ABSTRACT
The paper examines the heterogeneity of atheism and religiosity within the context of the dynamics between State authorities and the Catholic Church in socialist Slovenia. It analyzes trends in religiosity and non-religiosity based on a comprehensive analysis of statistical data and delves into the instruments of atheization through school curricula and textbooks. Atheization was a gradual process, developing with the awareness that most of the population was religious and that, prior to the Second World War, the Catholic Church had played a significant role in Slovenian society. The Constitution of socialist Yugoslavia guaranteed freedom of religion and respect for religious rights, but defined religion as a private matter, thus rendering it irrelevant and invisible in public. At the same time, non-religiosity and atheism, as the official stances of the Communist Party, were mediated through all spheres of social life. The dialectical materialism developed into the only recognized “scientific” way to explain the world and cope with the “ultimate questions”, while religion was considered a sign of ignorance, an illusion, and alienation of the people. The education system served as a pivotal mechanism for disseminating the new ideology. While religious education encountered stringent constraints and oversight until its expulsion from public schools in 1952, the introduction of the new school subject, Moral Education, in the same year, emerged as the most obvious instrument for promoting atheization within the school system.
