This study discusses high school and religion based on David Thurfjell's theory of secularization. The study answers three different research questions where the purpose is to use two reports from the think tank Timbro, based on a qualitative content analysis, to answer the study's research questions. The research questions include, (1) whether the Swedish classroom is secularized or not, based on the think tank Timbro's surveys “Being neutral” and “Confessional independent schools - societal problems or human rights?” (2) how religious students are treated in school by non-religious students and teachers, based on the think tank Timbro's surveys “Being neutral” and “Confessional independent schools - societal problems or human rights?”. The final issue discussed is, (3) different tendencies that can be found in scientific research and based on David Thurfjells theory of secularisation in terms of secularization and schooling.  The results of the study have been able to show that there is an exclusion of religious students in the Swedish high school classrooms as some teachers, among other things, choose to use the pronoun "them" when talking about religious people. This means that students with a religious background in the classroom do not feel included in the same way as the secularized students. This is a major reason why religious students choose confessional independent schools over public schools. (Karin Kittelmann Flesners, 2017, s. 21, 27), (Masoud Kamali (2005, s. 29-30), (Jonas Qvarsebo & Fredrik Wenell, 2018, s. 17).

The Development of Tibetan Cultural and Religious Identity among Tibetans Living outside of Historical Tibet The topic of my thesis was to find out changes in Tibetan society inside Tibet and in Tibetan exile in last 50. years and how do changes help to progress social capital. Inside Tibet is problem with high percent of nonliterary and high percent of incoming Han people, which cause that Tibetan people are getting on the edge of society, because they didn't have developed their human potential. The main problem is that Tibetan people don't know Chinese language well and this language is becoming more useful for daily life in Tibetan autonomous region. Tibetans, who are very religious, don't have opportunity to practice Tibetan Buddhism under communistic rule of Chine. Tibetans have to renounce His Holiness dalajlama and deny part of their Tibetan identity. Those reasons influence them to escape into exile. The second part of my thesis is concerned to describe push and pull factors of migration. As I found in materials, the main reasons to escape into exile were political, religion, education, economical problems and renounce dalajlama. In my research, Tibetan didn't divide those reasons to those categories, because they think of those problems in holistic way. The last part of thesis in...

Faith-based schools have become a growing phenomenon in Canada in recent decades and a cause of public concern in the context of a pluralistic society, where immigrants are increasingly likely to create educational institutions that reflect their culture and faith. This thesis presents a case study of Canadian Reformed schools in Ontario established by Dutch post-war immigrants who are members of the Federation of Canadian Reformed Churches (CanRC). Most children in this community have gone through this school system, an important feature of this long-standing, ethno-religious, immigrant-origin community. This thesis aims to examine how Canadian Reformed schools in the Province of Ontario have prepared their graduates for living in a diverse and pluralist Canadian society and their role in preserving the community’s ethnic and religious identities. The research is based on the theories of retention of immigrant ethno-religious identity as well as the role of religious schools in promoting immigrant-origin students’ ethical autonomy. Qualitative case study methodology was applied. The results are based on the analysis of sixty-four interviews with current and former members of the Reformed communities. Where possible, the results were triangulated by the content analysis of documents and mass media. This thesis concludes that Canadian Reformed schools have had a significant impact on the preservation of the community’s religious and ethnic identities. While Canadian Reformed schools have retained some level of self-isolation and a strict policy on the religious identity of both students and teachers, the findings reveal that the Ontario Canadian Reformed schools have evolved significantly in their five decades of existence. The tendency to shelter children is still present but principals and teachers generally aim to introduce current teaching strategies and develop standardized curriculum plans across the schools. Since their establishment, Canadian Reformed schools have encouraged students to discuss topical issues and develop their own solutions to enhance critical thinking skills. Tolerance and compassion to individuals with a different worldview are being promoted. Several respondents identified areas for schools’ improvement, including the need for a more inclusive and up-to-date curriculum, comprehensive school-based sex-education, a more profound level of understanding of religious tradition, reducing identity strain when exposed to the outside world, and high educational costs. This thesis addresses a gap in the study of how Christian schools in Canada prepare their graduates for socio-political engagement and in scholarly knowledge about Dutch Reformed community. This study also aims to contribute to policy making because the findings identify the challenges that religious schools’ graduates face and highlight the roles these schools play in bridging religious communities and the broader society.

This thesis aims to examine how political participation and trust in Lebanon have been affected by the economic turmoil in Lebanon in recent years. The main aim is to study the respondents’ experience of political participation and whether political participation is different depending on demographic factors, such as age, religion, gender, and education. Furthermore, the study will examine whether the respondents trust the political elite. To do this, the method used is qualitative in the form of semi-structured interviews. The study includes even interviews with respondents from different religious groups, ages, and gender. Lebanon has a long history of political instability and political deadlocks with religion being the foundation of their political system.  With recent years' events of the 2019 revolution, Covid-19, the Beirut Port explosion, and economic collapse, political trust in the country has decreased drastically. Therefore, the thesis will use political trust as a theoretical aspect to reach the purpose. Political trust will be used to understand how the respondents trust the political establishment and institutions. The thesis shows that economic turmoil, religion, and political deadlocks affect how the respondents feel that their trust in politicians has changed between 2018 and 2023. Furthermore, the thesis also shows that high levels of corruption and political inefficiency affected the trust of the respondents.

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Denna uppsats presenterar fyra obeslöjade svensk-muslimska kvinnors uppfattning och erfarenheter rörande slöjan, valet att inte bära slöja och samhällets syn på slöjan. Grundad på dessa kvinnors berättelser syftar uppsatsen till att undersöka vad det är som ligger bakom valet att inte bära slöja. Kvalitativ semistrukturerad intervju har används som metod för insamlingen av det empiriska materialet, och empiristyrd tematisk metod för analysen av det. De teoretiska begrepp som empirin vidare diskuterats utifrån är identitet, klassificering, symboler, normer och social kontroll. Informanterna i denna studie förklarar att de aldrig har känt sig tvingade till att bära slöja. De tycker inte att de behöver bära slöja för att kunna identifiera sig som muslimska kvinnor. Islam ligger inte i slöjan, utan i ens relationen till Gud. Vidare visar resultatet att de informanter som kommer från länder kategoriserade som muslimska länder har påverkats mer av det svenska sekulära samhället och dess normer än de som inte kommer från länder kategoriserade som muslimska länder. Hos alla informanter finns det ändå en rädsla för samhällets bemötande och potentiella hinder som får dem att stå fast vid beslutet att inte bära slöja. / This essay presents four not-/unveiled Swedish Muslim women's perceptions and experiences regarding the headscarf, the choice not to wear a headscarf, and the dominant understanding of the headscarf in Swedish society. Drawing on narratives of these women, this study aims to examine what it is that lies behind the choice not to wear the veil. Qualitative semi-structured interview was used as method for the collection of empirical data, and empirically guided thematic approach to the analysis of it. Moreover, set out from theoretical concepts of identity, classification, symbols, norms and social control, the obtained data is discussed. The participants in this study explains that they have never felt forced to wear the veil. They are of the opinion that one does not have to wear a headscarf in order to identify oneself as Muslim women. Islam, or ones level of religiosity, is not connected with a headscarf, rather, ones relationship as a Muslim is between that person and God. Moreover, the result indicates that the informants born in countries categorized as Muslim countries have been more affected by the Swedish secular society and its norms than those born in countries not categorized as Muslim countries. Nevertheless, they all fear potential rejection, negative sanctions and aggressions of society, causing them to stand by the decision not to wear a veil.

The increasing diversity of societies is one of the most important educational issues of the globalised era. However, while some attention has been paid to the schooling experiences of racial, ethnic and immigrant minorities in Western societies, little research has been conducted with religious adolescents. This thesis explores the complexities of religious adolescents’ experiences of English secondary schools. As an exploratory study, I employed an emergent research design carrying out loosely-structured, group and single interviews at eleven places of worship to investigate the schooling experiences of 99 adolescent Christians, Jews and Muslims. In order to interpret their reported experiences, I applied a theoretical model based on the Students’ Multiple World Framework in conjunction with concepts of religious identity negotiation and construction. The interview data show how Christians, Jews and Muslims negotiate their religious identities in the context of the numerous challenges presented by secondary schools in a religiously plural and largely secular society. In classroom worlds participants perceived their religious traditions to be distorted, inaccurately or unfairly represented. In peer worlds participants reported that they could experience prejudice, and criticism of their beliefs. Christians, Jews and Muslims reported two principal management strategies in the face of these challenges, either: declaring their religious identity openly, or by masking it in public. The findings of this study are highly relevant to debates about the role of religion in education, including those concerning faith and Church schools and the nature and purpose of the curriculum subject Religious Education.

Religious traditions are something that all of us have learnt about in school, even if we do not have a personal connection to a specific religion. Studies have shown that there is a discrepancy between what we learn about religious traditions and religiosity in school, and how religious people practice their faith in everyday life. How the religious tradition plays a part of an individual’s identity is not something that school textbooks specifically explains. For example, the course material does not mention how geographical context affects a person’s religiosity, even though the course curriculum, that is being studied in this thesis clearly states that you have to give examples of how different aspects of someone’s identity affect their religious identity.    This thesis discusses how Lived Religion can be included in course material as well as in the teaching of religious education in school in order to give a more accurate and more democratic picture of religiosity. Lived religion is a perspective that capture how individuals express their religious tradition and how religiosity could look like in different contexts. To use Lived religion as a complement in education could also help the pupils to achieve what the objectives in the curriculum asks for. Nevertheless, even if Lived religion is a helpful compliment to the traditional way of teaching the topic of religion, this thesis also shows that is it important to be aware of how this new perspective is used. If the perspective of Lived religion is not used correctly in classroom or how you explain someone’s religious identity, it could have greater negative consequences than its positive gain.   The title of this thesis aims to points towards how Lived religion can communicate a more complete picture of what religiosity is. The thesis argues that it is problematic to omit e.g. religious tradition or geographical context from an individual’s identity. That is also one of the main points of Lived religion, which is that religious identity is the religion lived out in the day-to-day life.

What is it like to grow up in the United States Midwest, without an accessible co-ethnic population, as a second-generation Korean American Christian? Drawing from forty-seven in-depth interviews of second-generation Korean American Christians who grew up in the Midwest, an analysis of the data reveals several aspects of their lives. First, Korean American families are moving to the Midwest for educational and economic gain, because of pre-existing networks with friends and family, and through family sponsorships. Second, this data reveals the long-term consequences of racism this population faces, causing some to desire to leave the Midwest, to internalize their oppression, or to work towards changing society through their careers and churches. Religious identity is a key factor in helping respondents process the racism they have faced. Second-generation Korean American Christians in the Midwest also find a sense of belonging, that they did not find in their neighborhoods and schools, through ethno-religious communities: Korean American Christian youth camp and/or organizations during college. Participation in these groups strengthened both their religious and ethnic identities.