Description:
The primary goal of religious education (RE) in Germany is to enable students to develop a personal worldview. According to the literature, this goal can best be achieved when RE a) presents material from various worldviews and b) relates this material to the student's daily life. Denominational RE, which is the organisational format of this subject in Germany, may fail to meet these requirements because it may tend to focus on the organised worldview of the relevant religious tradition as the preferred worldview for adoption by students. Motivated by the lack of relevant empirical studies, this paper offers initial insight into the issue by answering the question of how German denominational RE organises its themes. On the basis of a German case study, it maps the topical structure of teaching units (N = 15, comprising 116 lessons) by thematic analysis. The results indicate that RE in the German denominational context predominantly addresses its own denominational issues. Alternative perspectives of the unit's topic, the students' personal perceptions, and references to the students' lifeworld are primarily used to better facilitate the students' comprehension of these denominational issues. Only two units present a variety of worldviews as real alternatives to denominational perspectives.