Authority, Freedom, and the Risk of Indoctrination: Exploring a Third Way for Leadership in Faith Schools
Faith schools make visible a tension present in all education: leaders are responsible for giving direction and sustaining institutional traditions, yet education should leave room for students to think, judge, and respond as subjects. This keynote explores whether Christian faith schools offer resources for a renewed educational authority between authoritarian rule and bureaucratic control. Drawing on document analysis and interviews with leaders from Norwegian Christian schools, I examine how school policies articulate religious formation, critical thinking, and student freedom. A historical case from the DELK schools illustrates how religious and institutional authority can become authoritarian when questioning is constrained. In contrast, contemporary leaders describe different ways of combining a clear Christian identity with students’ freedom to question and choose. Gert Biesta’s distinction between authority and authoritarianism provides a conceptual lens. His suggestion that teaching acquires authority when it is given authority by the recipient points towards an understanding of educational authority that cannot be secured by either coercion or regulation. Findings from a recent student survey of Grade 9 students provide an additional student perspective. I argue that a possible “third way” lies in leadership that takes responsibility for formation without claiming ownership over students’ response or their future identities.
Published in Education, Formation and the Church IV: Reinventing Authority and Leadership in a Fragile World, 2026
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