<p>The period of church awakening in Sweden during the first half of the nineteenth century, has had a great influence on the Swedish society. During that time certain persons are to be noticed. Peter Fjellstedt and Peter Wieselgren, priests in the Swedish Church, are among those who were of special importance. But even the British preacher George Scott and later the Swedish layman Carl-Olof Rosenius became aware of the importance of networking. They all felt a call from God to preach a message of redemption and restoration. The people of Sweden were at that time under a burden of poverty, drunkedness and social destitution and thousands of people were touched by the message and had their lives changed.</p><p>This study is concentrated on the reason why this movement started and how it continued during the first 60 years of the nineteenth century. I look at the importance of the doctrine (läran), the spirit of time (tidsandan) and the networks (nätverken).</p><p>The conclusion is that the inheritance of Luther together with European pietism has been the reason for the reception of the message among people in general. The networks played a great role especially all the letters written by Fjellstedt and Wieselgren.</p>

Inkahealing är en relativt ny företeelse på den religiösa arenan, men har redan etablerat organisationer i elva västländer. Inkahealing har uppenbara ytliga likheter med New age-rörelsen, men ingen tidigare forskning finns på detta område. Målet med denna uppsats är ett jämföra Inkahealing med New age för att utröna var denna nya rörelse egentligen hör hemma. Undersökningen visar att det finns grundläggande likheter mellan Inkahealing och New age, med endast få undantag. En klar slutsats begränsas dock samtidigt av problematiken kring begreppet New age.

This essay studies the discourse about cooperation with the civil society within strategies and action plans considering violent extremism produced by the Swedish state and four different Swedish municipalities. The study also considers if some special actor from the civil society is mentioned more often than others in terms of cooperation. The analysis is implemented through a critical discourse analysis according to Fariclough and contextualized through Deans version of Foucaults theory about governmentality. The result shows that the discourse about cooperation used by the Swedish state impacts on the discourse used by the municipalities even though the municipalities use less harsh and imperative formulations. Religious communities are mentioned more often than other actors in terms of cooperation partners even though the documents rarely specify what kind of religious community they mean. This can partly be explained through the concept of “violent extremism” which leads to problems in actual cooperation and to feelings of alienation and stigmatization within different communities, especially Muslim.

The change of collective identity? A content analysis of the texts in second King 22–23 and Ezra 9–10. With the use of modern theories on identity theory, ethnicity and sexuality, apart from content analysis, this paper aims to broaden our knowledge of these ancient texts. In this paper the case is made that what happens in Ezra, with the mixed marriages crises, could be understood according to differences in coping with identity crisis as shown by the two groups in the text, that is a style of Normative processing orientation versus a style of Normative processing orientation. Regarding Josia the case is made that what happens in the text could be understood from the point that the text is addressing different views on the formation and understanding of an early Israelite collective identity.

This study aims to pinpoint the main rudiments of Islamic-normative environmental ethics, and also to give an overview of its similarities and/or differences from secular-normative environmental ethics, as they can be interpreted in Islamic Declaration on Global Climate Change, and in Declaration on Ethical Principles in Relation to Climate Change. As a theoretical framework, the study uses specifically selected features of Mikael Stenmark’s Miljöetik och miljövård, and of Ibrahim Özdemir’s The Ethical Dimension of Human Attitude Towards Nature: a Muslim Perspective. The material has been divided into the following four categories: Values, Humanity, Lifestyle, and Relations. The material has then been analyzed by using a qualitative content analysis. The results of the study show that the Islamic- and the secular-normative environmental ethics share many valuational standpoints, but their differences stem from what they use as the source to legitimize their ethics. The secular environmental ethics puts humanity in the center, whereas the Islamic environmental ethics places God in the center.

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Rituals have been a part a human civilization since the dawn of man. Even in todays’ technologically and scientifically advanced society, rituals still have a certain place regardless of them being in the church, the mosque or perhaps the grand opening of the city’s new opera house. Rituals have many functions, yet they seem to be diminished in the eyes of the Swedes. Our Lutheran heritage, with its emphasis on individual salvation, the Bible and its skepticism for all things Catholic, is believed to have had a profound impact on our views concerning the ritual. Regardless of Swedes’ apathy towards rituals, they still matter and are present in our lives. This raises the question of the presence of ritual discourse in Swedish schools. The aim of this study is to investigate how rituals are presented and discussed in high school textbooks in religious studies.

Thich Nhat Hanh is one of the key actors in the contemporary engaged Buddhist practice. With his understanding of the traditional Buddhist doctrine, tradition and practice he constructs a view of ecology that he thinks encourage both the individual and the collective to environmentalist action. His cosmology is based on an understanding the reality as a non-dual, interconnected, interdependent and impermanent and sees all beings and the nature equal in their nature. He also bases his ethical and moral views on this cosmology and is an advocate for traditional Buddhist ethical and moral principles such as non-violence and non-judgementalism. The traditional doctrine of the 4 noble truths and the dependent co-arising is the base for his thought of why we should practice mindfulness with the goal of raising awareness of the true nature of reality and the environmental issues. According to him it is possible to stop the global warming with the use of mindfulness and action that are based on on the traditional Buddhist perception of cosmology and moral and ethical principles.

The following study investigates the impact of the secular processes present in Early Modern Japan on Matsuo Bashō's prose. The theoretical basis for exploring this development is found in Durkheim’s distinction between the transcendent and the immanent, as well as the theoretical framework for secularism. The exploration of Bashō's writings is conducted through several key themes: self-presentation, people, religious concepts, nature and aestheticisms. From these categories a complex pattern emerges. It illustrates the enduring nature of the contemporary world-views through numerous references to and descriptions of existing systems of thought. Bashō's response to the dynamic societal changes of his time is an outright rejection of the new developments; instead he turns to nature and romanticism steeped in existing tradition.