(C2-5) Non-State Church Schools as Organised Agents between the Poles of Internal Church Logic, Social Educational Discourse, and State Educational Policy

The project aims to analyse the conflicting interests of non-state church schools between their commitment to the traditional logic of the Christian message and their simultaneous commitment to the political educational discourse as the structure of conditions for the organisation of non-state church schools. The following questions will take centre stage: what do the churches demand of themselves as regards educational policy and as agents of education services, and which institutionalisations are represented by this with regard to content (idea of man, educational concept, understanding of child rearing)? Where/how are processes of religious institutionalisation represented at the level of organisational processes and developments? What are the resulting distinctions between the organisational form of the non-state church school and other schools (selection of topics; rites etc.)? Where do conflicts of goals and incompatibilities of norms become apparent in the conveying of internal church logic and in the adaptation to the social and educational policy discourse? How is the handling of such conflicts between the opposing interests of “social educational discourse” on the one hand and internal church logic on the other organised? How do the churches, by means of their “own” schools, position themselves in the sociopolitical educational discourse and in the educational policy representation of interests towards the state?

On a first level of analysis, the religious institutionalisation processes (internal church logic) and their reflection in organisations will be investigated, insofar as institutionalisation processes are to be seen on the level of organisation formation. A second level of analysis aims at the conveying of the internal church logic by non-state church schools into a social public. The investigation is designed as a case study. It aims to provide a typification of the church schools as a place of an organised church claim to education, and to reveal patterns of normative interspersion and of positioning in the political field.


The Project is part of interconnecting platform E Differentiation and De-Differentiation and coordinated project group Social forms of religion in ‘second modernity’.