Vol. 33 No. 1 (2025): Rassismus als Ideologie: Konturen einer rassismuskritischen Religionspädagogik

From this complex constellation, this issue aims to focus attention on the ideology of racism and the efforts of religious education that is critical of racism, which has taken shape in recent years. In the context of the aforementioned awareness, greater attention is being paid, for example, to racist attribution and exclusion processes and Christian entanglements with racism. A central concern here is to develop ways of thinking that are critical of racism in the context of religious education by analysing different aspects (e.g. religious didactics or educational theory). Although these questions are analysed from a variety of theoretical perspectives, one dominant insight seems to prevail: Religious education that is critical of racism must be orientated differently than simply overcoming (religion-related racist) stereotypes or prejudices in order to avoid an under-complex approach to the structural dimension of racist thinking.

The first racism-critical considerations and approaches in the context of the religious education discourse clearly show how deeply racist structures are interwoven in questions of European self-understanding and what significance religions play in these questions of identity. It becomes clear that both practices of differentiation and questions of belonging and difference from a racism-critical perspective in religious education require attention, which must be addressed in co-operation with other academic disciplines. In view of the contemporary diagnostic problem outlined at the beginning, it also appears necessary to increasingly pursue a critique of racism in connection with other ideology-critical approaches (such as anti-Semitism or sexism, but also neoliberal ideologies) and to place different approaches and theoretical references in exciting and productive relationships. In this way, possible conflicts and challenges can be worked out and presented in a reflective manner - not least in order to be able to counter the accusations of ideologising the critique of racism itself.