ABSTRACT

This article aims to understand the personal worldviews ofFinnish youths. The fluidity of young people’s personalworldviews has been highlighted in a number of previousstudies, and this study presents more information by focus-ing on possible spiritual and religious elements in the perso-nal worldviews of young people and on the influences thataffect their personal worldviews. The data of this study con-sist of a quantitative questionnaire acquired from Finnishupper secondary school students (N = 973). The resultsshow that young people’s personal worldviews are notfixed but are fluid and that nominal membership ina religious community does not explain their worldviews.Young people do not see religion as important to them,and they see religion more as a part of culture and theirenvironment than as a part of their personal worldview. Themost important sources of information for the constructionof their personal worldview are school and the Internet.

Introduction

The aim of this article is to generate an up-to-date understanding of how youngpeople in Finland describe their personal worldviews and what sources they usewhen constructing their personal worldviews. For instance, gender, sexuality,language and personal worldviews are often fluid and mixed in nature andcontribute to the identity of young people. The fluidity of young people’spersonal worldviews has been previously highlighted (e.g., Francis, Laycock,and Penny 2016; Halafoff and Gobey 2018; Kuusisto and Kallioniemi 2017;Singleton et al. 2021; Wallis 2019; Åhs, Poulter, and Kallioniemi 2019). Fluidityin this study refers to the complexity of personal worldviews and to continu-ously changing and developing non-fixed views of life. Though possibly insomewhat varying degrees for different contexts or individuals, these viewsare embedded in and influenced by their sociocultural and historical circum-stances and their values and traditions, such as religion/s, science or culture. The Finnish National Board of Education (2021) defines a personal worldview asa constantly developing part of a person’s identity. Personal identity can bestrongly attached to a particular group identity (e.g., a religious community ortradition), or it can be more hybrid, deriving elements from various traditions(Helve 2015; Kuusisto and Kallioniemi 2017). Some scholars also argue thatpersonal identity includes spirituality as a possible innate capacity distinctfrom religious belief (see e.g., Robinson 2020).

There is considerable variation how young people define themselves using theterms ‘religious’ and ‘spiritual’ (Francis, Laycock, and Penny 2016; Singleton et al.2021). It has also been noted that it is difficult to research the concepts of religionand spirituality because of the various or overlapping nature of these definitions(Francis, Lankshear, and Eccles 2021). Hence, we do not wish to use one or theother of these terms and instead employ the term ‘worldview’ as an umbrella termwhen researching youngsters’ spirituality, non-spirituality, religiosity and non-religiosity. Lee (2020) points a kind of holistic approach when concludingapproaches researching spirituality. This study focuses on understanding howyoung people in Finland evaluate their personal worldview and its fluidity (includ-ing all its religious, non-religious and spiritual and non-spiritual elements) andwhat sources of information they utilise when constructing their personal world-view. People’s worldviews have traditionally been based on their nominal mem-bership of religious communities and divided based on the binary betweenreligious and non-religious views of life. This totally ignores the lived reality ofworldviews and their spiritual elements, which are not always linked to a religion(Westbrook et al. 2018). Young people have been noted to conceptualise spiri-tuality as part of religion or as being separate from it (Francis, Laycock, and Penny2016). This study exhibits the fluidity of young people’s personal worldviews,which we, alongside of other scholars, believe to be more complex than justticking a box regarding nominal membership of a religious community or thealternative, ‘non-religious’.

The question regarding the fluidity and construction of young people’sworldviews is important and insufficiently understood in Finland, whereLutheran roots are strong. Simultaneously, however, Finnish citizens are rela-tively secular (see e.g., Furseth 2018) and are conceptualised as being ‘SecularChristian’ or ‘Secular Lutheran’ (Poulter, Riitaoja, and Kuusisto 2016; Riitaoja,Poulter, and Kuusisto 2010). It has been suggested that religion (e.g., religioussymbols, traditions, etc.) in Western countries has been reduced to culturebecause it is too difficult to detach oneself from religious history (Joppke2018, 238). The Lutheran religion and the Finnish nation have always beenstrongly connected (see e.g., Furseth 2018; Sinnemäki et al. 2019). Berglund(2013) has described Nordic religiosity as being ‘marinated in Lutheranism’,which means that religiosity is diluted by traditions. Even though Finland isstatistically a relatively monoreligious country where almost 70% of Finnsbelong to the Evangelical Lutheran Church (Official Statistics of Finland OSF 2018), membership in has decreased during the 21st century, especially amongyoung adults (OSF 2018). According to Niemelä (2015), one reason for this is thatthe Church is not seen to be in line with the beliefs and life views of youngadults. The youth who live in Finland live in an environment where the world-view landscape is more diverse than ever before (Ketola 2020), and the statisticsdo not fully reflect peoples’ personal worldviews (see e.g., Furseth 2018; Ketola2020). This complexity of personal worldviews leads to a situation whereresearching worldviews should start from a non-binary approach. What isreligious and what is non-religious are not always opposites, and what is non-religious is not always secular or without religiosity or spirituality (Bråten 2021).

The young people in this study are Finnish general upper secondary schoolstudents. In Finland, students can choose either to continue to general uppersecondary school or to a vocational college after completing their 9 years ofcomprehensive schooling. Every year over 50% continue to general uppersecondary school, girls more often than boys, most of them being betweenthe ages of 16 and 19 (Vipunen – Education Statistics Finland 2018). As inFinnish comprehensive school, the general upper secondary school syllabusincludes compulsory religious and worldview education, which is organised inteaching groups according to the students’ nominal religious membership ora secular alternative. The majority (89.8% in 2017) attended Lutheran religiouseducation. Attendance especially in the secular ethics education class has,however, increased every year over the last decade (Vipunen – EducationStatistics Finland 2017). It has been argued that the Finnish (as well as theSwedish) core curriculum only presents relatively fixed views on religious andworldview identities (Zilliacus, Paulsrud and Holm 2017). Furthermore, theFinnish worldview education system has been criticised for not allowing stu-dents to attend the alternative of their own choosing (e.g., Åhs, Poulter, andKallioniemi 2019) and for its design in teaching worldview education withoutacknowledging the fluidity of the students’ individual worldviews (e.g., Kuusistoand Kallioniemi 2017; Lipiäinen et al. 2020).

Hence, this study aims to understand how young people describe the natureof their personal worldviews by focusing on possible spiritual and/or religiouselements, fluidity and the influences that affect their personal worldviews. Thestudy seeks to answer the following research questions: 1. How do youngpeople conceptualise the possible spiritual and/or religious elements in theirown worldview? 2. How do they evaluate the fluidity of their personal world-views? and 3. From where do young people perceive they have gained influ-ences to construct their own personal worldviews?

The personal worldviews of young people

The diversity of worldviews has increased in all Western countries.Reasons vary from country to country, but they include, for instance, transnational migration, the weakened influence of organised religion,and an increased interest in new religions and alternative spirituality.Vertovec (2015) distinguishes between ‘old’ and ‘new’ diversities, and herefers to the ‘diversifying diversities’ within society with his notion of‘superdiversity’ (Vertovec 2007). Beyer and Beaman (2019, 2) focus onthis ‘new diversity’ and point out that it includes an increased numberof people with ‘no religion’ as well as people who reject old-style reli-gions (see also Bouma 2017). People are also more interested in newmodels and moderations of spiritualism, which can be linked to somereligions, but are often separated from religiosity (Furseth 2018; Robinson2020; Woodhead 2017). In addition, they want to construct their ownreligious identity (Beyer and Beaman 2019).

To understand the worldviews of young people in a multidimensional sense,we emphasise the personal and lived dimensions of the worldviews in thisstudy. The concept of a worldview is context- dependent and widely discussedin education (Benoit, Hutchings, and Shillitoe 2020; Bråten 2021), and we wish toremain open to the insights introduced by empirical data. Focusing on theworldviews of youths from a personal perspective, a worldview is understoodin this study by distinguishing between organised or institutional, and personalor private worldviews (see e.g., van der Kooij, de Ruyter, and Miedema 2013,2017) and by focusing on its personal perspective. A personal worldview isa person’s unique vision and way of life (Valk and Tosun 2016), their alias andtheir ‘ontological and ethical orientation to the world, humanity, and life ques-tions’ (Riitaoja, Poulter, and Kuusisto 2010, 87). A personal worldview can bereligious, non-religious, or something in between (see e.g., Helve 2015; Kuusisto2017; Woodhead 2017). It can be spiritual, non-spiritual, religious and spiritual,or religious and non-spiritual simultaneously or separately (see e.g., Halafoffet al. 2020). It operates as a philosophy of life, and it is critical for understandingthe world and for finding answers to the importamt questions of life (Poulter,Riitaoja, and Kuusisto 2016; Kuusisto 2017).

Because of the personal perspective that a worldview has, its spirituality(religious or not) is defined by individuals themselves. In order to understandan individual’s worldview across cultures, the distinction between religion,spirituality and non-religiosity is not the primary point. In contextualising spiri-tual development, Westbrook et al. (2018) defined four possible sources ofspirituality. Only one of them (theistic) was related to religion, while nature,human, and transcendent sources were not. Individuals define themselves bywhat they see as sacral or spiritual, and therefore the spirituality of a personalworldview is highly complex and is not as context dependent as religion(Murphy 2017). Definitions of a personal worldview are close to Michaelson’s(2021) definition of spiritual health. Like spiritual health, a personal worldview isalso different for everyone: it can, for example, involve a purpose in life, or it canbe related to religious. However, spiritual health can have an impact on a personal worldview (Michaelson 2021), but a worldview is not necessarilyspiritual.

When characterising young people’s personal worldviews in theAustralian context, Singleton et al. (2021) identify six worldview types ofteenage worldviews. These worldviews are: ‘this worldly’/non-religious(23%); indifferent (15%); spiritual but not religious (18%); religious andspiritual (8%); nominally religious (20%); and religiously committed (17%).Similar findings have been found when researching the spirituality ofyoung people in England and Wales (Francis, Laycock, and Penny 2016).Here, 41% of young people defined themselves as neither religious norspiritual; 8% religious and spiritual; and 40% were unsure about thesecategories. However, Francis, Laycock, and Penny (2016) also founda group of young people who defined themselves as religious but notspiritual. In the Netherlands as well, defining worldviews as a binarybetween religious or non-religious was recently noted to be unsuitable inresearch. Although the Finnish landscape of religions and worldviews isdifferent from what it is in Australia, England and Wales, similar tendenciesare likely to be seen in the Finnish context.

Diverse Finnish society in the 21st century

The young people who are the subjects of this study were all born and grew upin the post 9/11 world, when religion re-entered the public sphere throughmedia and social media coverage. For them, the society they know did notchange because of globalisation or digitalisation, and the superdiverse societyof today (Vertovec 2007) is the only one they know and have experienced. Infact, changes in society had already taken place before they were born. After2001, religion has become more visible in public discussions, and fundamental-ist religion has increased in many parts of the world (Sinnemäki et al. 2019).

Intercultural understanding and the countering of violent extremism havebecome some of the main foci of many Western governments, most notablyin Europe as part of its re-oriented diversity policy (Council of Europe 2008).

To these young people, Finland has become more diverse than ever beforefor the following four reasons. The first concerns visible statistical changes. Everyfourth child under school age in the Helsinki metropolitan area has a foreignbackground, the number of immigrants almost doubling over the last ten years(OSF 2018). The increased number of asylum seekers in Finland and in otherWestern countries has increased the need to understand religions to an evengreater extent (Sinnemäki et al. 2019). Moreover, young people in Europe aremore likely to encounter other youths with foreign backgrounds, especiallyMuslims, and as a result their attitudes towards religious diversity are morelikely to be positive than those of older people (Yendell 2016).

Second is the visibility of diversity in the statistics. Diversity of gender andsexuality has become visible, while the compilation of statistics has changed.For example, new models of spiritualism and the possibility of defining one’sown personal worldview apart from nominal memberships has diversified theFinnish worldview landscape (Ketola 2020). This is related to the third reason,which is individualism and the need to define one’s own identity. As an exam-ple, personal worldviews have become more private (van der Kooij, de Ruyter,and Miedema 2013, 2017), and people have come to reject all kinds of ‘pack-aged religions’ (Bouma 2017), such as big world religions. They want to definefor themselves their connection to spirituality, which has not statisticallydecreased (Ketola 2020). Finally, the fourth reason is diversity in public discus-sions. Public discussions about the diversity of sexuality, gender and equity aremore broadly visible (Lehtonen 2019). Religiosity is more visible in politics andthe media (Furseth 2018; Sinnemäki et al. 2019) even though the discussion inthe Finnish context has mainly focused on the religiosity of other societiesrather than the religiosity of their own society (Sinnemäki et al. 2019).

Sample and methods

The data of this study consist of 973 Finnish upper secondary school students’answers to a quantitative survey. The majority of the participants (N = 580; 60%)described themselves as female, 40% (N = 388) as male, and 0.5% (N = 5) assomething else. The participants came from different upper secondary schoolsin Finland, and both national languages, Finnish and Swedish, were represented.The Finnish-speaking youths (N = 575; 59%) constructed three groups based onthe cities they came from. Two groups were medium-sized, one from the city ofPori (N = 176; 18%), which is on the west coast of Finland, and one from Joensuu(N = 175; 18%), from the eastern side of Finland. The largest group of studentswere from the capital city, Helsinki (N = 224; 23%). Swedish-speaking youngpeople (N = 408; 41%) divided into two groups: students from the medium-sized cities of Kotka and Pori (N = 70; 7%), and students from Helsinki (N = 328;34%). From the three-year Finnish upper secondary school, 542 students (56%) inthis study were first-year students, 405 (42%) were second-year students, and onlya few were third-year students (N = 26; 3%). The ages of the participants variedbetween 15 and 19, and three different age groups were calculated. These groupswere those who were 16 years old or younger (N = 374; 38%), those who were 17years old (N = 468; 48%), and those who were 18 or over (N = 130; 14%).

Participants answered the questionnaire anonymously during school lessons.The principals in the school organised the data based on what was collected byresearchers in spring 2017 and 2018. In the survey, the students were asked toevaluate their spirituality and religiosity and their religious behaviour, thefluidity of their personal worldview, and the sources they used to constructtheir personal worldview. More detailed questions were presented along with the results. The material was analysed using the quantitative software, SPSSStatistics. The sample was analysed by basic statistical analysis (including fre-quencies, means, standard deviations, t-tests, factor analysis and sum variables).

Results

The aim of this study was to understand how young people evaluate theirworldviews; how they conceptualise the possible spiritual and/or religiouselements in their worldview; how they evaluate the fluidity of their personalworldviews; and where the influences for the construction of their personalworldviews come from. First, we present the results of the young people’sevaluations relating to religion by comparing our results with previous research.In the next section, we present the results on how young people evaluate thefluidity of their personal worldviews, and then we present the results on thesources of information for the construction of their personal worldviews.

The religiosity of Finnish youths’ personal worldviews

Overall, our analysis and recent studies by the Church Research Centre(Salomäki et al. 2020) of Finland show that young people’s personal worldviewsdo not correspond to nominal membership rates. In other words, the livedspirituality and religiosity of Finns is not occurring within the boundaries ofinstitutional religion. Students were asked to evaluate their religiosity andreligious behaviour by answering different questions (1 = not important at all,5 = very important).

Our analysis shows that, overall, students consider that religion is not particu-larly important for them (M = 2.1; s = 1.1). Religion was a little more important forfemale students (M = 2.2; s = 1.2) than for male students (M = 2.0; s = 1.1). Thedifference between genders is highly significant (t = 3.5; df = 943; p = 0.000).Similar results have been found when researching the religiosity of Finns morebroadly. More than 50% of Finns define themselves as religious, but identifyingoneself as non-religious was five times more common among members ofGeneration Z than the oldest generation. Religion was important to only oneout of five among those who were born between 1990 and 1999 (Ketola 2020, 40–41, 43). In addition, nominal membership in the Evangelical Lutheran Church wasmore common among women than men (Sohlberg and Ketola 2020).

Based on the analysis, participation in religious activities was not commonamong Finnish youths. The majority of students participate in religious activitieseither very seldom or not at all (N = 710; 73%), and few of them participate oftenor very often (N = 111; 11.3%). Participation in religious activities and serviceshas also decreased among Finns in general. One explanation for this is thatreligiosity is more likely to be seen as an individual matter than before, andreligious traditions are not felt to be as important in life as significant turning points, such as birth and death (Salomäki 2020). This fits van der Kooij, deRuyter, and Miedema’s (2013) idea about a more private personal worldview.

Religious upbringing within homes has decreased in Finland. Previous researchindicates that parents raise their children to observe ‘traditional behaviour’, suchas visiting the graves of relatives at Christmas and the baptism of infants, whichthey do not always see as religious, rather than giving them a religious upbring-ing. Previous research also highlights the confusion regarding the limits of reli-gious upbringing when parents are not certain what is religious and what isculture (Hytönen, Ketola, and Salminen 2020). The conception of religious sym-bols and traditions as pertaining to culture (see Joppke 2018) was also found inour study. The majority of students (N = 588; 61%) seldom have a religiousupbringing at home, and only a few students (N = 79; 8%) replied that religionis often visible in their home. One-third of the students (N = 294; 31%) estimatedthat religious practices had not been taught in their homes.

The fluidity of Finnish youths’ personal worldviews

The fluidity of the personal worldviews of young people was ascertained in thequestionnaire by two questions. Students were first requested to evaluate whythey consider themselves to belong to their particular religion or worldview,and second, they were asked how they consider themselves from the perspec-tive of certain dimensions of religions or worldviews.

For the first question, there were seven different statements that studentsevaluated on a five-point scale (1 = totally disagree, 5 = totally agree). Whenconsidering all the students’ evaluations, the variation between means is nota-ble (from 2.7 to 3.9). Figure 1 presents all the answers to these statements withmeans and a more detailed table with standard deviations. All the responses canbe found in Table 1. Students strongly emphasised that their religion or otherworldview is their own choice (M = 3.9; s = 1.1), with 68% (N = 628) of themagreeing or totally agreeing with the statement. Finnish young people’s Figure 1. Reasons to belong to a religion or other worldview.

Table 1. Why do you belong to your religion or worldview?

emphasis on the importance of freedom in choosing and constructing one’spersonal worldview has also been found in other studies about the worldviewsof youths (Wallis 2019). Students also strongly agreed with the statement thatthey were born as members of the religion or other worldview that theynominally belong to (M = 3.6; s = 1.1). The majority of them (N = 621; 66%)chose between the two highest options. However, the students were not ofthe opinion that a nominal religion or other worldview defines who they are (M= 2.7; 2 = 1.2) or that their religion or other worldview tells them things that areimportant to them (M = 2.9; s = 1.2). It is obvious that the students do notemphasise these components in their personal worldview because they arenot very religious and they do not practise religion, as has been previouslyshown.

Based on the factor analysis with the principal component analysis, westructured two sum variables: religion as a part of one’s personal worldviewand religion as a part of one’s culture or environment. The varimax solutionproduced the most interpretative solution (see Appendix). The sum variables areshown in Table 2. Students emphasise their religion/worldview more as a part oftheir culture and environment (M = 3.4; s = 0.9) than as a part of their personalworldview (M = 2.8; s = 1.1). The difference is highly significant (t = 14.2; df = 878;p = 0.000). The gender-distinguishing evaluation shows that females (M = 3.4; s= 0.9) emphasise religion as part of their environment more than men (M = 3.2;s = 0.9). The difference is significant (t = 2.9; df = 907; p = 0.004). Furthermore,students’ language differentiates their evaluations: Finnish-speaking students Table 2. Sum variables of students’ evaluations, how they see themselves as belonging in theirreligion or worldview: Means, standard devotions and alpha coefficient.

(M = 3.0; s = 1.0) emphasise religion as a part of their personal worldview morethan Swedish-speaking students (M = 2.6; s = 0.9). The difference is highly sig-nificant (t = 4.5; sd = 894; p = 0.000).

In the second question, students were required to evaluate how they seethemselves from the perspective of certain dimensions of religions or worldviews(1 = not at all, 5 = very much). Our analysis shows that students did not stronglyattach themselves to any dimensions of worldviews (see Figure 2). Only beingtolerant was emphasised (M = 3.5; s = 1.3). They highlighted themselves as seekers(M = 1.6; s = 1.0) or as spiritual (M = 1.7; s = 1.1) least of all. Regarding oneself asreligious (M = 2.0; s = 1.2) and as a believer (M = 2.0; s = 1.0) also received lowevaluation rates. Being an atheist (M = 2.4; s = 1.4) or an agnostic (M = 2.4; s = 1.4)were evaluated as mildly popular and had the highest deviations.

The differentiation between the sum variables was also found between genderand language. Gender differentiated between students’ answers in many dimen-sions. For instance, girls (M = 2.2; sd = 1.1) regarded themselves as more religiousthan boys did (M = 2.0; sd = 1.0). The difference is highly significant (t = 3.4; df =938; p = 0.001). Also, more girls (M = 2.0; sd = 1.2) considered themselves to bebelievers than boys (M = 1.8; sd = 1.0.) The difference is significant here as well (t =2.7; df = 921; p = 0.007). Girls (M = 2.2; sd = 1.1) also evaluated themselves to bemore spiritual than boys did (M = 1.8; s = 1.1), and they (M = 3.7; s = 1.2) thought ofthemselves as more tolerant than boys did (M = 3.2; s = 1.3). In both of these cases,the difference is highly significant (t = 4.9; df = 910; p = 0.000, and t = 5.2; df = 897;p = 0.000). Based on these results, it seems logical that boys (M = 2.9; sd = 1.3)evaluated themselves to be more agnostic than girls did (M = 2.6; sd = 1.2). Thedifference is highly significant (t = 3.6; p = 0.000; df = 908). Furthermore, moreboys (M = 2.5; s = 1.2) saw themselves as atheistic than girls (M = 2.5; sd = 1.2).The difference is significant here as well (t = 3.2; p = 0.002; df = 920). Comparingthese results to an Australian study shows that boys do not believe in God asmuch as girls, but girls define themselves as seekers more often than boys.

Figure 2. Evaluations of dimensions of religions or other worldviews with regard to belonging.

Table 3. Students evaluate how they see themselves from the perspective of certain dimensionsof their worldview.

However, in many cases gender does not explain the differences between perso-nal worldviews (Singleton et al. 2021).

Language also distinguished students’ opinions: the Finnish-speaking stu-dents (M = 2.2; sd = 1.2) evaluated themselves to be more spiritual than theSwedish-speaking students did (M = 1.8; s = 1.0), and the Finnish-speaking stu-dents (M = 3.8; sd = 1.1) considered themselves more tolerant than the Swedish-speaking students did (M = 3.0; sd = 1.3). The difference is highly significant inboth cases (t = 4.0; df = 915 and t = 10.3; df = 920; p = 0.000). More detailedinformation, including all the means and deviations, can be found in Table 3.

Sources for constructing one’s personal worldview

The third aim of this research was to study what sources influence the studentsin the construction of their personal worldviews. Students were asked to eval-uate how important different people or sources were when constructing theirpersonal worldviews (1 = not important at all, 5 = very important). The mosteffective sources of information were the Internet (M = 3.6; sd = 1.3) and school(M = 3.5; sd = 1.1). Almost 60% estimated that the Internet (N = 547; 59%) andschool (N = 525; 57%) are important or very important sources of information. Ascan be seen in Figure 3, youths evaluated that all the other sources (family,religious community, social media, friends, newspapers, radio and TV) were notimportant or were not important at all. More detailed information, including allthe means and deviations, can be found in Table 4.

Gender makes a difference in the evaluations: girls clearly emphasised family(M = 2.8; sd = 1.2), friends (M = 2.6; sd = 1.1) and social media (M = 2.8; sd = 1.1)as a source of information more than boys (family M = 2.5; sd = 1.2; friends M =2.3; sd = 1.1; and social media M = 2.3; sd = 1.1). The differences in all these casesare highly significant (family t = 3.5; p = 925; p = 0.001; friends t = 4.1; df = 913; p Figure 3. Sources of information for the construction of one’s personal worldview.

Table 4. Sources of information for the construction of one’s personal worldview.

= 0.000; and social media t = 6.5; sd = 919; p = 0.000). These differences may beexplained by girls’ more general attachment to social relationships than boys’,and they therefore potentially place more emphasis on family, friends and socialmedia as sources of information on worldview issues.

Discussion and conclusions

Overall, the findings that we present here illustrate that nominal membership inreligious communities does not explain the personal worldviews and spiritualityof young people. Finnish young people do not see religion as important to them,and they seldom or never attend religious services. Similar findings are foundamong Finns in general, but this trend is more accentuated in the youngergeneration (Ketola 2020; Salomäki 2020). The majority of young people do notreceive a religious upbringing at home, and it is therefore assumed that they willnot raise their own children religiously in the future. Religion has in many ways become a part of culture, while religiosity has been described as having beendiluted in religious traditions (see Berglund 2013). This is visible especially whenparents in Finland raise their children to observe religious traditions but withoutteaching them religion (Hytönen, Ketola, and Salminen 2020.)

This study shows that young people see religion more as a part of their cultureand environment than as a part of their personal worldview. Sinnemäki et al.(2019) argue that Lutheranism has maintained its position as a national historicaland cultural symbol even though religion is no longer considered to be a practicalguide for peoples’ personal lives. The changing of religion into culture has beenargued to be one of the main reasons why the Christian religion still maintains itsspecial status as the nominal religion of the majority in Western countries (Joppke2018; see also Furseth 2018). However, Finland is also a statistically more diversesociety than ever before. Because of this, and in light of the results of this studyregarding the fluidity of young people’s personal worldviews, it is necessary to askwhose religion has turned into culture? Even though young people emphasisereligion more as a part of their culture than their personal worldviews, they arevery fluid and non-attached to Lutheran religion.

The school’s role in the construction of young people’s personal worldviews isstill crucial, and alongside of the Internet, schools are the most important source ofinformation. Our results show that the personal worldviews of young people arefluid and mixed, and nominal membership in religious communities does notdescribe the lived reality of spirituality, religiosity and worldviews in young people’slives. In the light of this result, the justification for organising worldview education inFinnish schools based on nominal membership in religious communities is notconvincing. Rather, as the findings point to the ‘messiness’ of personal worldviewsboth among and within individual youths, we argue that the worldview educationmodel should be rethought and revised in order to accommodate better bothsocietal diversity and the needs as well as the active personal choices of pupils.Earlier models are no longer suitable for the diverse society of young people in the21st century because they do not represent their religiosity and worldviews. Wesuggest, based on the results of this study, that schools should continue to provideeducation about religions and worldviews, but the main focus of this educationshould be to give tools to support young people’s own worldview construction.

In addition, as Zilliacus, Paulsrud and Holm (2017) have noted, the Finnishcurriculum needs to be revisedwith regard to the fluidity of personal worldviews.According to them, the worldview identities represented in the curriculum are stillvery fixed, and they need to be changed to reflect the diversity and, perhaps evenmore importantly, the fluidity of personal worldviews. One possible approach todeal with these concepts in Finland, as in Canada (Michaelson 2021), could be touse the term ‘spirituality’ rather than ‘religiosity’, because it allows pupils theopportunity to define the sacral and spirituality for themselves. We recommendthat the whole curriculum should be modified to support pupils’ holistic growth,without assuming fixed models for worldviews or any other aspects of identity.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Funding

This research was supported by the Finnish Cultural Foundation.

Notes on contributors

Lipiäinen Tuuli (M.Ed.) is a lecturer in Normal Lyceum of Helsinki and Doctoral researcher atthe Faculty of Educational Sciences, University of Helsinki. Her research interests includeteacher profession, worldviews in educational context, and integrated worldview education.https://researchportal.helsinki.fi/en/persons/tuuli-kristiina-lipi%C3%A4inen

Kuusisto Arniika is Professor (Early Childhood Education) at the Faculty of EducationalSciences, University of Helsinki, and Honorary Research Fellow at the Department ofEducation, University of Oxford. Her research includes Academy of Finland projects”Growing up radical? The role of educational institutions in guiding young people’s world-view construction” (2018–2023) and ”Child in Time – Existential Resilience in Early Childhood”(2023–2027). https://researchportal.helsinki.fi/en/persons/arniika-kuusisto

Kallioniemi Arto is Professor of Religious Education (since 2001). He also holds the UNESCOchair on Values, Dialogue and Human Rights. He has published several books and articlesrelated worldview education, human rights education and leadership. https://researchportal.helsinki.fi/fi/persons/arto-kallioniemi

ORCID

Lipiäinen Tuuli http://orcid.org/0000-0002-8453-2826

Kuusisto Arniika http://orcid.org/0000-0002-6085-576X

Kallioniemi Arto http://orcid.org/0000-0002-1581-7617

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Appendix

Factor matrix (Rotated Component Matrix Rotation Method: Varimax with KaiserNormalization and Extraction Method: Principal Component Analysis.

Main article link:

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/epdf/10.1080/1364436X.2023.2224938?needAccess=true