Published in Culture Dialogue and Civil Consciousness: Religious dimensions of the intercultural education, Tbilisi: CIPDD, Konrad Adenauer Stiftung, 2010, pp. 51-62.
The 1989 overthrow of Todor Zhivkov destroyed the monopoly of militant atheism in Bulgaria. The return of religion to the public sphere, however, was not a single act, but a long lasting process of restoring memories and practices from the pre-communist period and their accommodating to the contemporary conditions and needs of Bulgarian society. In the first years after the end of communism people crowded churches, prayer houses, mosques and synagogues not only in a search for God, but also in an attempt to manifest their break with the totalitarian past. As a result, religion was often perceived as an antipode of communism and thus one’s religiosity was often regarded as a sign for his or her predisposition to democracy. Even the leaders of the former Communist Party found it appropriate to take part in the Easter Liturgy, held in the Patriarchal Cathedral “St. Alexander Nevski” in Sofia on April 15, 1990, just two months before the first free elections in Bulgaria since World War II.[2] At the same time, religion was kept away from public schools until 1997, when the first experimental religious classes were allowed. This act was also influenced by an alleged link between religion and democracy. The second government of the Union of Democratic Forces introduced optional classes of religion as one of the measures for rejecting the communist past and restoring the continuity with the pre-World War II development. Until 2010, however, the students enrolled in them do not exceed 2 per cent of all Bulgarian school boys and girls.
Why religion is not welcomed in the sphere of education?
The weak interest in religious classes in Bulgarian public schools is a complex result of historical, political, economic, social, legal and organizational factors. The initiators of the study of religion in school were not able to benefit from the pre-communist traditions in this sphere. From the Liberation of Bulgaria in 1878 to the eve of World War II, religious instruction was not a priority of the national governments, which policies were characterized with pro-western and secular orientation. For about 60 years, priests were not allowed to teach in schools, while religious instruction was limited to the children from the first four grades, who attended such classes one hour per week. Only in 1938 the Bulgarian state changed its attitude to the study of religion in school and allowed religious instruction and Bulgarian Orthodox Church history to be studied in the upper classes, including gymnasium. After the communist takeover, however, religion was banned in school. In this way, it is difficult today, even for the Bulgarian Orthodox Church to organize such classes or Sunday schools due to the lack of historical experience. More different is the situation of religious minorities who enjoy internal autonomy in the pre-communist period and organized their own faith instructions either within the minority schools, Muslim, Catholic or Protestant, or in special Sunday schools at their prayer houses.
In short, contemporary Bulgarian society has a limited historical experience in the sphere of the religious classes at the level of public schools. Moreover, in the past they served different aims – to prepare the children from a separate religious community to learn about their own faith and to develop skills to practice their particular faith tradition. Nowadays, the study of religion is challenged by a series of new requirements. In legal terms, “religious institutions are separate from the state” and education in public schools is secular.[3] Under these conditions it is impossible to introduce a confessional religious instruction on regular basis in public schools. At least, such classes cannot be mandatory, but only optional. In addition it is not a task of the school to prepare students as devoted believers but as mindful and responsible citizens. If the pre-communist Bulgarian Constitution (1879-1947) declared Orthodox Christianity as the dominating religion in the country, the 1991 Constitution (Art. 37) abandons the Stalinist formula of “freedom of worship and of atheist propaganda” and promotes real freedom of religion.[4] In addition the Bulgarian membership in the European Union requires respect to the European Declaration of Human Rights that presupposes the principles of pluralism and tolerance, i.e. the Bulgarian Orthodox Church cannot enjoy special status or privileges justified by its historical role or by presenting the majority of Bulgarians.[5] This means that religious classes in school should give knowledge and develop skills necessary in the communication between the adherents of various religious traditions. This need becomes even more important in the age of globalization and intensive domestic and international migration. It seems that there is a profound difference in the tasks of religious bodies and public schools in the teaching of religion. The former have to train the children of their adherents to be faithful believers, while the latter – to prepare the school boys and girls for the challenges of a multi-religious world.
At the same time, both, the religious institutions and the state suffer from the lack of cadres able to teach religion on confessional as well as on intercultural grounds. The Bulgarian Orthodox Church cannot use its priests for this purpose due to two reasons. Its parishes outnumber in times the number of priests, i.e. one priest often serves in more than one parish and thus he is not able to combine his duties with those of a teacher. Most priests have no pedagogical training and experience. Only recently the faculties of Orthodox theology have made efforts to fill this gap in their curricula, but in most cases the pedagogical courses are led by former professors of catechism, who slightly changed their previous lectures. There is no cooperation between theological and pedagogical faculties for the purposes of the study of religion in public schools. The ‘secular’ university scholars face also problems to prepare courses designed for the future teachers of religion. On the one hand, religion was taboo in the academic milieu during communism. On the other, there is shortage of empirical research about the development of religious life in Bulgaria during the last century. This situation creates theoretical, epistemological and practical difficulties that impede the development of a new school discipline dealing with religion. In addition the curricula for such a discipline has to take into account the specific religious demography of Bulgaria, where the study of Orthodoxy should be combined with that of Islam, confessed by the second big religious community in the country.
The negative attitudes to the study of religion in public schools in Bulgaria appeared under the influence of different worldviews and experience. Many people consider that religion has no place in school – the temple of science. Still only a tiny group of them take radical atheist stand, while the others will support religious instruction but in Sunday schools, established at the corresponding religious communities. There are also financial considerations. The study of religion in school is paid by the state budget, not by those of the various religious institutions that are separate from the state. Therefore, the tax payers should be asked whether and how to use their money in the system of state education. By this moment an optional and confessional study of religion in public schools seems to be a working option that respects the rights of parents to choose the religious orientation for their children and the principle of freedom of religion. Meanwhile an intercultural study of religion remains an open task for the state authorities, university scholars and school teachers.
Not less important reason for the mass abstention from religious classes roots in the post-1989 developments in the religious sphere. In 1992, the leaderships of the two biggest religious communities in the country – the Orthodox and the Muslim ones split into hostile camps, accusing each other in various sins, especially in collaborationism with the communist regime. This undermined the confidence of many Bulgarians in their religious leaders. These conflicts had much more profound effect on the Orthodox community, which still is not able to solve it. Meanwhile it was quickly overcome by the Muslims whose religious divisions were not bound with political ones. In the Orthodox case, the schism in the Bulgarian Orthodox Church brought about the establishment of two parallel leaderships: the Synod of Patriarch Maxim and the so called Alternative Synod. Moreover, this division was linked with the political struggles in post-communist Bulgaria. The Synod of Patriarch Maxim received the support of the Bulgarian Socialist Party and thus was accused of collaborationism with the former totalitarian regime, while the Alternative one was regarded as a tool for the democratization of the Bulgarian Orthodox Church and was backed up by the Union of Democratic Forces. Every time when one of these political parties came to power, the corresponding Synod took the control over the capitals and properties of the Bulgarian Orthodox Church. In the next years the conflict escalated so much that now its solution depends on the decision of the European Court of Human Rights on the case of Holy Synod of the Bulgarian Orthodox Church (Metropolitan Inokentiy), expected in 2010. Being in a deep crisis, the Bulgarian Orthodox Church – the biggest religious institution in the country, is neither able to organize effective Sunday schools at its own parishes, nor to act as an effective partner in the elaboration of a national concept on religious education in public schools. The two synods also developed different views on the nature of religious classes in public schools. The Alternative Synod is more open to way of teaching that promotes interreligious dialog, while the Synod of Patriarch Maxim insists on a traditional confessional faith instruction. The latter is supported by the Grand Mufti’s Office that also prefers a confessional approach to the religious education of the Muslim students. As a result, religious education in public schools did not make great progress since the end of atheism.
What has been done since 1997?
In the spring of 1997, the interim government of Stefan Sofiianski, associated with the democratic forces, established “Commission on religion” at the Ministry of Education.[6] It had to prepare a concept for the study of religion in public schools. Written by representatives of the Sofia Faculty of Theology, it reduced the term “religion” to Eastern Orthodox Christianity. The concept also suffered from internal contradictions. On the one hand, it stated that the new discipline would not be an Orthodox or another indoctrination which is a monopoly of the officially registered religious institutions in the country (Part 2, §4, §7). On the other hand, it required the classes of religion to be taught only by theologians, i.e. the graduates of the Faculty of Theology (Part 3, §13), whose training was limited to the Orthodox understanding of religion. Their knowledge on the other religious traditions is insufficient and often does not recognize any views that differ from the Orthodox one.[7] The Faculty’s curricula includes only one mandatory discipline dealing with the other religious denominations, called “History of religions” (45 academic hours) and one optional – “Non-Orthodox Christian denominations” (45 academic hours).[8] This state of affairs questions their literacy not only in non-Christian religions but also in non-Orthodox denominations.
The school discipline “Religion” was introduced in the autumn of 1997 in the form of optional classes on Orthodox theology. Next year it was expanded to all middle school grades and the number of the students visiting these lessons reached 25,000. The escalation of the schism in the Bulgarian Orthodox Church in 1998, however, chilled the enthusiasm of many parents and the number of the students enrolled in religious classes dropped in the next years despite the expansion of the discipline. In 1999, the study of religion in public schools was enriched by introducing classes of Islam. They, however, were designed for the Muslim students in the regions with compact Turkish and Pomak (Bulgarian speaking Muslims) population and thus remained geographically restricted. Provoking an exceptional interest among the Muslim children the study of Islam inspired their Orthodox classmates to join with similar enthusiasm in the classes of Christianity. In this way, the level of attendance there was much higher than in the schools situated in relatively religiously homogenous areas where the average attendance does not exceed 1 per cent.[9]
At the same time, the confessional approach to religious classes revealed some negative effects. It drew up new lines of division in the schools situated in religiously mixed regions. The religious lessons split the classmates into Orthodox and Muslim groups. One of them had its religious instruction in classrooms designed with Christian items and symbols, while the other – in rooms suitable for the study and practicing Islam. In a similar way the former were taught by alumni from the faculties of Orthodox theology, while the latter – from those of the Higher Institute for Islamic Studies, established in Sofia in March 1998.[10] Therefore, the knowledge of religious identity and difference, received during these lessons, was not combined with skills how to deal with it in the everyday life.
In 2003, the Ministry of Education made an attempt to improve the social effect of religious classes in public schools by changing the Regulations concerning the application of the Law of People’s Education. The study of “religion” was allowed in two forms as a “mandatory-optional” and as a “free-choice optional” discipline in all public schools (Art. 4, §3).[11] On this basis, in 2003, the classes of religion were expanded to the last school years (IX-XII class). The Regulations define that “Religion” has to be studied in the terms of philosophy, history and culture through the educational material distributed in different school disciplines (Art. 4, §2). This intercultural or interdisciplinary approach, however, remained a dead letter because the state authorities were not able to overcome the confessional approach in the organization of religious classes. In June 2003, Mr. Vladimir Atanasov, then Minister of Education, issued Instruction No. 2. According to its Art. 3, para.3, these classes have to be organized on the basis of the concepts of teaching “Religion” and “Religion-Islam,” developed under the pressure of the leaderships of the Bulgarian Orthodox Church and the Muslim community. The discipline “Religion-Islam” was specifically designed for Muslim students. In agreement with this confessional approach, Art. 11 defines that the graduates of the faculties of [Orthodox] theology and the Higher Institute for Islamic Studies are the only professionals eligible to teach these disciplines.[12] This means not only a confessional separation of classmates within the framework of public school, but also an Orthodox or Islamic indoctrination (or faith-teaching) of students which contradicts to the constitutional and law principles for secular education. Although this approach satisfied the two religious leaderships as a guarantee for their spiritual monopoly over the religious education of the children from their communities, it turned to be counterproductive. The number of the students attending religious classes declined. In 2006/07, both disciplines, “Religion” and “Religion-Islam”, were attended only by 16 667 students (12,925 from the I-IV classes, 2,748 – from the V-VIII classes, and 994 – from the IX-XII classes), i.e. by less than 2 per cent of all Bulgarian students.[13] Such classes were available in 10 per cent of the Bulgarian public schools. The discipline was taught by 207 teachers, 14 of whom were specialists in Islam.[14] Meanwhile the other, over 90 registered, religious communities in Bulgaria organize and maintain religious instruction for the kids of their adherents at their own premises and at their won expenses.
Is there a solution for religious education in a pluralistic society?
The lack of results from the 2003 reform in religious education drove the Bulgarian Orthodox Church and the Grand Mufti’s Office to unite their efforts in the sphere of religious education. They referred to the Ministry of Education with request to make religious training compulsory for the students, belonging to their religious communities. Such requests provoked sharp criticism in society, especially among the Orthodox lay people who were deeply disappointed by the long lasting conflicts and social passivity of their hierarchy in the other spheres of life. Therefore, in 2007 the Ministry of education set up a special Commission to develop a new concept on religious education. The Commission consisted of experts in religious studies (Christian and Islamic), historians, philosophers, teachers and theologians.
The new concept differed from the previous ones in many ways. The old ones were written by people appointed directly by the Holy Synod of the Bulgarian Orthodox Church or with its consent. The new Commission was initiated by the Bulgarian Parliament and established with a special order of the Minister of Education. Moreover, it had the potential of elaborating an interdisciplinary approach to the problems of religious education. It created the first concept that took into consideration the legal framework in which religious education can be carried out in public schools. It paid attention not only to the national legislation but also to all international acts ratified by Bulgaria. It was based on the principles of religious tolerance and pluralism, freedom of religion and consciousness, children rights, the secular nature of Bulgarian state and education, etc.
The Commission did not propose a mechanical restoration of the pre-communist models or an imitation of the existing models in other Orthodox countries such as Greece, Romania and Russia but an original concept that is in conformity with Bulgarian specific features, with some weaknesses and strengths that have been omitted by the authors of previous concepts. It departed from the old paradigm of religious instruction or “teaching of religion” and proposed a new one – “teaching about religion(s)”.[15] According to it, the discipline of “Religion” is aimed at bringing up citizens who are aware of the local and world religions, able to work together with people of different beliefs for the realization of common social and public projects and to respect the secular state. Religious classes should also assist student’s value orientation. The interdisciplinary and multicultural approach proposed by the Commission allows “Religion” to be introduced as a mandatory discipline in the curricula of public schools. The members of the Commission agreed on mandatory study of religion in the first seven grades (I-VII) and facultative one – in the last four (VIII-XII) grades of the public school. It also expanded the group of people who can teach religious classes, i.e. not only theologians, but also historians, philosophers and specialists in other social sciences were included. It proposed the development of special MA programs preparing teachers for these classes.
The publishing of the Concept in the spring of 2008 provoked hot debates in Bulgarian society. Some people, mostly from religious minorities and atheists, rejected it because they were afraid that a mandatory teaching of religion will be used by the Bulgarian Orthodox Church to indoctrinate or proselytize their children. Some nationalist parties also opposed the concept due to its pluralistic and multicultural orientation that would undermine the Orthodox identity of the Bulgarian nation. Their main criticism was against the study of Islam by Orthodox children, foreseen by the new concept. On their turn, the Synod of Patriarch Maxim and the Grand Mufti’s Office did not accept the concept as well. They protested against a mandatory teaching of religion on multicultural grounds to small children. In their view, these children should first receive a religious training in their own faith and only later on could study about other religious traditions.
In the spring of 2008, the Synod of Patriarch Maxim proposed its own contra-concept.[16] It stated that “the upbringing of a free, moral and initiative personality” is impossible without the cultivation of Orthodox Christian faith of the ancestors of contemporary Bulgarian nation. It claims that the Bulgarian Orthodox Church has been “the mother-guardian” of Orthodox Bulgarians throughout centuries and as such has special rights over religious education. Only graduates of the Orthodox faculties must be allowed to teach this discipline in public schools. Their training and their salaries are expected to be covered by the state budget. In addition, the whole educational system in Bulgaria must be based on Christian values. The religious classes should be organized on confessional grounds. The Synodal concept is open to a compromise in the case of non-Orthodox students and offers three major disciplines: “Religion-Orthodoxy”, “Religion-Islam” and “Religion” (a kind of secular religious studies).[17] The Bulgarian Orthodox Church allows a possibility for the other religious communities to organize their own religious classes in public schools.
According to the Synodal concept, all students from the twelve grades of the Bulgarian public schools must have mandatory religious classes twice a week. The same rule has to be applied for kindergartens. The students in the elementary schools will study Orthodox rituals, prayers and holidays, in the middle school – Orthodox ecclesiastical history and in the high school – historical and philosophical grounds of Orthodoxy. The other world religions can be studied only in the twelfth grade. The curricula and handbooks will be under Synodal supervision.
These radical and unrealistic requirements of the Synod increased the resistance of Bulgarian society not only to this particular concept but also to that of the interdisciplinary Commission, appointed by the Ministry of Education. A sociological survey, conducted in March 2008, revealed that although 96 per cent of Bulgarians are affiliated with one or another religion only 7 per cent of those are regular church-goers and other 24per cent have never visited a church, mosque, synagogue or any other prayer house. It also reveals that 61 per cent of Bulgarian citizens appreciate family as the most important moral-building factor, 18 per cent – the national traditions, 7 per cent – science and only 4 per cent – religion.[18] The constant insistence of the religious leaderships for compulsory religious instruction provoked a decline in the general support for religious education in public schools. It dropped from 70 per cent in March 2007 to 55 per cent in March 2008. There is also a strong public opinion against allowing clerics to teach religion in public schools. As a result, none of the concepts was approved and the situation in the sphere of religious education in Bulgarian remains at unchanged, i.e. it embrace about 2 per cent of Bulgarian school boys and girls, mostly in the first grades.
Conclusions
Since the 1990s, the study of religion in public schools has become one of the most debatable issues in the Bulgarian public sphere. It raises many questions but still there is no comprehensive answer to them. On the one hand, there is a search for continuity with the pre-communist times. On the other, that past lacks patterns applicable in the contemporary conditions, i.e. in a secular state and in pluralistic society. The end of atheism does not mean necessarily a return to the model of dominating Orthodoxy. Bulgarian citizens are free to confess and practice their religions but must respect the secular nature of the state. Despite the traditional character of their religion the Orthodox majority needs to respect the adherents of other faiths or irreligious worldviews in the same way as its own members. People have to learn to deal with the differences of their recovered religious traditions and to work together for common social causes. The return of religion on the public scene made also possible an intertwining of the interests of religious institutions with those of various political and economic forces, which is a new challenge for post-communist societies.
As a result, many approaches to religious education appeared. Divided by civil and canon law religious institutions and the state authorities face difficulties to find common grounds for organizing religious classes in public schools. In the post-atheist space, religion becomes a public force and thus it attracts political and economic interests. Therefore, it is important who and how will teach religion to the young generation. Finally, the end of communism is also the end of atheist society with its ideas for proletarian internationalism. This change requires a new vision of nation, national interests and national identity in a pluralistic society and in a globalizing world. The pre-communist patterns of dominating Orthodoxy are out of date, while new ones are not still elaborated. Bulgaria, as most societies where the majority of people are affiliated with Orthodoxy, assumed the constitutional formula of Orthodox Christianity as traditional religion without declaring special privileges to its institutions and communities. In practice, however, Orthodoxy is perceived and treated as an inherited feature of the national identity. All biases concerning the non-Orthodox religious traditions erupt in the discussions on religious education when the issue of national identity is at stake. Therefore, the accommodation of the value of pluralism with the religious aspects of national identity seems to play a growing role in the debate for religious education not only in Bulgaria but also in the other Eastern European societies in the forthcoming years.
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[1] This article presents a summary of research on religious education in Bulgaria conducted within the framework of the REVACERN Project supported by the Sixth Framework Programme of the European Commission and presents updated version of previous publications by the same author. See: D. Kalkandjieva, “Religious Education in Bulgaria Today” In: Religiöse Dimensionen in Schulkultur und Schulentwicklung, eds. Martin Jäggle, Thomas Krobath, Robert Shelander (Hg.), (Vienna: Lit, 2009), 481-488; “Religious Education in Bulgarian Public Schools: Practices and Challenges” In: Education and Church in Central and Eastern-Europe at First Glance (Debrecen: CHERD, 2008), 167-179. The author of this article was also a member of a special Commission, appointed by the Bulgarian Minister of Education, established with the task to prepare a concept for the introduction of religions education in Bulgarian schools.
[2] Chervenata vlast sreshtu vyarata [Red Power against the Faith] (memories and documents), published in Discussions Forum “De zorata?”, available in: http://de-zorata.de/forum/index.php?topic=675.0. Last use on February 24, 2010.
[3] See the Bulgarian Constitution of 1991, art. 13.1 and the Law on People’s Education of 1991, art. 5.
[4] Bulgarian socialist constitution of 1947 (art. 78) and of 1971 (art. 53)
[5][5] According to the last national census (2001), 82,6 per cent of Bulgarians are affiliated with Orthodoxy, 12, 2 per cent – with Islam, while the adherents of the other faiths count 1,3 per cent together. There are also 3,9 per cent of citizens registered as irreligious.
[6] Ivan Denev, “Religious Education in Bulgaria,” Religious Education within the Context of the Common European Home. International Symposium on Religious Education, Held in Bulgaria, I. Denev and Engelbert Gross eds., (Sofia, 2004), 20-21.
[7] In 2002, the award of Cardinal Walter Kasper as Doctor Honoris Causa of Sofia University provoked some students and members of the teaching staff of its Faculty of Theology to protest against this act with an open letter, where they stated that the only theology that could exist was the Orthodox one.
[8] The Faculty curricula is available in Bulgarian in its website: http://www.uni-sofia.bg/faculties+bg/theology+bg/curriculum+bg.html. Last use on April 7, 2008.
[9] In 2005/06, religious classes were attended by 10,000 Christian and 4,000 Muslim students. See: “Only 14,000 children take classes in religion,” newspaper Standart, September 5, 2006, p. 5.
[10] This Institute was a successor of a semi-higher school for Islamic education that existed from 1991 to 1998. See: http://islambgr.googlepages.com/higherislamicinstitutesofiacity
[11] Regulations for the Application of the Law of People’s Education, State Herald, No. 15, February 24, 2003. The text is available in Bulgarian in Internet: http://rio-lovech.hit.bg/index_files/PPZNP.htm. Last use on February 15, 2009.
[12] Instruction No. 2, issued by the Ministry of Education on June 23, 2003, State Herald, No. 60, July 4, 2003.
[13] Official statistics of the Bulgarian Ministry of Education.
[14] Marina Hristova, „Islam is taught in the classes on world religions”, [newspaper] Novinar, 31.03.2007, p. 1-2.
[15] See Religious Education in Europe, Peter Schreiner ed., (Münster: International Commission on Church and School (ICCS)and the Comenius-Institut, Protestant Center for Studies in Education, 2000.
[16] Published in Bulgarian: http://www.mitropolia-varna.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=869&Itemid=29. Last use on February 15, 2010.
[17] This proposal was supported also by the Grand Mufti’s Office.
[18] The survey was made by the National Center for Studying Public Opinion (Sofia, March 2008)
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