Socialt arbete förknippas ofta med myndighetsutövning eller behandling, trots att socialt arbete förekommer i andra verksamheter varav Svenska kyrkan har en lång tradition av socialt arbete. Syftet med denna uppsats var att studera hur det sociala arbetet ser ut som diakonin bedriver i Svenska kyrkan idag samt vad Svenska kyrkans roll som välfärdsaktör betyder för det svenska samhället. Studien har genomförts med hjälp av en kvalitativ metod där texter analyserats. Resultatet av dessa texter har gett en inblick i de verksamheter som diakonin bedriver i Svenska kyrkan. De teman som funnits i resultatet är verksamheter, förhållningssätt, diakonens roll som röstbärare samt utmaningar för det diakonala arbetet utifrån ett organisatoriskt perspektiv. Resultatet har analyserats utifrån dokumentet ”Vägledning för diakoni” som är framtaget av Svenska kyrkan. Resultatet har även analyserats utifrån vad Erik Blennberger (2016) skriver om välfärd, samt kapitlet i Svensson m.fl (2008) om roller och yrkesroller. Slutsatsen blev att diakonin bedriver många olika verksamheter varav några har samarbete med offentlig sektor och några är helt i församlingens egen regi. En annan slutsats är att diakonerna tar på sig många olika roller som socialarbetare i Svenska kyrkan, varav en är röstbärare för de medmänniskor som behöver det. Den tredje och sista slutsatsen blev att det finns en utmaning i de organisatoriska ramarna för diakonin, då diakoner kan känna sig bundna och icke hörda. Detta påverkar diakonernas arbete och det finns en uppmaning om att höja rösterna för en förändring och förbättring för både diakoner som kollegor och för alla medmänniskor. / Social work is often associated through the exercise of public agency/authority or through treatment work, even though social work is also present in many other occupations. One of those occupations being the church of Sweden, which has a long tradition of social work. The purpose of this essay is to study what the social work is that is operated by the deacons of the church of Sweden, and also what the role is for the church of Sweden as a factor in the Swedish welfare society. The study has been made with a qualitative method, where several texts have been analysed. The results of these texts have presented an insight to the activities managed by the deacons of the church of Sweden. The findings of this study have developed into themes, which are the activities, the approach, the deacons role as ”a voice for those who can not speak for themselves”, and also challenges in the work by deacons in the perspective of structure and organisation. The results have been analysed by using a document about guidance for diaconal work produced by the Church of Sweden. The results have also been analysed by what Erik Blennberger (2016) writes about welfare, and the chapter in Svensson m. fl (2008) about roles and profession. The conclusion is that the deacons of the church of Sweden operate many activities wherein some are through the cooperation with the public sector, and some are completely within the management of the parish. Another conclusion is that the deacons take on multiple roles as social workers in the church of Sweden, where one is providing agency as “a voice for those who can not speak for themselves”. The third and last conclusion is that there are many challenges that come within the structure and organisation for the deacons, where they might feel bound and unheard. This affects the deacons and there is an exhortation to raise the voices to change and improve the work for not only the deacons as colleagues, but also for all people.

In this master thesis the critique of the development within the Church of Sweden, by the Swedish Lutheran minister Dag Sandahl, is examined and analysed. Sandahl is an outspoken critic, and self-described dissident, in the Church of Sweden. He is primarily known for questioning, and being an opponent to, the opening up of the priesthood to women dated 1958 in the Church of Sweden. The source material used consists of monographs with critique of the Church published by Sandahl between 1973 and 2018. The thesis concludes that Sandahl’s critique touches a broad array of themes and occurrences within the life of the Church – primarily the Church of Sweden – such as the Church’s self-understanding as a national church and not part of the Church catholic, a functionalistic view of ministry leading to the ordination of women to the priesthood, the rough treatment of the opposing minority and the politicized General Synod. It is argued that Sandahl’s critique is best understood in terms of lived ecclesiology and ecclesiology proper.

This study explores how the Church of Sweden was impacted by the Spanish flu in 1918-1920 and how people affiliated with the church interpreted the pandemic theologically. The material analyzed is trade-magazines for people affiliated with the Church from the relevant years. During the current Corona-pandemic, the activities of religious organizations have been given a lot of media attention as potential risk-events for infections. The religious beliefs of those organizations are scrutinized to explain why they feel safe to gather. After gatherings, possible effects such as large-scale outbreaks are often the focus of negative attention. Historically, however, there seems to be few studies on how religious organizations handled ongoing pandemics and the theological beliefs that motivated their choices. This study tries to look at the people working for the Church of Sweden in 1918-1920: how were they affected by the pandemic, how did they interpret the events theologically and what did they do in response to it.

There is no consensus on whether Church of Sweden should comment on political issues and participate in the political debate or not. The opponents argue that religion and politics should be kept apart, while others claim it is the duty of the church to raise its voice on political issues when it witnesses injustice and oppression. As an Evangelical Lutheran church, Martin Luther's two kingdoms doctrine is a part of the theological tradition in which Church of Sweden stands. The purpose of this essay is to analyze parts of the debate about Church of Sweden as a political actor during the 21st century, based on Luther's two kingdoms doctrine and later interpretations and comments on it. Debate articles from Swedish newspapers have been the primary source in the study of this debate, along with both historical and contemporary Lutheran documents on the two kingdoms doctrine. The outcome of this argumentation analysis shows that the arguments defending a politically active church are to be considered the strongest. A prophetic political theology can be partially supported in the 16th century interpretation of the two kingdoms doctrine. The Lutheran World Federation, in its document The Church in the Public Space, speaks even more in favour of this view of the relationship between church and politics. The Lutheran tradition of keeping an ongoing interpretation and exposition of the faith in each new era is also an important factor in assessing what can be considered a reasonable view of the Church of Sweden's role as a political actor. To legitimize its political commitment, it is crucial for the church that this always derives from and is motivated by its faith. The 16th century reformists as well as the Lutheran World Federation of today identifies the political task of the church to be to take action motivated by its faith, when the governing power pursues a policy incompatible with the word of God. Thus, it is crucial that the church can motivate its political commitment theologically. If the church does, it can justifiably act as an non-governmental organization in political debates.

In 2017, the Church of Sweden elected a new service-book which is mandatory for the liturgy in the ceremonies. This undergraduate thesis aims to analyze the prayers of forgiveness to recognize the hamartiology, understandings of sin, in the Church of Sweden. The main question asked was: "In the moment of Prayers of forgiveness in the handbook of the Church of Sweden, which different ideas of sin and forgiveness can be identified?". A total of eight prayers of forgiveness were analyzed with three sub-questions: (A) How is the sin understood? (B) How does God relate to sin? (C) To the person praying, what change does the prayer aim to affect? The theories in this paper were based on contemporary, Lutheran theology, with the origins from the Church of Sweden, linked to sin and forgiveness. The prayers were compared with different understandings of the original sin (ontological sin, and structural sin) and the actual sin (subjective sin and objective sin). The result of the thesis revealed that the actual sins were the most common in the prayers of forgiveness. The structural sin can be understood as the original sin as being structures one is born into. As shown in the first two prayers, named B1 and B2 in this paper, the idea of an ontological sin was identified in various prayers, such as B4, B5, and B8. The B3, B6, and B7 prayers were lacking a direct link to the original sin and were instead directed towards a God described as loving and merciful. The subjective sin was expressed through the encouragement of self-reflection in B3 and B6. The objective sin was identified in most of the prayers.

The purpose of this study is to shed light on how the internal secularization of the Church ofSweden affects the congregations' work when it comes to fulfilling its mission. Where thecongregations may provide answers to the questions in their written planning of their tasks andfocus areas. Three internal secularization theories have been used in the analysis of the sourcematerial, which are ”classical secularization theory”, ”supply-side-theory” and a third theory whichcan be called the critical secularization theory.The first question in this study examines whether or not it is possible to see any regional differencesand similarities between the parishes The second question intend to investigate if there any topic orproblem that the congregations particularly highlights.. Based on the study of the source material,the third question aim to see if one theory of secularisation is more correct than the others when itcomes to describingthe development of the Church of Sweden today. The last question in this studywill try to place the parishes in one of Anneli Öljarstrand's two categories, these are the reluctantcongregation and the conformist one. These questions will be answered by using the contentanalysis method, where the analysis will be based on a coding scheme. The coding scheme containsfive categories that are based on the empirical material, the theory and the previous research.The answer to the questions has been that the congregations emphasize the importance of beinginclusive and open. And that there is a differnece between the parishest as well as similarities. Thestudy shows that the classical secularization theory are the theory that best fits the assembledcongregations. The answer to the last question is that there are congregations that fit in as bothconformist and reluctant.

The purpose of this study is to investigate The Church of Sweden’s role in the society of Årjängs municipality and to make visible if and how new spiritual phenomena occurs in Nordmarken Parish. Previous research suggests that more research is needed regarding new spirtual phenomena (Frisk 2015). Previous research also shows that new spiritual related thoughts is rising in Sweden which in turn warrants more studies in the area (Löwendahl 2002). The methods used in this study will consist of participant observations and content analysis where the observations will be used for gathering data and content analysis to interpret said data. The results of the study show that new spiritual related elements do exist in Nordmarken Parish although not to any great extent. One reason for this seem to be the influence of the Corona virus leading to fewer new spiritual related activities than previous years. The study also shows that The Church of Sweden in Nordmarken Parish has a relatively prominent and visible role in the society of Årjängs municipality. The result in relation to previous studies does match with Jarnkvists (2017) presentation that The Church of Sweden play a large role in the life of many Swedes.

This essay has examined the transition from physical pastoral care conversations to digitalized ones and the experience of it in the workplace. The thesis for this essay is the following; how has the pastoral care conversations continued during the pandemic, and what advantages and disadvantages has the informants experienced in the transition from physical pastoral care conversations to digitalized meetings? The study has been conducted through qualitative semi-structured interviews with a selection of priests and deacons within the Church of Sweden. The main questions that have been asked are: 1. How has the pastoral care meetings practically taken place during the pandemic? 2. What thoughts and experiences has the informants had to the transition from physical to digitized pastoral care meetings? 3. What advantages and disadvantages has this in turn meant for the work with pastoral care? Each interview has been transcribed and then analyzed through a so-called content analysis. This type of analysis has been helpful in being able to pick out relevant themes from the material that have been keys within the interviews. From the analysis, there was four themes that stood out, which were: openness, access, problematics and challenge. The first two categories deal with the informants' experience of the transition as an advantage, while the two latter one’s points to disadvantages that arises with the digitalized transition in their work. The analysis from the interviews showed that one does not exclude the other, that the transition is not just a disadvantage or the other way around, but rather that the two are connected. Instead, both of them help the congregations to create new ways to continue being a church for the community. Reaching out and responding to peoples need to converse and to feel connected even though they have been isolated. The conclusion shows that the advantages and disadvantages have helped bringing the Church to the people when physical meetings are limited or cut off completely due to restrictions within the society. The analysis has also shown the difficulties that these informants have battled with and how they have handled them.

Sweden and its relationship with the former state church Church of Sweden and religion, is complicated. The country has been described as one of the most secular countries in the world, and yet one of the longer recurring public debates has been on the topic of whether schools’ end of year ceremonies should take place in local churches or not. The peak of this debate coincides with newly defined regulations from the Swedish National Agency for Education regarding what is considered appropriate and inappropriate religious features in school and its ceremonies. The aim of this study is to investigate how Swedish citizens contribute to this debate and to illuminate what different intents and purposes they associate with the end of year ceremony in church. The research questions asked were: What themes occur in the opinion pieces written by Swedish citizens in the years 2010–2012? What or which purposes do they ascribe to the end of year ceremony in church within these themes? In what ways can these intents and purposes be seen and understood through Grace Davie’s” Vicarious religion” and religion as a public utility? The study was conducted by performing a qualitative content analysis on 28 articles published in public debate or opinion pieces in Swedish regional press through the years 2010–2012. The result was then analyzed with Grace Davie’s theory” Vicarious religion” and the notion of religion as a public utility within that theory. The results and analysis showed that the citizens had different understandings of the political decisions that concerned the end of year ceremony, which in turn led to different opinions on the purpose of the ceremony taking place in church. The differences in opinion showed that the Swedish people considered religious features and locales as either going against the school’s non-confessional policies and the freedom of religion, or as a necessity to fulfill a culturally traditional or educational role. The citizens who want the end of year ceremonies to take place in church and potentially include religious aspects can be understood as participating in vicarious religion in the sense that they defend continued access to religious locales and features as part of education and tradition, and by consequence, religion as a useful public utility.

The aim of this essay is to present and analyse six calling narratives that has been collected from six different priests. Three of them belong to the Roman Catholic Church and three of them belong to the Church of Sweden. I have chosen to have priests from two different churches because I also want to investigate if their calling narratives can be connected to the church they belong to. To be ordained in any of these two churches one´s calling must be acknowledged by the Church involved. In the Church of Sweden, they look at the calling (or vocation) as something with two dimensions, the inner calling and the outer calling. Meanwhile the Roman Catholic Church looks at the calling as one dimensional.  The calling narratives has been collected by interviews with each priest. The interviews have been semi-structured, with the intention that the priests should have been able to talk freely about what they have found important. The main questions, that all the priests got, was “Why did you choose to become a priest?”, “How did you assure yourself that the calling was from God?” and lastly “What has the calling meant in your role as a priest?”.  The essays questions are what the priests think has been crucial for their journeys to become priests, and also if there is possible to see any difference between how the priests from the Roman Catholic Church assured themselves that the calling was from God compared to how the priests from the Church of Sweden assured themselves that the calling was from God. The answer to the first question is that I noticed two different kinds of narratives, one where the calling narrative was described as a process and one where it was affected by one specific experience. The answer to the second question is that I saw a pattern where all the priests from the Church of Sweden described that confirmation from other people, about their adequacy for the priest role, had been crucial to them, while none of the priests from the Roman Catholic Church brought that up.