al. 2019). Of course, it is especially relevant in countries which have adopted or plan to adopt worldview education to replace or complement traditional religious education.

Before continuing, it might be worth explicating that this paper is written from a philosophical-didactical point of view. Our contribution is theoretical in nature, and we do not offer any new empirical data. Our arguments and suggestions build on previous research from the sociology of religion and religious studies, in combination with theoretical frameworks from the philosophy of religion.

We proceed as follows: in section 2, we give a short presentation of how the concept of ‘worldview’ is included in the curriculum in the Swedish primary and secondary school and of the problems with current worldview theory. In section 3, we describe the semi-secular landscape in Sweden, giving some specific examples of semi-secular views expressed by informants in recent sociological literature. We demonstrate that some of these views are not easily captured by a doxastic worldview perspective. In section 4, we present non-doxasticism as it appears in the epistemology of religion. Finally, in section 5, we end the discussion with some concluding didactic remarks concerning non-doxasticism and semi-secularity.

2. Religious education in Sweden and the worldview framework

In Sweden, religious education is compulsory both in primary and secondary school. It is a non-confessional subject, taught in accordance with Wanda Alberts’s ‘integrative model’. It is taught in the same neutral way to everyone in the classroom, and there is no possibility to opt-out (Alberts 2007). Apart from stressing that religious education should be non-confessional, current syllabuses reflect the idea that learning about different religions and other worldviews should increase tolerance and reduce prejudice. It is therefore important that the teaching covers a wide range of outlooks, with a special focus on worldviews present in the pupils’ own society (Brömsssen 2022).⁹

While the subject is still known as ‘religionskunskap’, the aim of inclusion has led to the adoption of a worldview framework. In the National Swedish syllabus for compulsory schools, it is explicit that the extension of the concept ‘worldview’ is meant to include secular perspectives as well as religions:

Teaching in the subject must aim for the pupils to develop knowledge of religion and worldviews in Swedish society and in different parts of the world. […] The education should comprehensively highlight the role religion can play in society and how social conditions affect the development of religions and other worldviews (Lgr 22).¹⁰

With some progression, the purpose in the syllabus for Swedish secondary schools state:

The teaching in the subject should aim at the pupils broadening, deepening and developing knowledge about religions, worldviews and ethical approaches as well as different interpretations regarding these (Lgy 11).¹¹

The term ‘worldview’ has been chosen to promote inclusion, but as we already explained, current worldview theories often fail to include large segments of the contemporary religious landscape since both semi-secularity and non-doxastic attitudes fall outside the framework.

In the eighties and nineties, Ninian Smart (1995) used the concept ‘worldview’ to call for a wider focus for philosophy of religion to include alternatives to Christianity, both religious and secular. Even though not everyone has a religion, everyone has a rudimentary worldview; a constellation of ideas, attitudes and values about themselves, the world, and their place in it (Stenmark 2022). Today worldview theory is used both within religious studies (Droogers 2014; Taves 2018, 2020) and in religious education. It has proven a useful tool to recognise, develop and systematise different conceptions of reality.

The doxastic assumption has always been a part of worldview studies. Swedish Professor in worldview studies Anders Jeffner (1974) – a pioneer in in the field who established the concept in Swedish academia decades before Smart introduced it internationally – presented a worldview as including three components. According to his definition, a worldview involves (1) a central system of values, (2) a certain optimistic or pessimistic posture in life and most importantly (3) a set of theoretical beliefs about the world and us humans. This doxastic assumption remains in the work of his successors Carl Reinhold Bråkenhielm (2013, 2018) and Mikael Stenmark (2021, 2022).

The distinction between religious and secular worldviews is equally basic in worldview studies. As way of example, here follows Stenmark’s recent formulation of the distinction between religious and secular worldviews in terms of affirmation:

Religious worldviews affirm the existence of a transcendent, divine, or spiritual dimension of reality and its importance for how we understand and live our lives.

Secular worldviews deny the existence of a transcendent, divine, or spiritual dimension of

reality and affirm that reality has a different makeup, and it is the basic features of this reality that have importance for how we should understand and live our lives (Stenmark 2022, 574).¹²

Here, it is easy to interpret ‘affirm’ and ‘deny’ in terms of belief and disbelief, since assertion is generally taken to require belief.¹³ If so, it seems that Stenmark’s recent distinction includes both assumptions we find problematic in worldview studies: doxasticism and a dichotomy between religious and secular outlooks. We strongly doubt that the worldview approach, formulated in such a way, can fully capture all relevant views and attitudes prevalent in semi-secular Sweden.

3. The semi-secular landscape in Sweden

Turning to Sweden, one might be inclined to think that secular worldviews of one type or another would be dominating. Sweden is often considered one of the most secular countries in the world (Willander 2015, 53), very much in line with the self-image of many Swedes (Willander 2020, 61). This view on Sweden is also backed up by scholars like Phil Zuckerman who depicts Sweden as ‘about as secular as sociologically possible … ’ (Zuckerman 2009, 57). In making this judgement, Zuckerman dismisses religious affiliation as a relevant factor, instead focusing on a widespread lack of traditional Christian beliefs and low numbers of traditional religious practitioners.¹⁴

It is certainly the case that belief in a personal God is lacking among most Swedes, but that fact alone should not lead us to think that most Swedes are full-blown naturalists. Instead, there is a large and diverse semi-secular group which does not qualify as religious in the traditional sense, but neither do they reject all kinds of spirituality or every supernatural idea. Willander (2020, 87) has presented an analysis of answers to a particularly interesting survey question in EVS (2011, 2019) which demonstrates the Swedes semi-secular leanings. The question is ‘which of the following statements comes closest to your beliefs?’ and the alternative answers the following:

1. There is a personal God

2. There is some sort of spirit or life force.

3. I don’t really know what to think

4. I don’t really think that there is any sort of spirit, God or life force.

The survey stretches from 1982 to 2018. Even though there is a decline of believers in a personal God and a slight increase of naturalists who do not believe in anything beyond the mundane, the vast majority of Swedes would select alternatives (b) and (c).

In 2018 only 10% of the Swedes believed in a personal God, a decline by 10% points since 1982. 28% did not believe in any sort of spirit, God or life force, an increase with 10% points since 1982. However, not only has the undecided – call it the agnostic – alternative (c) above remained at about 20% during this 36-year period. The answer (b) ‘There is some sort of spirit or life force’ has remained the most popular option with at least 40% selecting it (see Willander 2020, 87).

Sociologists like Zuckerman seem to disregard the EVS-survey and similar data (perhaps because of the vagueness of the alternatives) when insisting on describing Sweden as a highly secularised country.¹⁵ Other sociologists, like Paul Heelas (2007), have appealed to EVS in order to draw a conclusion which is the opposite of Zuckerman’s, namely that Sweden is leading a spiritual revolution of sorts. While Heelas claim might seem as exaggerated as Zuckerman’s,¹⁶ it seems clear that the conception of Sweden as the world’s most secular country fails to capture that most Swede’s are neither traditionally religious nor outright atheists, but instead what we call semi-secular.

What exactly is the semi-secular take on religion? While the details vary between subgroups and individuals, some general trends are detectable. According to religious scholar David Thurfjell, the majority of Swedes are critical towards organised Christianity and traditional religion, and their views about the world are ambivalent and vague:

Swedes largely express a skeptical attitude towards religion in general, and a mildly critical attitude towards religion is common in public discourse. However, many adopt a faith-based stance that can be described as ambivalent. It is characterized for the majority not by atheism but by a personal belief in a vague ‘something’.

(Thurfjell 2015, 28–9)

Uncertainty and vagueness are often expressed by claiming that there is ‘something more’ beyond the purely physical realm. In an interview study, part of the so-called Enköping project, Willander discovered that this ‘something more’ is often described as having axiological qualities, it is a ‘goodness in life’ or a ‘sense of justice’. A paradigmatic example from the study would be Gunilla who states that:

I cannot say that I am really ‘Christian’ or religious, but I do believe in something which is not only physical. Well, maybe not a God but that there is something … that there is goodness in the world … well, it would be hard to live without that, I believe.

(Willander 2020, 66)

Gunilla qualifies her thought about this ‘something’ by saying that it is ‘not only physical’, while others from the same study present it as ‘something beyond humans’. Others lean more heavily towards classical agnosticism and suggest that this ‘something more’, ‘may be God or may be something else’ (Willander 2020, 66).

As made clear by Thurfjell in his seminal Granskogsfolket, many semi-secular Swedes have existentially deep and meaningful experiences of ‘something’ immanent in nature, particularly the forest. As an example from this study, consider the informant Per. Per says that there is something in the forest ‘besides everything else’ and goes on to state that ‘I’ve never bothered to try to explain it … it fulfils certain functions… a security, but, but also cognitively something rational… that it is something that … well it is difficult’. Per goes on to explain how he gets into contact with this ‘something’ through what can only be described as prayer:

Maybe it’s when I’m out running, then I stop… it’s become a bit of a habit… I stop. There is a particularly beautiful place in a small wooded area over there, and I stand there for a few minutes… Then it doesn’t become this usual inner dialogue, it becomes a dialogue with ‘something’.

(Thurfjell 2020, 213)

Thurfjell points out that like many others, Per is reluctant to say anything more about his experiences in nature, and that he is satisfied with being vague. Many people in this group think that full articulation would tarnish their experience, making it less meaningful (Thurfjell 2020, 222).

However, not all subjects are as hesitant as Per when it comes to describing their experiences. They say that there is something immanent in the forest that they can feel ‘connected’ with. Some even suggest that the forest has person-like properties such as ‘kindness’, ‘compassion’ and ‘hospitality’ (see e.g. Thurfjell et al. 2022, 207). We therefore think it appropriate to describe these semi-seculars as neo-animists.

Also among the so called religious ‘dones’ (people who are done with and leaves a specific religion) can we find examples of uncertainty and ideas about something vague. Curt Dahlgren (2008) has shown that far from all Swedes who have left their Christian faith become naturalists. Many are agnostic and describe their current view in a vague terminology. In an interesting passage on ‘changing belief’ we are presented with quite a few such cases. The agnostic Gustav states that:

one hears that strange things happen that are difficult to explain rationally. It is quite often that I hear such things […] even close to me. It makes me wonder if there could be another world that we don’t know about, so to speak. Something spiritual in some way.

(Dahlgren 2008, 171)

Sometimes people are also vague and use the word ‘something’ when answering questions about a potential life after death or when asked if there is a beginning to the universe. One interesting example would be Paula from a study on privately religious people by the sociologist Lena Löwendahl. Paula expresses what she thinks about life after death not only by appealing to ‘something’, but also by talking about hope. She states:

I hope that there is something, but I don’t know where and what. A lot of souls flying around, that doesn’t work either. It’s this again, that I don’t want to mix God with the physical world. If there is to be any life after death, it is also on that side not ours.

(Löwendahl 2005, 43)

One interesting result from Löwendahls study is that many of her informants are seekers open to revise their ideas. They ‘represent a kind of religious exploration where fixed norms and clear endpoints are missing’ (Löwendahl 2005, 143).

Now, there are more studies concerning the uncertain and vague beliefs of the semi-seculars and even though the examples presented here are only snapshots, the overall picture is quite clear. A significant group or even the majority of the Swedes are neither traditionally religious nor secular and when describing what they believe many are increasingly vague. In many cases, it is also doubtful whether their outlooks could appropriately be described in terms of belief.

4. Adding a non-doxastic framework

It has recently been questioned whether all semi-secular subjects are believers, in the sense that belief is their primary attitude towards the content of their worldview. In an important study, Ann of Af Burén (2015) has demonstrated that some semi-secular subjects are not only uncertain and vague, they also simultaneously hold views and ideas which are explicitly incoherent. Consider the following two examples. In the first, Burén’s interviewee Göran offers two parallel but incompatible explanations of why he miraculously survived a motorcycle accident. In the second, the informant Victor struggles with the meaning of life and the idea of an afterlife:

[Göran] offered me two parallel interpretations of his experiences without taking a stand on which of the two he considered to be ‘true’. In doing so, he gave voice to a recurrent pattern in the material. In relation to the motorcycle accident he said: ‘I think that on the one hand it could be survival instincts. Like a cat that you throw up in the air. In such extreme moments there is that possibility. OR, that there is some guardian angel. That evening I did thank possible guardian angels. If it was that, just to be on the safe side’.

(Af Burén 2015, 182)

I need to believe in a greater meaning, and also, as a matter of fact, in a life after this, in order to feel completely at ease … I can see all the arguments for this being something people have made up in order to endure something that is difficult. So, intellectually I could understand that probably it is not … it is better to face the facts. But emotionally I can’t do that. I really want to believe in a life after this so I cling on to the things I have heard that might just suggest that.

Af Burén (2015), 198)

Burén calls this phenomenon semi-secular simultaneity, and, working from the doxastic assumption that these subjects are believers, she understands them as largely irrational and compartmentalised.

We have recently questioned this understanding. In Palmqvist and Jonbäck (2022) we reject the doxastic assumption at work in Burén’s interpretation. We claim that subjects like Göran and Victor should not be understood as believers, because on a close reading it rather seems that they entertain or try to choose between different epistemic possibilities (i.e. ideas they are uncertain about, but think might be true). It also seems evident that they lack outright belief in these possibilities – Göran has suspended his judgement and Victor can neither believe in an afterlife nor let the possibility go and believe in naturalism. Instead, we should understand the subjects in a non-doxastic manner, as exhibiting not belief but non-doxastic attitudes such as acceptance (Göran) or hope (Victor).

Moreover, the principle of charity dictates that we should prefer a non-doxastic interpretation. According to the principle of charity, we should (everything else being equal) prefer an interpretation of others which allows us to regard them as rational persons. An interpretation of semi-secular simultaneity in terms of belief strongly implies irrationality, since it is clearly irrational to believe two contradicting propositions at the same time. However, there is nothing irrational with accepting both in a non-doxastic manner, and we should therefore prefer the non-doxastic reading (Palmqvist and Jonbäck 2022, 7–8).

The non-doxastic approach to religion has become increasingly popular among philosophers of religion during the last decades. According to non-doxasticism, a religious commitment need not be based on belief, but only on some epistemically weaker attitude such as hope (Pojman 1986), acceptance (Alston 1996), voluntary assent (Schellenberg 2009), or belief-less assumption (Howard-Snyder 2017). While most philosophers of religion working with non-doxasticism are mainly interested in defending a kind of belief-less Christian faith (Alston 1996; Howard-Snyder 2017; McKaughan 2017), others have shown that the framework is much more widely applicable. For example, Schellenberg (2009) has argued for non-doxastic ultimism (a kind of future-oriented religion directed at an abstract ultimate reality) and Palmqvist (2022) has shown that even neopagan revivalism can be epistemically rational if understood in non-doxastic terms.

While the details vary between the accounts, there are two main requirements which everyone seems to agree are required for a non-doxastic stance, one conative and one epistemic. These conditions can be summarised as follows:

Conative condition: The person desires the truth of the proposition in question or considers its truth an overall good thing.

Epistemic condition: The person believes that the proposition is epistemically possible and neither believes nor disbelieves it.¹⁷

The conative condition is about having a positive orientation towards the truth of the proposition in question. This basically means that in order to have a positive non-doxastic attitude towards something, you have to think it would be a good thing if it were true. Note that this desire might take many different shapes. It is not necessary to desire the truth of the proposition ‘for its own sake’, you might well desire the truth of it because you think that if it is true, you will receive some sort of benefit, or you might desire the truth because it implies the truth of something else, which is what you really care about. For example, when Victor expresses a desire for the truth of the proposition ‘There is an afterlife’, it seems clear that what he really desires is to survive his own biological death.

The conative condition also expresses the subject’s motivation. Unlike belief, non-doxastic attitudes are voluntary, and therefore the subject needs motivation to take them on. For example, it is Victor’s desire to survive death which makes him cling to the epistemic possibility of an afterlife. If Victor had been completely indifferent, he would not have had any reason to take up any non-doxastic attitude.

Epistemic possibility can be interpreted in at least two different ways. In the broad sense, all propositions which are neither known nor known to be false are epistemically possible. In the narrow sense, a possibility needs to be a live or real possibility to count as an epistemic possibility. To see the difference, consider the following scenario. Martin suddenly realises that he is not wearing his reading glasses, and he cannot remember when he last had them on or where he has put them. He does remember, however, that he had them when reading a novel yesterday evening. In this scenario, it is an epistemic possibility in the wide sense that Martin’s glasses might be on every place to which they can possibly have travelled since last night. Perhaps he had the window open, and they were taken by a bird who picked them up and happened to drop them on the roof of a train taking them hundreds of kilometres away. Or perhaps they were taken in for study by alien scientist (we do not really know that there are no aliens, do we?). Epistemic possibilities in the narrow sense, however, are limited to where Martin actually thinks the glasses might be, like on a shelf in his bookcase or under his favourite armchair.

While some philosophers of religion (Schellenberg 2009, 8) hold that a non-doxastic commitment only requires epistemic possibility in the widest sense, we strongly suggest that epistemic possibility in the narrower sense is needed, at least if the subject is to remain rational. It is by requiring epistemic possibility in the narrow sense we can exclude silly and far-fetched (but still broadly possible) religious alternatives, like The Flying Spaghetti Monster, from serious consideration. Consider again the case of Göran. If Göran believes that it is only a possibility in the widest sense that he was saved by a guardian angel, it makes little sense to suspend judgement rather than believing in a natural explanation. Only if Göran regards the angelic explanation as a possibility in the narrower sense does it make sense to non-doxastically accept it.

So, the suggestion is that many semi-secular persons are not believers but instead consider the content of their views as live epistemic possibilities, towards which they have non-doxastic attitudes such as hope, acceptance, or assumption. This seems plausible not only when it comes to semi-secular simultaneity, but also in many of the examples discussed in the previous section. Some explicitly suggest a non-doxastic reading, like Gustav who says that ‘It makes me wonder if there could be another world that we don’t know about, so to speak’ or Jenny who expresses that ‘I hope that there is something, but I don’t know where and what’. However, we like to suggest that a non-doxastic interpretation might be suitable also in cases which are not explicitly non-doxastic on the surface. There can be at least two major reasons for advancing a non-doxastic reinterpretation.

Firstly, it might be the case that a belief-based reading implies irrationality, while a non-doxastic can preserve the rationality of the subject. This, we think, could be the case when it comes to Per, who communicates with ‘something, besides everything else … a security, but also cognitively something rational’ which dwells in nature. Now, Per could be interpreted as believing that this entity really exists in nature, but the case for animism is rather weak and it seems doubtful whether Per could actually have enough experiential evidence to be justified in believing in this ‘nature spirit’. A doxastic reading therefore implies that Per fails to meet the standards of rationality. However, since the requirements for regarding something as a live epistemic possibility is generally much more relaxed than the requirements for justified belief, a non-doxastic interpretation of Per would suggest that he is as rational non-doxastic hoper, who hopes that the entity in nature exists and that his experiences of communion with it are genuine. The principle of charity clearly suggests that we should prefer the second interpretation.

Secondly, if we return to the examples of the previous section, we see that taking up a non-doxastic attitude is but one of two strategies employed in a semi-secular context in order to come to terms with uncertainty. The contrasting strategy is to leave concrete and detailed views behind and opt for a more abstract or vague alternative. Both these strategies makes considerable sense. If you are doubtful that the traditional Christian picture of God is correct, you can move either way. You might want to go abstract and replace the Christian notion of God with something vaguer, like ‘a good force’, but you might also want to go non-doxastic and replace belief in the existence of God with hope that God exists. As we understand the standard examples of semi-secularity, some subjects combine these strategies,¹⁸ while those who choose only one standardly opt for vagueness. In some of the latter cases, a non-doxastic reinterpretation might in fact be preferable over going vague, and we suspect that many neglect this possibility because they think of religion in terms of belief.

The fact that some semi-secularity is explicitly non-doxastic strongly suggest that worldview theory has to include other epistemic attitudes than belief, thereby making space for non-doxastic worldview approaches. To capture the complexity of semi-secularity, and to make full justice to religious stances based on epistemic attitudes weaker than belief, worldview education also needs to include non-doxasticism.

5. Concluding didactic remarks

We want to end with some concluding didactic remarks, first on non-doxasticism and then on semi-secularity.

We have suggested that the worldview framework is problematic insofar as it presupposes a dichotomy between religious and secular, and insofar as it presupposes doxasticism. While the former problem can be avoided by introducing semi-secularity as a third option, we think that teachers can handle the latter problem by making a proper distinction between the content of a worldview and the attitudes (some doxastic, some non-doxastic) it is possible to have in relation to such content. One practical and straightforward way to implement this distinction is by thinking of worldviews as answers to what Ann Taves (2020) calls ‘The Big Questions’. Like for example:

Ontological questions: What exists and what is ultimate reality?

Cosmological questions: Where did everything that exists come from? How does it all end? Is there a life after death?

Axiological questions: Are there objective goods and evils and if so is there anything good that makes our lives meaningful?

Praxeological questions:If there is something good for us humans, how do we obtain that good? How do we live a meaningful life?¹⁹

We can now think of worldview content as consisting of more or less vague answers to these questions and worldview attitudes as doxastic or non-doxastic attitudes towards those answers. This way of thinking about worldviews not only makes room for non-doxastic attitudes. It also provides a way of demonstrating the complexity of individual worldviews. Some people might believe in their answers to some questions while being agnostic concerning the answers to others. Of these, they might hope for some and suspend judgement completely regarding others. This approach nuances an important subject matter in religious education and might be increasingly fitting for the classroom in semi-secular Sweden.

It is important to see that the distinction between content and attitude is not only relevant for semi-secularity. In most discourse on religion, an oversimplified picture where faith is equated with belief remains the norm. Few scholars, however, would agree that the cognitive side of religion, in all its complexity, could be captured by the notion of belief alone. The distinction allows for a more complex and consequently more accurate presentation of all forms of religion.

It is common to make a distinction between ‘believed religion’ and ‘lived religion’. The present account suggests how such ‘lived religion’ can be understood, since the non-doxastic framework makes explicit how there can be ‘lived religion’ without ‘believed religion’. The idea that one might live a religious life without religious belief might otherwise seem strange, because it might be thought to imply a religious life without a cognitive side. But once we realise that attitudes such as non-doxastic acceptance are viable alternatives to belief, we see that it is possible to live a religious life in a belief-less way, by accepting religious ideas as grounds for action etc.

However, non-doxasticism does not only allow for a better and more nuanced understanding of different worldviews. The framework also offers a multifaceted language for the pupils to work on their own life issues. In countries like Sweden, where the syllabus is explicit that worldview formation and progress should be an integral part of religious education (Lgr 2022), introducing non-doxasticism seems especially important.

Turning to semi-secularity, we want to acknowledge some further didactical challenges worthy of future research. The first is empirical. More empirical research is needed to fully understand the semi-secular views, perspectives and lifestyles prevalent in our society, but perhaps more importantly we need to know more about the views prevalent in the classroom. We know that there is a predominantly secular discourse in many classrooms in Sweden and that the interest in spiritual issues dominates that of traditional religion (See Kittelmann Flensner 2015 and Lövheim and Bromander 2012). But how prevalent in the classroom are the semi-secular ideas and perspectives that we have shed light on here? Who is sitting in the classroom? To promote inclusive religious education relevant for the pupils, didactic research on this would provide important knowledge.

The second challenge is related but more practical. How should a teacher introduce semi-secularity in the classroom? To introduce novel yet (in our view) important content in religious education is time consuming for teachers and learning material, in a broad sense of the word, is lacking. This practical challenge may be dealt with when further research and teaching material are developed, but for now, it is difficult to see how to overcome it without putting a heavy burden on individual teachers.

Finally, it is sometimes suggested that the didactical question of why a certain content should be included is the most challenging one. In this case, however, the answer to the question should be quite clear. The semi-secular group constitutes the largest group in Swedish society. If we want to understand Sweden as a country containing of a multitude of worldviews and foster both respect and tolerance in relation to these views, we as well as the pupils need to understand semi-secularity in all its diversity.

In Sweden, the move from traditional religious education to worldview education has been explicitly motivated by the democratic aim of fostering tolerance. A broad and inclusive approach to the subject is therefore not only desirable but also demanded by the government. Arguably, a minimum criterion for achieving this is to adequately represent the contemporary religious landscape. The Swedish educational system therefore needs to make room for semi-secularity and non-doxasticism in worldview education.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

The work was supported by the Vetenskapsrådet [2018-01050].

Notes on contributors

Francis Jonbäck

Francis Jonbäck is lecturer in religious studies at the University of Gävle, associate professor in philosophy of religion at Uppsala University and a high school teacher of religion and philosophy. He has published in areas such as philosophical theology, the faith and knowledge debate, the problem of evil, secular worldviews, semi-secularity, atheism and agnosticism. He is currently finishing his project Making Space for Secular and Religious Agnosticism, funded by the Swedish Science Council [2018-01050].

Carl-Johan Palmqvist

Carl-Johan Palmqvist is a post-doctoral fellow in theoretical philosophy at Lund University and a high school teacher of religion, history, and philosophy. He has published in areas such as non-doxasticism, religious fictionalism, evolutionary religion, semi-secularity, neo-paganism, the analysis of hope and the philosophy of J. L. Schellenberg. Palmqvist’s current project Beyond Faith, funded by Åke Wibergs Foundation, is about applying non-doxasticism outside of traditional religion.

Notes

1. This include Sweden, Norway, Finland, Great Britain and the Netherlands. Consequently, the concept of ‘worldview’ has received significant attention by scholars in these countries (Miedema 2014; Gustavsson 2020; Bråten 2018; Bråten and Skeie 2020; Thalén 2021; Hand 2012; Freathy and John 2019; Kooij (Van Der) (2016; Åhs and Kallioniemi 2017, 2019).

2. ‘Secular’ is a term which can have a lot of different meanings. To clarify, we consequently use the term ‘Secular’ in a strong sense. A secular worldview in this sense is one based on naturalism (the philosophical view that there exists nothing more in reality than ‘nature’ as that which is described by science). We also take secular to be synonymous to ‘non-religious’. Since we reserve the term ‘religion’ for traditional religion, we get the result that the semi-secular are neither ‘religious’ nor ‘non-religious’ - a result we are happy with since semi-secularity includes many worldview components standardly associated with religion, although the semi-secular themselves often reject the religious label.

3. Jackson builds on recommendations from the Committee of Ministers of the Council of Europe, by providing advice to policy makers and teachers. He points out that both organisations and individuals can have worldviews and that both religious and secular worldviews are important for intercultural education.

4. Worldview theory is now prevalent in many disciplines, so to avoid confusion we want to make clear that we are primarily addressing worldview theory as it is being used in philosophy of religion and religious studies, which are the two fields we think has the clearest connection to the use of a worldview framework in religious education. Of course, our criticism is applicable to all kinds of worldview theory which runs on a dichotomy between religious and secular.

5. The distinction between religious and secular worldviews is also very much present in the syllabus for religious education for compulsory school in Sweden (Lgr 22).

6. The term ‘semi-secular’ is due to Ann Af Burén (2015). Another common term used when referring to this group is ’fuzzy’ religion (Voas 2009) and recently Bråten (2022) introduced the term ‘non-binary worldviews’ as a way of capturing these types of views. We use Burén’s terminology since it is more explicit and more directly conveys what it refers to. To correctly understand ‘fuzzy’ nor ‘non-binary’, we need to know something about content and/or context (also political worldviews or philosophical views could be described as ‘fuzzy’ or ‘non-binary’). An alternative would be semi-religious, but we prefer semi-secular as it connects with the grand narrative of Western secularisation. For the same reason, we prefer semi-secular over ’Remixed religion’ (Burton 2020) or the popular American term ‘spiritual but not religious’. We want to stress that our choice of term is for theoretical purposes, and that we are well aware that the semi-secular themselves might prefer other terms for self-description.

7. Indeed, according to the syllabus for religious education in Swedish compulsory school, ‘teaching should stimulate pupils to reflect on various life issues and ethical approaches and provide pupils with tools to analyse and take a stand on ethical and moral issues. In this way, teaching should contribute to the pupils’ ability to develop a personal attitude to life and readiness to act responsibly in relation to themselves and their environment’ (Lgr 2022). Thus, pupils should not only learn about various religions and secular worldviews, but also learn from various worldviews in order to develop or work on their own views. For the distinction between learning about and learning from see e.g. Grimmitt (1991). In our view, questions about rationality and criticism of different alternatives is essential for developing one’s own worldview when learning from others. Translation of the syllabus and of other Swedish sources in this paper are our own.

8. In Swedish, the discipline is called ’livsåskådningsvetenskap’, which literally means something like ’the science of perspectives on life”. The translation of ’livåskådningsvetenskap’ into ’worldview studies’ is uncontroversial and one constantly employed by Swedish scholars.

9. Sweden is somewhat unique with respect to this underlying philosophy, when contrasted with other European countries. The standard approach is to teach the home religion or worldview of each individual in order to foster confidence and self-awareness, thereby also making it easier to meet people with different religious and secular worldviews later in life (See Brömssen 2022, 121).

10. Italics added. Note how the syllabus first speaks of religion and worldviews, and then of religion and other worldviews. These formulations seem to reflect two different and incompatible understandings: the first that worldviews are something distinct from religion, the second that religions are a kind of worldviews. It should be noted that it is the second, wider understanding which is standard in the academic study of worldviews (even though many would argue that religion contains more than a worldview).

11. Italics added.

12. Italics added. It should be noted that Stenmark (2022, 573) makes this distinction fully aware that there is a ‘grey zone’ where it is hard, if not impossible, to properly distinguish the religious from the secular. We therefore feel the need to clarify that our goal is not to criticise Stenmark’s account as much as it is to raise an awareness of the level of simplification involved in such distinctions and of the importance of not taking them at face value.

13. Many philosophers would even claim that affirmation, if understood as assertion, not only requires belief but even knowledge (for an influential account, see Williamson 2000, chapter 11). If so, Stenmark’s formulation seems even more questionable, since even those who defend the rationality of religious belief tend to deny the possibility of religious knowledge.

14. Zuckerman is by no means alone in viewing lack of traditional religious belief and practice as indicators of far-reaching secularisation. Also see, for example, Urstad (2017).

15. Of course, it could also be the case that all highly secularised countries have a large semi-secular population, in which case Sweden might still be among the most secularised countries in the world.

16. See e.g. Willander (2015) and Voas and Bruce (2007) for criticism of the idea that there is or has been a spiritual revolution.

17. These conditions are roughly the same as the ones presented by Palmqvist and Jonbäck (2022, 9). However, we replaced their original labels (ND1 and ND2) with the hopefully clarifying ‘Conative condition’ and ‘Epistemic condition’.

18. For a philosophical use of these twin-strategies, see Schellenberg (2009).

19. Compare these questions with the questions in e.g. Taves (2020).