Between world polity and historical path dependency. Religious Education and Politics in an International Perspective

The article elaborates the impact and analytic potential of World Polity Theory for re-search on religious education in Europe. Juxtaposing this approach with insights into the path dependency of religio-cultural transformations, it assesses the challenges to an effective use of World Polity Theory that stem from the diverse national arrangements regarding a religious component in public school education. German scholarship on re-ligious education must engage the international discourse on religion, politics, and edu-cation more actively. Neglecting to do so would mean to ignore the entanglement of global developments in education in generel as well as the contemporary movement to-wards worldview education in particular.

World Polity, global developments in education, historical path dependency, religious education in European schools