How to move from being able to ‘read’ religion to ‘understanding’ and further to becoming educated in it is a core question of education in the twenty-first century. Arguably, religion is present in many of the images and narratives of Western societies and cultures. It has been ‘back’ in public life and the political agenda since the early 2000s (Habermas, 2006), if it ever truly left. Furthermore, mediatization of global conflicts, human rights, migration and its effects, polarization, hate and radicalization call for a new kind of critical understanding of religion among citizens in Western societies. The demand is dire not only because the premises of education about religion in public education—often embodied in the subject religious education—have changed from promotion of religiosity to inclusive personality development and knowledge about religions and non-religions, and not only in light of curricular changes and demographic changes with regard to the religious and non-religious in society. Moreover, there seems to be an urgent need for a modern and critical normative basis for how to cultivate and evaluate ‘good’ understanding, knowledge and learning concerning religion in public education (Vermeer, 2012, p. 340). While several authors today are calling for the re-analysis of the fundamentals concerning religion in public education and pedagogy (Barnes, 2009; Biesta et al., 2019; Ubani et al., 2020; Ubani & Ojala, 2018) more engagement is needed.