The neutral course will be taken by those students who will be exempted from religious studies. According to K, the history of religions has more chances than philosophical ethics and religion. Of course, the establishment of the new course is expected to increase the number of student parent exemption applications, which currently stands at around 10,500 per year. In fact, an appeal has already been filed with the Council of State regarding the current terms of the exemption, as they are considered restrictive. The decision of the Ministry of Education and Religious Affairs will also determine which teachers will be able to teach the new course, which explains the competition between the respective departments of the university. This will be the seventh post-political change in religious education, which is a field of ideological and political battles.

“Education is one thing, but the forces that interfere with education are another,” said Giannis Antoniou, president of the Institute for Educational Policy (IEP). “The course of religious studies in the public school is between two opposing tendencies. Get out of your traditional and narrow confessional framework in a fruitful dialogue with religious heterogeneity and pluralism, or remain in a closed monophony as the official teaching of the Orthodox dogma at school,” said Stavros Yagazoglu, Associate Professor of the Department of Theology. EKPA, for a number of years the Executive Director of the Pedagogical Institute and the successor of the IEP, and one of the pioneers of an important reform, the course of which began in 2009.

In particular, the opinions of independent bodies from time to time, up until the most recent (2/2022 Office for the Protection of Personal Data – APDPX), have consistently leaned in favor of general exceptions on grounds of conscience and freedom, but also New educational conditions and rapid social changes have brought the Pedagogical Institute and IEP to the decision to change curricula in 2010. leaders who passed through the Ministry of Education – how they carried out an unprecedented dialogical discovery of a course towards religious otherness.

However, the inclusion of religious references and the new pedagogical way of teaching met with strong opposition from church leaders, theologians and believers, who petitioned the Council of Ministers to cancel the programs. And this despite the fact that the Church of Greece held a dialogue with the ministry and agreed to new programs.

The SC upheld their appeals (rep. 1749-1752/2019) and, for the first time, proposed an equal and up-to-date course as a solution between the confessional course and the exceptions. As Secretary General of Religious Affairs Georgios Kalantsis told K, “The SC stated that the constitutional basis for the course of religious studies is not Article 3 of the Constitution on the dominant religion, but paragraph 2 of Article 16 on the development of national and religious consciousness. The SC says that the answer to the question, what is religious consciousness, is the same as to the question, what is national consciousness, i.e. the constitution itself. Thus, the national consciousness is the Greek national consciousness, and the religious consciousness is that which concerns the vast majority of Orthodox Greeks. The UK clarifies that the confessional course is different from the catechetical course, which aims to inculcate faith rather than knowledge.” He pointedly emphasizes the position of the parties on the issue that “what escapes the attention of many is the fact that for the first time the SC based its decisions not only on the Constitution, but also on a systematic interpretation of the Constitution in relation to the European Convention on Human Rights.” “The decisions of the Council of Europe are controlled by national conscience. What the legislator does, not the judge,” said politician and constitutionalist Evangelos Venizelos, speaking at an event recently.

Since the Council of Europe has demanded the introduction of a new course for students who will be exempted from religious studies, the Ministry of Education and Religious Affairs must find a solution by the end of the academic year, in June, so that the program of the new course can be drawn up and planned by the teachers who will teach it. Of course, the new course will be taught for as many hours as religious studies are currently taught.

The scenarios considered for a course type are a neutral religion (eg philosophical ethics) or a purely religious course.

In June, the form of the alternative course will be determined, with the History of Religions having the greatest chances.

As George Streligas, consultant for theological education in Crete, has pointed out, there is generally the possibility of institutionalizing a hetero-religious course or other parallel denominational multiple courses (e.g. Islamic, Hindu, etc.) that will unite those who do not desire a narrow Orthodox denominational teaching. After all, according to the information of “K”, in the recent past, Muslims filed a corresponding request in Crete.

As educators emphasize in “K”, the consequences of the decision of the Council of State create new and unprecedented data in the Greek school. “So what will a public school teenager choose? A course that by its nature and purpose is closed, mono-confessional and constantly gravitating toward a catechism or a religious course, open and dialectical, including the major religions of the modern world, or a course of secularized philosophical ethics? Mr. Yagazoglou asks mockingly. “We will get into difficult situations, and we will be pushed to make the course optional,” said Chrysostomos, Metropolitan of Messina, professor of theology at the University of Athens, in an interview with K.

For this reason, it is believed that the decisions of the CE did not “win” only those who, having lost the prospect of abolishing religious studies, decided to pursue the same goal indirectly, asking the CE to change the course from compulsory to optional through the possibility of exempting all students from it. The Church is also considered “defeated”, as the SC in its decisions completely did not take into account the decision of the Hierarchy that it has no doctrinal objections to the programs of the Religious, which entered into force in 2018.

“They do practically nothing.” This is an answer to the “K” of an experienced theologian about what students who are exempted from religious studies are doing at school now. “If they don’t stay in the yard during Religion, they can go to a class in another department,” he adds.

The headache is not only the decision on the course that from now on will be taken by those students who will be released, in case of course a sufficient number (what needs to be determined, rather by analogy with the decision to create French or German departments). It is also difficult to find rooms as well as staff. In fact, the nature of the chosen course depends on the teachers of what specialties will teach it. “Theologians are ahead,” a high-ranking official from the Ministry of Education told K. After all, this specialty suffers from a high level of unemployment. Departments of social anthropology may also reserve the right.

The Atheist Union, its president Seeley Koitzanou told K, has a concrete proposal for an alternative course. “Since it will be addressed to those who do not want to base the formation of their worldview and their ethics on the acceptance of the supernatural, but on an objective awareness of what preceded and shaped human beliefs and theories, then an alternative course should pass through and consist of: knowledge of anthropology, archeology, history, religion, sociology, philosophy,” the Union’s proposal says.

On the other hand, the Atheist Union has filed an appeal with the Council of State against a ministerial decision on the conditions for granting exemptions from religious articles, arguing that it is unconstitutional to ask a parent/guardian of a child to apply for an exemption on grounds of religious conscience. Under the current conditions, only non-Orthodox students (that is, non-religious, heterodox, non-religious, atheists, agnostics) can be exempted from the compulsory attendance of a religious studies course.

How the Ministry of Education defines learning objectives

“The Religious Studies course contributes to the formation of free, responsible and critically thinking citizens, as well as preparing students for the public sphere in such a way that they highlight universal principles and values ​​as citizens of the world from the point of view of the Orthodox Christian tradition.” This is one of the goals set out in the ministerial decision on the revised religious studies curriculum, which will be taught as a pilot project from September next year and in the 2022-2023 academic year in standard and pilot high schools.

Another goal of the course is “the development of the students’ religious consciousness by analyzing and strengthening the Orthodox tradition in such a way that the free formation of their personality is not under any circumstances jeopardized”, but also the comprehensive, harmonious and balanced development of the students’ intellectual and psychosomatic powers so that they had the opportunity to develop into full-fledged individuals, to be able to live creatively, with love for man, life and nature, to be obsessed with loyalty to the motherland and the authentic elements of the Orthodox Christian tradition, which is a fundamental element of modern Greek and European education.

The main axes of the curriculum for the three grades of secondary school are defined, as stated in the ministerial decision, with questions that define modern religious education in Greece and concern the individual citizen: i) What does it mean to be an Orthodox Christian and how does this choice affect one’s life?
ii) What is the cultural context and how does an Orthodox Christian identity affect its position in society at large? iii) How is his function as a citizen of the state, of Europe and of the whole world shaped by this orthodox Christian identity?
Separate subjects of the curriculum in the 1st secondary school are God, Creation – Fall, God’s people (prophets – saints), Incarnation – Christ. In the 2nd school it is the Church – Worship – the Bible, the Kingdom of God and the Christian life, and in the 3rd school Religion / and – Worldview.

Among the specific objectives of the course are “to make students realize that God is not an impersonal idea, but a Person who relates to His creations and saves for their salvation”, “to assess through the presence and action of the Orthodox Church in Greek history the importance of a formed and living collective religious experience as element of modern Greek and European education”, “discover the values ​​of Christianity as a proposal for the orientation of life and action in the public space and a vision of the transformation of the modern world”, and “to get acquainted with the historical foundation and development of the Christian world of the West and modern major religions”.