This study presents a critical discourse analysis of workplace health at the Swedish Church in Umeå. The analysis in this paper is based on Carol Bacchi‟s theoretical framework “What‟s the problem represented to be?”, which helps to build an insight on the common sense understanding that what we propose to do about something reveals what we think needs to change and hence what we think the „problem‟ is. The main area has been focused on (1) working hours and workload (2)competence transmission and (3) discrimination. The analysis of the policy documents shows that work hour and work load due an independent work enviroment for most of the professions in church, create an individual liability in relation to competence and qualification. It also reveals an assumption that the surrounding, a revival legacy where the Church of Umeå act, created a positive/affirmative action trough competence transmission between older vicars and younger female vicars to cope a long-term male dominated profession. The study also found that competence transmission between older and younger employees create an implied assumption of alack in competences among younger employees. To prevent discrimination a key concept was to promote good work relationships. That means through constructions of equality and gender equality. A possibly effect of the policy of equality, where it´s assumes that everybody has to take responsibility to prevent discrimination, but allows individual interpretations created a risk that the actions to whom it concerns fails. It also shows that the individual government was highly depending in the relations of power as the victim - violates and also in the relationship employee –employer as a junior partner or superior partner. / Syftet med denna uppsats att analysera hur framställningen av psykosocial arbetsmiljö är utformat i policydokument inom Svenska kyrkan i Umeå i relation till tidigare forskning. Analysen i uppsatsen baserar sig på Carol Lee Bacchis metod What´s the problem represented to be? som syftar till att ge en insikt av bakomliggande problem i policydokument och hur man ämnar förebygga arbetsrelaterad ohälsa. Utgångsläget var att studera det konkreta förslaget och utifrån det utläsa vad det egentliga ”problemet” är. Analysen resulterade i ett fokus på områdena för 1.) arbetstidens förläggning och arbetsbelastning, 2.) kunskapsöverföring och 3.) kränkande särbehandling. Studien fann att det förebyggande åtgärderna inom ramen för arbetstidens förläggning och arbetsbelastning utgår från att arbetsrelaterad ohälsa ska förebyggas genom arbetsgivarens ansvar för att arbetsbelastning och krav ligger i linje med medarbetarnas kompetens och förmågor. Flertalet yrken inom kyrkan förväntas själva kunna avgöra när arbetsinsatser är rimliga, varför det ändå kunde ses bli en individfråga huruvida arbetsbelastningen kan bli relaterad till kompetens och förmåga. Det återfanns även föreställningar om kön utifrån Umeå pastorats omgivning av väckelse arv som kan skapa en positiv särbehandling som diskurs genom kompetensöverföring mellan äldre och kvinnliga yngre präster för att hantera ett länge mansdominerat yrke. Studien fann även att ålder utifrån insatser om kompetensöverföring mellan yngre och äldre skapade en underförstådd föreställning om kunskapsbrist i relation till yngre medarbetare. Inom ramen för att motverka kränkande särbehandling blev nyckelkoncept som främjande av konstruktiva arbetsrelationer viktig. Det innebar att utifrån konstruktioner av jämlikhet och jämställdhet förebygga kränkande särbehandling. En effekt av policyn för jämlikhet där alla förväntas ta ansvar och att man tillåter egna tolkningar, riskerade att skapa en otydlighet till vem insatserna riktar sig till och där individe nblev produktivt styrande i maktrelationerna som den utsatte vs. den som kränker och som anställd i förhållande till arbetsgivaren.

This study examines how the organizational model of the Church of Sweden as stipulated in laws and regulations can contribute to an understanding of practical board work among members of working committees that are related to individual board members’ understanding of the organizational notions collaboration and responsibility. The study further examines how these two notions may be affected by how the organizational model of the Church of Sweden describes and outlines how collaboration and responsibility should ideally work within the Church of Sweden. Through qualitative analyses of regulatory documents, observations of board work and interviews and surveys with active board members, both clergy and lay members, of working committees within the Church of Sweden, the study finds that an ideal logic of how the organizational model of the Church of Sweden should work is conveyed through laws and regulations, but finds that the studied working committees follow these to a limited extent. Instead the study concludes that the practice of the studied working committees is determined by how individual members understand and believe the organizational model should work, i.e. how clergy and lay members within the working committees should cooperate. There is an indication of a correlation between how the working committees organize their work in the committees and how they relate to the organizational model of the Church of Sweden. The working committees that have a weak co-operation, seem to focus more on internal issues within their local church, while working committees that have a strong co-operation tend to focus more on strategic public issues within their local diocese.

The purpose of this thesis is to investigate whether young people with neuropsychiatric disabilities feel that they have a spiritual longing. The research questions are also about what young people experience that which their spiritual longing is expressed and what conditions and obstacles exist to meet their longing and needs. With the help of role theory, language theory, and the theory of the illusionist world, new knowledge about young people's spiritual longing is gained.   The essay uses a qualitative method and collects empirical data by having two (2) group interviews, the first was with key people who are active in the business. And the second interview was with some young people who are active in the same business. With the help of the key people, broader knowledge has been achieved. By interviewing young people, their spiritual longing has been identified.   The essay shows that young people have a spiritual longing and that it must be allowed to take place and be taken seriously. The young people and the key people show signs that a language and an expression of spiritual longing is something that needs to be explored and developed. The essay concludes that young people have a spiritual longing and there are good conditions for further development, but more knowledge is needed when dealing with young people and their spiritual longing. The Church of Sweden has come a long way on its journey to a community, but there are still unexplored paths to follow.

Many Christians believe in a future with eternal life, some say it will be “in heaven”. What kind of existence do they imagine? Do they think that the risen Christian congregation will have physical bodies like we have here in our lives on Earth today? Or will it be a spiritualexistence? Bible scholar and former Anglican bishop NT Wright asserts that Christianity’s most distinctive idea is bodily resurrection and he also defense a literal resurrection of Jesus.1 He claims that most Christians don’t understand the meaning of the “Christian hope” – that of a bodily resurrection and a new creation. What is the theological statement on resurrection from bishops in the Swedish Lutheran Church? Which message about the Christian hope do they advise, especially when it comes to funerals? What kind of eschatological tracks are to be found in the main manual Kyrkohandbok för Svenska kyrkan? Is the afterlife to be seen as a spiritual existence or one with physical bodies? And does it really matter? The main purpose in this essay is to find out what kind of eschatological guidance there is for priests officiating funerals. With starting point in the theology of NT Wright, in comparison with the advice from Swedish bishops, the essay is studying which words and formulation could be used to talk truthfully about the Christian hope.

Exercising power is unavoidable in aid work because donors convey money to grant recipients. Exercising power is therefore part of aid work and something donors and recipients must relateto. The need to create a more equal relationship between donor and recipient has been a recurring issue in aid work and an important part of the aid decolonization process. This qualitativecase study examines how employees at Act Church of Swedens Africa unit interpret and relateto its position of power in partnership relations. The essay also examines if employees at Act Church of Sweden can identify whether power discourse affects recipient organisations' stanceon equality issues. The essay is based on a postcolonial theory that was formed using the concepts of paternalism and power, colonial discourse, partnership discourse and discourse in thespirit of Maria Eriksson Baaz (2005) and Ania Loomba (2008). The theory functions as apatchwork when using Norman Fairclough's critical discourse analysis because the conceptsare often sewn and patched together in the form of Fairclough's three-dimensional model as ananalysis tool. Norman Fairclough's method is used to analyze text, discursive practice and social practice. The result establishes informants' interpretations and approach to legitimatepower, above all based on its job description where exercising power is a "natural" part of theprogram manager's duties, since a significant part of the work involves donors conveying money to recipients. Regarding the informants' position of power, the focus has been on how thepromotion of shifting power is described and how it should be done. Relevant concepts for thepractical process of shifting power are the way Act Church of Sweden work according to ahuman rights-based approach, capacity development, local ownership, working more locally, information sharing and the reorgansation that came into force in early 2023. Regarding employees' interpretation of whether partners adapt in their approach to gender equality and health,informants state that it depends on the local context. Partners generally adapt because they genuinely have a similar view of gender equality and health as Act Church of Sweden. Or if they do not have the same view the employees would not certainly know. The constant paradox inthe analysis of power relations within aid is something that manifests itself when looking atpower relations in a larger perspective. Because employees both within Act Church of Sweden, back donors and recipient organisations are part of power hierarchies in themselves.

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Syftet med denna uppsats är att lämna ett litet bidrag till Svenska kyrkans självreflektion och därmed till ekumeniska samtal genom att undersöka sammanläggningarnas konsekvenser för församlingssyn och liv. Med denna sammanfattning besvarar jag även frågeställningarna; Vilken ecklesiologi kan efter relationsförändringarna utläsas i Svenska kyrkans utredningar och i Läronämndens yttranden över territorialförsamlingarna? Vad ger denna för implikationer för församlingen som koinonia? Genom att analysera den ecklesialitet som framträder i Svenska kyrkans utredningar och Läronämndens yttranden har jag sökt finna svar på frågan hur territorialförsamlingarnas ecklesiologi framträder och vilka implikationer detta kan ha för den ekumeniska förståelsen av kyrkan som koinonia. Jag har visat ett plausibelt samband mellan sammanläggningar av territorialförsamlingar med kommunalisering av kyrkan och ett organisatoriskt skifte från Gemeinschaft till Gesellschaft.Territorialförsamlingarna har genom sammanläggningar gått mot större ekonomiska enheter med större geografisk storlek och ökad genomsnittlig mängd tillhöriga per församling. Man har rört sig från ett övre tak av antalet medlemmar i en församling till en miniminivå. Denna nivå syftar till att utgöra ett tillräckligt stort kyrkoavgiftsunderlag i syfte att bära kostnader för personal och fastigheter. Med detta har man rört sig från att antalet medlemmar avgör mängden personal till att mängden personal avgör antalet medlemmar.Samtidigt som antalet medlemmar minskar ökar antalet anställda. Svenska kyrkan kan beskrivas som tjänsteinriktad folkkyrka där välutbildad och kunnig personal utgör den faktiska församlingen medan den tillhörige primärt konsumerar religiösa tjänster. Den demokratiska organiseringens offentligrättsliga karaktär stärker den Gesellschaft¬-struktur som utvecklats över åren. Möjligheten för den enskilda att ta ansvar för, och engagera sig i, sin församling som förtroendevald går via nomineringsgruppernas respektive vallista och inte via det direkta engagemanget i församlingen. Man skulle kunna säga att församlingsbon lämnar över sitt religiösa liv att skötas av anställa och nomineringsgrupper å sina vägnar. Ett slags helig gemenskap på entreprenad där den enskildes ansvar flyttas till nomineringsgruppen och kyrkolivet sköts av proffs medan den enskilde döpte kan komma och fylla på sitt själsliv vid behov eller vid högtidliga tillfällen. De anställda och förtroendevalda bildar en slags ställföreträdande koinonia medan de tillhöriga blir passiva konsumenter som inte ser sig själva som kyrka. Denna ställföreträdande koinonia riskerar även att leda till en organisatorisk donatism, där förståelsen av kyrkan som en samling rättfärdiggjorda syndare tonas ner då graden av professionalitet ökar.När kyrkan blir för lik världen hamnar dess skapelseteologiska annorlundaskap i bakvattnet till förmån för statsvetenskaplig och ekonomisk rationalism och då riskerar kyrkan att delas upp i en yttre organisation och en inre gemenskap där den förras mätbarhet hamnar i förgrunden. Kyrkans organisering behöver istället hålla ihop med dess syfte att människor ska komma till tro och kristen gemenskap skapas. Kyrkans annorlundaskap som koinonia grundad i Treenigheten kan utgöra en förebild för världen och ge just de förutsättningar som en öppen folkkyrka behöver för sitt grundläggande uppdrag, sin lagstadgade identitet, sin ekonomi och som en del av den ekumeniska rörelsen. Inte minst i en tid av transition mot att vara en kyrka med mer likartade förutsättningar som andra samfund. / In the ecumenical movement the Church is often understood as koinonia – communion with (in) God realized in interpersonal community. In this essay, I have tried to show that the organizational structure in Church of Sweden after the separation of Church and state, risks forming a vicarious koinonia of staff and elected officials. Mergers of territorial parishes and an organizational shift from Gemeinschaft to Gesellschaft has shifted the view of who is part of the koinonia and put emphasis on employees and on the church as a provider of religious services while the parishioners are passive bystanders and form the basis for church tenth. The vicarious koinonia risks forming an organizational Donatism in which religious professionals replace the understanding of congregation as justified sinners, and of ecclesiological Docetism where the organization of the church is separated from its purpose of community and lived faith.  The church's identity as koinonia founded in the Trinity can set a model for the world and provide the conditions that an open folk church needs for its mission, its finances and as part of the ecumenical movement.

Purpose of the study was to investigate how people interact with artifacts in the Church of Sweden in Vienna. Data was collected through participatory observation and analyzed using Latour's ANT theory. The study revealed that the various artefacts fulfill both a religious and social role for the congregation and the Church of Sweden is both a sacred place but also gathering point for meeting of non-religious people who want to preserve Swedish culture abroad. Together with the visual essay, a film has been created. The essay portrays the empirical evidence that emerged in the investigation such as the fields validity and artefacts in the Swedish Church of Vienna.

Contemporary pastoral care appears to both ignore queer theological advancements and to have lost its heritage in Luther`s pastoral care theology.This study aims to investigate which aspects of Lutheran theology can be denoted queer, and thereby of particular relevance for pastoral care undertaken by the Church of Sweden in today's rainbow-aware context. Thus, the study intends to contribute to deepening understanding of contemporary contextual pastoral care, by bringing together two theoretical areas, Lutheran theology and Queer theology, to inform and develop new approaches to pastoral care needs and interventions. A literature review provides the basis for theory-driven analysis that is qualitatively inductive.The main finding of this study identifies the social dimension of both approaches as being vital for contemporary pastoral care. Luther`s social theology for example emphases the social vulnerability of human beings and their experiences of oppressive social systems. This emphasis is also a driving force in Queer theology. Both perspectives also challenge us not only to actively counter experienced social inequality but also to undertake the care of those in need. The work reported in this thesis demonstrates the potential of such an approach for bringing forth certain aspects of Lutheran theology as queer, not only in a broader sense, but in particular for the development of theological and pastoral care encounters for a new era and a new societal situation involving individuals in existential crises. This study thus provides a foundation for a pastoral care that is queer-informed and importantly, thoroughly Luther.

This thesis is about the Assimilation Policy against the minority Kvens in the years 1840-1950. The purpose of this thesis is to investigate which role the Church of Sweden played in the assimililation and what made bishops and priests to take this role. The base is the theoretical concepts of nation and nationalism, identity and etnicity, minority and majority and authority. This study is mainly a collocation of previous research. In november 2023, the Swedish state finished a commissionwork about the Assimilation Policy against the Kvens and gave an account for the discrimination, excesses and assimilation from the state and the Church of Sweden against the Kvens. (SOU 2023:68) That work is the main source in this thesis. During the investigated period, the church was intertvined with the state which made it a part of the nationalistic endeavor to make every person in Sweden a good citizen and a good Evangelic-Lutheran Christian. The church contributed in coercive methods such as language compulsion to teach every person Swedish, Racial biology and Eugenics and to make the Kvens change place for worship. The only approved language in both the state and the church was Swedish and this enforced the Kvens to learn a new language and stop using their own minority language Meänkieli. It started with the children, but with time every Kven was affected by the Assimilation Policy. The Religious Revivial movement the Laestadianism became a safe haven for the Kvens because during their services Meänkieli was allowed. Thanks to the Laestadianism the Kvens could continue to meet Kvens in Finland and Norway in a transnational community. Both the Swedish state and the Church of Sweden felt treatened by this transnational community which they feared was a threat to the nation and the homogenization. The church became a part of the nationalistic struggle to make Sweden strong and independent. Both the state and the church believed in "one nation–one language–one church". A strong nation was homogenous with all citizens sharing in traditions, history, religion and language of the majority. The Kvens were faulty people according to race, language and worship.  The period with Assimilation Policy is a dark chapter in the history of both the Kvens and the Church of Sweden.