Educational Secularization within Europe and beyond: The Political Projects of Modernizing Religion through Education Reform

Did religion disappear with modernization and the secularization reforms
that changed the relation between religion and state throughout the
European empires and nation states from late nineteenth century onwards?
Or was religion rather transformed, becoming a part of the new social
and national imaginaries on the road from European empires to African,
Middle Eastern, EU and Post-Soviet nation states? What are the historical
roots behind the divisions of state, church and education that characterized
the late nineteenth and the twentieth century? What has been the role of
education in this context, both with regard to political reforms targeting the
education systems and with regard to broader public enlightenment efforts
and modernization of the state?
Connecting scholars across the fi elds of history and historical sociology
of education, church history and historical religion research and political
history, and covering the time span from the early modern period and up
until the present, this volume explores how education reform has functioned
as an arena for the political project of secularization and in which way this
contributed to transforming and revitalizing religion.