Anti-Semitism as a Challenge for Religious Education

Between 1980 and 1995, several religious education textbooks and curricula were analyzed regarding the subject of anti-Judaism in Germany and Austria. The result corresponded with other analyses of anti-Semitism in the context of religious education and can be explained in particular in relation to various theories of prejudice. Noteworthy is that in the subsequent twenty years no similar analyses of the treatment of Judaism in Protestant and Catholic religious education were undertaken. Julia Spichal’s dissertation, supervised by the author, fills this gap by posing the question: What developments have occurred in the past two decades? Selected findings from the study form the main segment of this chapter. They refer to such typical neuralgic points as Jews as murderers of Jesus, the Pharisees, and the Torah. The chapter advocates the revision of textbooks and curricula, on the one hand, and the underlying analytical framework, on the other. (Rothgangel, M. (1997). Antisemitismus als religionspadagogische Herausforderung. Eine Studie unter besonderer Berucksichtigung von Rom 9–11. Freiburg: Verlag Herder, 2. Aufl. and Spichal, J. (2015). Vorurteile gegen Juden im christlichen Religionsunterricht. Eine qualitative Inhaltsanalyse ausgewahlter Lehrplane und Schulbucher in Deutschland und Osterreich. Gottingen: V&R Unipress.)