Many consider Sweden as one of the most secularised countries in the world. While the country is rapidly growing more religiously and culturally diverse there still remains a Lutheran touch in the school curriculum. Skolverket depicts itself as being nondenominational and objective, but many have argued against this statement. The educational system’s roots of both being organised and run using Christian religious materials clearly presents the complex situation that can be recognized even today.  Researchers and students alike agree that there is an issue regarding the representation of all cultural and religious groups in the Swedish educational system. The students in the work of Carina Holmqvist Lidh testify of the lack of representation or frequent misrepresentation in their formal education. Many feel the religion they meet in schools cannot be recognized as their own. This is a problem both in the condensed teaching materials which are used and the very limited lesson time a teacher has at hand. An active didactical choice, deeming what’s important knowledge or not, falls in the lap of educators and the consequences that I want to present in this essay is that many religious orientations risk going unnoticed.  That’s why in this essay my goal is to create a discussion about the ways the Lutheran Christian faith has historically, and continues to affect religion education, all while deeming itself as non-confessional and neutral. Furthermore, owing to fellow students’ essays and professors' analysis of textbooks depiction of non-Lutheran religious groups I hope to present the problem with this Lutheran-touch, which leaves many students from other religious orientations feeling their faith is misrepresented or left out in traditional teaching.

Is John Locke a philosopher or theologian? When considering Locke's religious thought, scholars seldom point to his Paraphrase and Notes on the Epistles of St. Paul. This is puzzling since the Paraphrase is his most extensive treatment of Christian theology. Since this is the final work of his life, did Locke undergo a deathbed conversion? The scholarship that has considered the Paraphrase often finds Locke contradicting himself on various theological doctrines. In this dissertation, I find that Locke not only remains consistent with his other writings, but provides his subtlest interpretation of Scripture. He is intentionally subtle in order to persuade a Protestant audience to modern liberalism. This is intended to make Protestantism, and specifically Calvinism, the vehicle for modern liberalism. This is seen clearly in Max Weber's The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism. Though Weber concludes that Protestant support for capitalism in the late 19th Century is due to its theological foundation, I find that Weber is actually examining Lockean Protestantism. Locke's success in transforming Protestantism is also useful today in showing how a modern liberal can converse with someone who actively opposes, and may even wish to harm, modern liberalism. The dissertation analyzes four important Protestant doctrines: Faith Alone, Scripture Alone, the church and family, and Christian political life.

[pt] A Tese intitulada Protestantismo e Identidade Negra sob enfoque narrativo: dilemas e relações possíveis buscou investigar, primeiramente, em que dimensão (ou se) a rede de crenças do sistema religioso em questão tem influenciado homens e mulheres – autodeclarados negros, evangélicos praticantes e que transitam em meio aos discursos que mais caracterizam a religião – na marcação de diferenças (operadas por meio de sistemas simbólicos de representação) que fabricam suas identidades raciais, consideradas aqui como um construção social, histórica, cultural e plural que implica a construção do olhar de um grupo étnico/racial sobre si mesmo, a partir da relação com o outro. Em segundo lugar, e de modo menos aprofundado, este trabalho teve como escopo refletir sobre algumas peculiaridades que teriam favorecido protestantes negros norte-americanos a fazer uso da esfera religiosa para um maior engajamento em questões sociopolíticas. Quanto à sua relevância, dados do último Censo Demográfico do IBGE (Instituto Brasileiro de Geografia e Estatística) apontam que entre 2000 e 2010 o número de evangélicos cresceu cinco vezes mais que a população brasileira, correspondendo a um total de 42,3 milhões de pessoas com idade média de 28 anos; além disso, revelam que, desse total, 53,9 por cento se autodeclararam pretos ou pardos (2010). Considerando que a análise do modo e daquilo que as pessoas narram em entrevistas de pesquisa pode remeter a estruturas socioculturais mais amplas, a pesquisa que gerou esta tese procurou alinhar-se aos pressupostos teóricos da Análise de Narrativas – vertente transdisciplinar dos estudos discursivos abrigados na área de Linguística Aplicada que se apoia em áreas tais como Sociologia, Antropologia, Psicologia Social e Estudos da linguagem. Os principais entendimentos formulados após a conclusão deste trabalho, que podem se somar aos já disponíveis sobre a temática, são o de que o Sistema de Coerência religioso a que o cristão autodeclarado negro adere contribui para fabricar sua identidade racial; de que os rituais religiosos se constituem em um elemento-chave na construção de uma identidade racial politicamente marcada; de que a perspectiva teológica denominada Teologia Negra contribui para a construção de identidades sociais racialmente letradas; de que não só os discursos que circulam no ambiente eclesiástico, mas principalmente a subjetividade – que se consiste numa resposta positiva ou negativa às práticas que nos interpelam – colaboram para a construção ou desconstrução das identidades raciais nos homens e mulheres negras que integram essas comunidades religiosas. / [en] The thesis entitled Protestantism and Black Identity under a discursive approach: Dilemmas and Possible Connections sought to investigate, first, to what extent, or whether, the web of beliefs of the religious system under analysis has influenced These Black men and women, who regularly attend church – in the marking of differences (operated through symbolic systems of representation) that produce their racial identities, considered here as a social, historical, cultural and plural construction that implies the construction of an ethnic/racial group s view of itself, based on the relationship with the other groups. Secondly, and with no intention of in-depth reflections, this work aimed to reflect on some particularities that would have favored North American Black Protestants to make use of the religious sphere for greater engagement in sociopolitical issues. As for its relevance, data from the last IBGE (Instituto Brasileiro de Geografia e Estatística) Demographic Census indicate that between 2000 and 2010 the number of evangelicals grew five times more than the Brazilian population, corresponding to a total of 42.3 million people twenty-eight years old on average; Furthermore, the data reveal that 53.9 percent of this total are Black people (2010). If we consider that when we analyze what people say in the stories that emerge in the interviews we can refer to broader sociocultural structures, the inquiry that generated this thesis is aligned with the theoretical assumptions of Narrative Analysis - an Applied Linguistics transdisciplinary discipline that draws on areas such as Sociology, Anthropology, social Psychology and Language Studies. The main understandings formulated after the conclusion of this work, which can be added to those already available on the topic, are: the religious Coherence System to which the Black people adheres contributes to the fabrication of his or her racial identity; the religious rituals constitute a key element for the construction of a politically marked racial identity; the theological perspective called Black Theology contributes to a better racial literacy, even giving to the concept of race a value closer to what it has in the black church context; and finally the understanding that mainly the subjectivity – which consists of a positive or negative response to the discursive practices that hail us – but not only the discourses that circulate in the ecclesiastical environment can build or deconstruct the racial identities of black men and women in these religious communities.

[pt] O protestantismo brasileiro, de uma forma geral, orgulha-se de ser contracultural. Orgulha-se de estar dentro de um cativeiro cultural impossibilitado de dialogar com outras áreas do saber e principalmente com a ciência moderna. Este trabalho quer mostrar as raízes e o desenvolvimento de um discurso anti-intelectual marcante no protestantismo brasileiro que o impede de ser relevante diante das demandas do tempo presente. Ao olhar para a antiga modernidade, pode-se identificar o mergulho que a humanidade fez em direção ao racionalismo, ao cientificismo exagerado, que guiado pelo viés positivista fez com que o homem se enxergasse totalmente separado de tudo e de todos. No meio religioso se evidencia a briga entre Fé e razão. Porém um dos contornos nítidos do paradigma atual é que a briga entre a religião e a ciência, entre a Fé e a Razão merece morrer. Infelizmente, dentro do protestantismo brasileiro ainda se escuta ecos fortes desse conflito que a modernidade fez explodir. E dentro do protestantismo, no lugar da denúncia do indevido uso da Razão, aconteceu a exclusão completa da mesma. No Brasil, um protestantismo guiado por um emocionalismo puro e por uma espiritualidade que não enxerga o mundo e suas mudanças, persiste em fazer morada dentro das diversas igrejas protestantes. Um olhar para o passado tentando entender as origens e o desenvolvimento desse problema é essencial para a superação do mesmo. É exatamente nisto que esta pesquisa propõe-se a ajudar. / [en] Brazilian Protestantism, in general, prides itself on being countercultural. It prides itself on being in a cultural captivity unable to dialogue with other areas of knowledge and especially with modern science. This work intends to show the roots and the development of a striking anti-intellectual discourse in Brazilian Protestantism that prevents it from being relevant in face of the demands of the present time. When looking at the ancient modernity, one can identify the plunge that humanity made towards rationalism, to exaggerated scientism, which, guided by the positivist bias, made man see himself totally separated from everything and everyone. In the religious milieu, the fight between Faith and reason is evident. However, one of the clear contours of the current paradigm is that the fight between religion and science, between Faith and Reason, deserves to die. Unfortunately, within Brazilian Protestantism, one can still hear strong echoes of this conflict that modernity has caused to explode. And within Protestantism, instead of denouncing the misuse of Reason, it was completely excluded. In Brazil, a Protestantism guided by pure emotionalism and a spirituality that does not see the world and its changes, persists in making a home within the various Protestant churches. A look at the past trying to understand the origins and development of this problem is essential to overcome it. This is exactly where this research is intended to help.

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This project follows recent scholarship that challenges an older paradigm of the social gospel tradition's demise after World War I. It undertakes a multifaceted analysis of Harry Emerson Fosdick, his local and national audiences, and his context of The Riverside Church--as building and as congregation--as a means of tracing the contours of the social gospel through the Great Depression. Fosdick was an internationally known liberal Protestant minister who was prominent in efforts to rearticulate the social gospel and maintain its relevance in the postwar period. He grounded his interpretation of the social gospel in personalist philosophy, which asserted individual personality as irreducible, yet also shaped within social networks. Personalism manifested liberal Protestantism's emphasis on experience, pairing well with the interest in psychology that burgeoned in the early twentieth century, and which was prominent in Fosdick's preaching and writing. I refer to this threefold convergence of liberal theology, social gospel critique and activism, and personalist philosophy as social gospel personalism. While social gospel personalism promoted activity to bring about social change, I find within it a rhetorical tendency to prioritize attention to the psychological development of personality as the primary means through which the aim of transforming society would be met. In this dissertation, I attend to the ways in which social gospel personalism as articulated by Fosdick and embodied in The Riverside Church was particularly classed, with attendant blind spots and limitations, while simultaneously serving to provide its white, middle class adherents with a religious grounding that helped them weather a period of acute social and economic upheaval. Recent scholarship on American religious liberalism seeks to move beyond the narratives of Protestantism, but I argue that Fosdick and Riverside, by virtue of their cultural prominence, represent an important attempt to find personal grounding amidst depersonalizing social currents, and a religious vocabulary for critiquing those social forces that diminished the person. To make this argument, I engage social gospel personalism from multiple angles. I begin with an analysis of Fosdick's preaching and writing, situating him within the social gospel tradition and tracing the presence of personalist thought throughout his message. I then consider Fosdick as a mediated phenomenon, allowing an examination of the ways in which his message was received and utilized by his multiple audiences, suggesting that the dynamics of mediation tended to heighten the individual, existential elements of Fosdick's message. In turning to the Riverside Church itself, I interpret the building as a site within which social gospel personalism was embodied and enabled, attending to the utilization of space as both reflective of and formative of religious practice. Finally, I analyze two of Riverside's programmatic responses to the vast unemployment engendered by the Great Depression as a means of illuminating the ways in which social gospel personalism was and was not prepared to meet the crisis. / Religion

Adventists hold various views with regard to their understanding of themselves as a church. They view themselves as the last remnant church of God today. They also believe that they are a part of the general Christendom. Adventists acknowledge the presence of sincere Christians in other churches. In this study, the background to twentieth century Christian ecclesiological self-understanding is examined. The origins and development of the Seventh-day Adventist ecclesiological self-understanding, especially as it relates to the remnant idea is examined. Three different types of the remnant namely historical, faithful and eschatological can be identified. Biblical images/models used in the development of ecclesiology agree with the biblical understanding and application of the remnant idea to God's people. The remnant idea is not limited in its application to organizational entities. Seventh-day Adventists should adopt an open, inclusive and universal view of the remnant concept. / Theology / Philosophy, Practical & Systematic Theology / Th. M. (Systematic Theology)

The argument of this dissertation is that a critical reading of the concept of "covenant" in early American writings is instrumental to understanding the paradoxes in the American political concepts of freedom and equality. Following Slavoj Zizek's theoretical approach to theology, I trace the covenant concept in early American literature from the theological expressions and disputes in Puritan Massachusetts through Jonathan Edwards's Freedom of Will and the essays of Ralph Waldo Emerson, showing how the covenant theology of colonial New England dispersed into more "secular" forms of what may be called an American political theology. The first chapter provides an overview of recent attempts to integrate theology and theory, specifically comparing Jacques Derrida and Zizek to better understand the latter's theology of materialism which relies on as well as informs the Reformed Protestant covenantal dichotomy of grace and works. The second chapter establishes the complicated architecture of the covenant concept within seventeenth-century New England Reformed Protestantism, and uses church membership transcripts along with Ann Hutchinson court trial documents to demonstrate how this inherently unstable theology created unintended slippage between God's grace and mankind's works, resulting in a theological formulation remarkably open to Zizek's analysis of political ideology. The third chapter demonstrates how Jonathan Edwards, through his ingenious counter-argument in Freedom of Will, provides a theoretical foundation for an uneasy but necessary alignment of the covenants of works and grace, releasing the subjunctive potential of grace to operate through history as a predeterminer of meaning and, potentially, freedom. In the last chapter, I argue that Emerson finally converts the covenant from a politically conceptualized theological framework for radical grace into a personal institutionalization of grace itself. Stanley Cavell's exploration of Emerson's "constitution" in light of the covenant motif demonstrates the political (im)possibilities inherent in America's self-conceptions of personal liberty and civic equality. In the end, complexities inherent in the concept of the covenant, especially its creative failure to control the radical nature of "grace," are determinative factors in our contradictory American egalitarian ideals.

Vad som inspirerade mig till att skriva denna studie var påve Franciskus besök i Lund och Malmö den 31 oktober 2016 i samband med det gemensamma luthersk-katolska uppmärksammandet av 500 års minnet av reformationen. Syftet med min studie är att undersöka hur reformationen och den katolska kyrkan skildras i sex stycken läroböcker i religionskunskap för gymnasiet och hur skildringarna förhåller sig objektivt i enlighet med skolans läroplan. För analysen av läroböckerna har jag använt mig av en kvalitativ textanalys. Mitt förväntade resultat var att skildringen av reformationen skulle ha en lutherskt präglad syn på konflikten och dess konsekvenser och att jag skulle finna objektivitetsbrister i skildringen av reformationen. Studiens resultat styrker min hypotes då Martin Luther och den lutherska reformationen utgjorde det övervägande utrymmet i alla läroböcker förutom en samt att den katolska reformationen endast skildras i en av de sex läroböckerna. Av de undersökta läroböckerna bedöms endast en som objektiv i förhållande till läroplanen. / What inspired me to write this study was the visit of Pope Franciscus in Lund and Malmö on October 31 2016 in connection with the common Lutheran Catholic attention of the 500th anniversary of the Reformation. The purpose of my study is to investigate how the Reformation and the Catholic Church are depicted in six textbooks in religious studies for upper secondary school and how the descriptions relate objectively according to the school curriculum. For the analysis of textbooks, I have used a qualitative text analysis. My expected result was that the depiction of the Reformation would have a Lutheran distinctive view of the conflict and its consequences and that I would find objectivity deficiencies in the depiction of the Reformation. The results of the study reinforce my expectation when Martin Luther and the Lutheran Reformation constituted the predominant space in all textbooks except one, and that the Catholic Reformation is only depicted in one of the six textbooks. Of the studied textbooks, only one is assessed as objective in relation to the school curriculum.