Celem artykułu jest prezentacja specyfiki czeskiego Kościoła i religijności Czechów. Autorka inspiruje się pracami głównie czeskich badaczy (Petr Fiala, Dana Hamplová, Tomáš Halík, Pavel Hošek, Jan Jandourek, Max Kašparů, Dušan Lužný, David Václavík, Michal Martinek, Zdeněk R. Nešpor, Pavel Říčan, Ivo O. Štampach, O. Štěch, David Václavík) i rozwija zawarte w nich myśli. Zajmuje się stereotypem Czecha, charakterystyką czeskiego wierzącego, czeskiego duchownego oraz czeskiego Kościoła, znajdując źródła wskazanych odmienności w wydarzeniach historycznych i ich interpretacji. W zakończeniu artykułu przedstawiono wnioski i przybliżono odbiorcy „obraz czeskiego Boga”.

Tackling biography. Building religious identity amidst the discontinuity of intergenerational transmission

The article explores the issues of searching for identity in the third post-war Polish Jew generation. Its purpose is to try to reconstruct the experience of becoming a religious Jew and choosing the Jewish path during adolescence faced with missing or incomplete transmission of intergenerational cultural heritage. The two biographies were investigated in terms of the educational paths of their narrators, primarily informal education, independent gaining of cultural (religious) knowledge, as well as the opportunities and limitations of formal Jewish education in Poland. The research was based on the biographical method, unstructured/in-depth interviews. The article consists of four main parts: 1. the application of the biographical method to own research; 2. the social context of the biography of the “unexpected generation”; 3. two biographical exemplifications; 4. the portrayal of the narrators’ struggles in building their own path in religious education. The exemplifications provided by the two biographies help identify the process of “becoming a religious Jew” in the “found generation”, illustrate individual biographical events and common biographical sequences. Furthermore, the article pinpoints the so-called biographical anchors, including prominent figures, religious authorities, minority organisations, and accessibility of religious education in Polish conditions – factors that contribute to the rise of the “cultural self”.

Translations of religious source texts and intercultural education

The article presents the main concepts of biblical translation studies and their importance in intercultural education. On the example of the New Testament term παρακαλέω, the need to update religious translations of source texts is shown due to the changing culture and the loss of some traditional terms of their original meaning. In the theoretical layer, the importance is discussed of language in the formation of human identity and social structures, and the possibility is indicated of including these processes in the strategy of intercultural education.

The authors present results from the project APVV-0372–06: Conceptual approaches to Character Education as a school subject in Slovakia and in selected European countries. The literal translation of its Slovak name is Ethical Education. The aim of the methodology used in the project—the analysis and comparison of current conceptions of Character Education or its equivalent subjects in Slovakia with the selected European countries—was to design a new study programme for future teachers of the course. This article focuses in more detail on the results of the comparison of approaches and trends in various European countries towards Character Education as part of state school curricula. The question was whether this subject was compulsory, optional, or substitutive for Religious Education. This article compares the position of Religious Education versus Character Education in selected regions in order to understand the purposes and goals for the respective courses.