The Life-World and the Teaching of Religions 83 Kåre Fuglseth The Life-World and the Teaching of Religions Some Insights from Husserlian Phenomenology and Non- Ethnocentric Definitions for Religious Education in a Multicultural Situation The life-world and religion The concept of a life-world («Lebenswelt») is a notion that has been developed and applied by several scholars in many areas and in multiple ways. In sociological theory, the life-world as a basic concept has been employed by scholars of different schools, from sociology of knowledge by Berger and Luckmann (Berger & Luck- mann, 1967) in particular, but also Marxist inspired everyday-life sociology (Lefebvre, 1968). In Germany the sociologist Herbert Knoblauch (2005) has further developed this phenomenological basis into a systematic presentation of the sociology of knowledge. Several efforts have been undertaken by Heimbrock and other German scholars of religious education (Failing, Heimbrock & Lotz, 2001; Heimbrock, 2001, 1998). Max van Manen has used the perspective in relation to the study of teacher reflection among several other purposes (van Manen, 1991, 1997). Arnim Kaiser has also developed principles and methods for studying educational matters from within the life-world perspective that I find promising (Kaiser, 1990). The life-world perspectives also has a firm Nordic basis in educa- tional theory (Bengtsson, 1998, 1999; Bengtsson & Kroksmark 1994, p. 208). Bengtsson (1999, p. 9–10) demonstrates the variety of uses of the word life-world, both within and outside the phenomenological frames of theory. This article proposes some new paths to applying a life-world perspective in relation to the study of religious education. The perspective has been employed in empirical and theoretical studies in sociology of religion, but not in relation to religious education yet. One reason for this lack of interest by scholars in educa- tional fields is the radical bracketing of the world that all phenomenological analyses demand and in this bracketing the religions of the world are also put aside, a fact that is indeed not promising for a study religions or for the actual teaching of religion. However, there is one central element of phenomenological philosophy that is promising for an applied use. Above all the perspective suggests a wide functional and radically non-ethnocentric definition of religion. As Bengtsson, I am only concerned with the phenomenological based use of a perspective constituted by the notion. It is not that other ways are irrelevant, but my aim here is to focus on one theory especially, to demonstrate its fruitfulness in the theorising of education in general and in relation to our common and specific challenges in state schooled concerning multiculturalism and education in particu- lar. Generally, all life-world-theories concern in one or another way the move from the natural attitude to more sophisticated knowledge, such as to theories of the life- world itself and, in fact, all abstract analysis. The main methodological point of