The Representation of Divinity and Mechanisms of Ideological Adaptation in Buddhist Religious Education Textbooks in Indonesia

Abstract

This study aims to analyze the representation of the concept of divinity in Buddhist Religious Education textbooks at the senior high school level in Indonesia and to examine the mechanisms of its adaptation to the ideology of Pancasila. This study is important because an epistemological tension exists between the non-theistic nature of Buddhist teachings and the principle of Belief in One Supreme God as the ideological foundation of the state. This study employs a qualitative approach using interpretative and comparative content analysis. The researchers collected data through a document study of six official textbooks used in the 2013 Curriculum and the Merdeka Curriculum, and then analyzed the data through coding, categorization, and thematic comparison. The findings show that the representation of divinity in the textbooks is structurally ambivalent. The 2013 Curriculum employs a mechanism of double encoding, which combines normative affirmation of God with a conceptual rejection of God as a creator within a single text. In contrast, the Merdeka Curriculum employs a mechanism of discursive stratification, which separates normative and philosophical discourses into different contexts. These findings indicate that the representation of divinity constitutes a discursive construction shaped by the relationship between religious teachings and state ideology. The implications of this study emphasize the importance of developing a more integrative conceptual framework and pedagogical approach to reduce ambiguity and dissonance in learning. The originality of this study lies in the development of the concepts of double encoding and discursive stratification as mechanisms of ideological adaptation in religious education, which contribute new insights to the study of religious representation and textbook analysis.