The aim of this thesis is to investigate the relationship between evangelicalism and modernity with the Swedish holiness preacher Emil Gustafson (1862–1900) as a case. This is achieved by comparing Gustafson’s spirituality with Charles Taylor’s characterization of modernity. The investigation identifies five central themes in Gustafson’s spirituality: conversion, calling, suffering, sanctification, and spiritual experience. With regard to these themes paral-lels with modernity are noted. For example, the analysis shows that modern individualism influenced Gustafson’s view of conversion, and that instrumental rationality informed his evaluations of his own work as a preacher. But there are also instances where he distanced himself from modernity. He did not embrace a modern optimistic anthropology, or the view of suffering as purely negative. It is concluded that Gustafson is neither anti-modern, nor identical to Taylor’s depiction of modernity. He represents one kind of modernity. One that is theocentric rather than anthropo-centric. In order to uphold this theocentric character Gustafson’s opposition to the basic struc-ture of modernity had to be grounded in social practices. For instance, his negative anthropol-ogy was grounded in the revival-meeting where outsiders were called to repent and rely on God rather than themselves. Based on the results from this study it is suggested that evangelicalism should be inter-preted as neither in conflict with modernity, nor in continuity with it, but rather as a kind of modernity. There are multiple modernities, and evangelicalism is one of them.

The aim of this comparative study between Acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT) and Emil Gustafson is to identify possible significance of the concept of God in relations to suffering. This is achieved by comparing Gustafsons concept of God in suffering and ACTs concept of a destructive normality as a significant role in human suffering. The study identifies five themes in ACT: destructive normality, fusion, experiential avoidance, defusion and acceptance. A comparative analysis shows that christian concepts in Gustafson like the human as damaged, humility, pride, surrender and fear of temptation may have an impact of the perspective of suffering for the individual human. The study does not show that Gustafsons christian concepts include ACT as such. The psychological processes that ACT identifies and correlates with the power of human language are rather incorporated in Gustafsons language and his concepts of God. It may be concluded that the concept of God in Gustafson, in itself, have structures of symbolic language that can play a significant role in handling with the relations of psychological processes and human language that ACT identifies as a part of human suffering.