Tidigare studier visar att sekulariseringen inneburit stora förändringar på det religiösa området. Studiens syfte var att beskriva hur präster inom Svenska kyrkan i Gävle uppfattade sekulariseringens påverkan. Fokus låg på att beskriva de kvalitativt olika uppfattningar som fanns, då dessa förhoppningsvis skulle ge en ökad och fördjupad vetskap kring sekulariseringens olika verkningar. Det empiriska materialet samlades in via kvalitativa intervjuer där åtta präster gav uttryck för sina uppfattningar. Studien visar på att kvalitativt olika uppfattningar fanns.

The aim of this master thesis is to study the students usage and experiences of the reference services at the university library at Linköping University. The four questions that I seek answers to are: - What kind of help do the students most often ask for at the reference desk? - To what extent do the students use the reference services for their studies? - What are the students experiences of the help they receive at the reference desk? - What are the students experiences of the treatment they receive from the librarians at the reference desk? I have studied literature that describes reference work and evaluation of reference work. I have also studied Christian Grönroos theory of service quality. I have distributed questionnaires to students at Linköping University.

I have in this essay focused on the attitude towards the medieval muslims in swedish textbooks, in the subject of history from the years between 1954 and 2012. I have made an analysis on the discourse in the books and what they says about the muslims who lived before 1500 AD. The theory I have is a Postcolonial one from the authors Edward Said, Ania Loomba and Leela Gandhi. I have also analyzed the rhetorics the authors have used in every textbook. The results I have identified is that the attitude towards the muslims have changed during the years, from a generalizing view that says that the muslims were driven by the religion and that they were different from the Christian European society that existed during the same time.

The purpose of this study is to analyse asylum seeking converts understanding of their conversion process based on church context, specifically within the realm of evangelical church and theology. Through the method of content analysis this essay analyses six qualitative interviews done with converts from two Islamic traditions to Swedish free church Christianity. The essay discusses the results through the lens of Lewis Rambos seven-phase theoretical concept of conversion. The important results given by this study shows that the first contact with other Christians in a new country, which creates a new community serving as an interpretive framework for their lives, triumphs the question of the theological perception for the conversion. Also, the results shows that intellectual understanding of the doctrines of faith is less important relative to the conversion process best described by the words touched, taught, and transformed.

The aim of this essay is to study the religious education which the Jewish Community of Göteborg offers to members between six and fourteen years of age. The main question of the essay is ?what function does the religious afternoon education serve for the Jewish Community of Göteborg??To answer this question I have interviewed four people who in various ways are engaged in the religious education. To analyse the result I have used Danièle Herviue-Léger?s theory ?religion as a chain of memory?.

This paper is based on Bowlby's attachment theory in the exploration of Christian pastoral care literature. Kirkpatrick and Granqvist account for the majority of previous research on the subject, however, not related to counselling or counselling literature. The selected pastoral literature, which is three books by each author: Liselotte J Andersson and Margareta Melin provide several possible associations with attachment theory. In the process, nonetheless, more literature has been studied than those reported here. This paper aims to investigate whether a relationship with God is given as an attachment relationship of the selected pastoral literature.

AbstractThe purpose of my essay was through economically, socially and psychologically aspects examine the impact Bethesda Children´s Ministry made on families. Special interest have been taken to how Bethesda is dealing with responsibility and expectations. Also I´ve been interested in which vital change the boy have gone through during the rehabilitation? I´ve got the information from staff, parents and former street boys through interviews done in Kenya.The first result showed that rehabilitation at Bethesda means socialisation of the boy, from the behaviour of the street, to a functional family member. A great change for the boy was stopping using drug and start live in a family.

In the New Testament different pictures of a Christian woman are presented, not only thepicture of someone who is nursing and caring, but also the picture of someone who is learningand being educated.Women are put into systems of gender which form them, and throughout the years the pictureof women has been that they primarily should be caring and nursing, not learning.Both of these pictures exist within the Swedish Missionary Society, a society that has not hadany constitution to comply with until 1964, which meant that each person could make his owninterpretation of the Bible and its texts.This essay examines how fifty-year-old women are pictured within the Swedish MissionarySociety 1945-1970, assuming that women who want to serve Jesus have to be prepared togive up their traditional role of nursing and caring, and focus on learning instead.The research method is qualitative, and the written sources are from a regional Christianweekly publication. The essay does not present an unambiguous picture of fifty-year-oldnonconformist women, but the results show that they are not being related to children, that themajority has a higher education than elementary school, and that many of them are addressedto as ?Mrs?..

This essay deals with a picture-stone that was found in a pre Christian grave during the archaeological excavations of the Viking Age harbour and trading place at Fröjel parish, Gotland, in 1999. The stone is at least 100 years older then the male grave in which it was found. The picture-stone can be dated to  late 8th century or early 9th century, and the grave is probably from the late 10th century. One of the main questions in this essay is why the people of that time re-used an older picture-stone in a younger burial. I believe that the stone was reused as a grave-gift.

Before the autumn term 2011 the Swedish compulsory school adopted new syllabuses in relation to, inter alia, religion. Changes within the religion topic have historically been a heavily debated issue among decision-makers, interest groups and the church, where the role of the Christianity has been particularly controversial.The main purpose of this study is therefore to investigate how the Swedish compulsory school?s teaching of Christianity has changed over the years. I have in order to conduct this study applied a descriptive method as well as a content analysis. The Swedish compulsory school?s current and historical syllabuses in religion have served as basis for this study.The outcome of this study clearly shows that the Christianity has received less influence to the benefit of other topics.

Title: Process description of round timber transports ? a case study at Tra?frakt Go?taland ABAuthors: Karl ? Johan Tern, Christian Johansson and Andreas IvarssonTutor: Anders JerrelingExaminer: Fredrik KarlssonBackground: Today the profitability of forest haulers is unsatisfactory. Negotiations on prices are more about the relative strength of the negotiation parties rather than a discussion about actual costs. Adding extensive changes in the forest haulers cost structure has led to insufficient knowledge of whether the negotiated prices really correspond to their costs.Methodology: We decided to carry out a case study at Tra?frakt Go?taland AB, a special interest organisation whose members represent the majority of forest haulers in Go?taland.Purpose: To describe the processes and underlying activities of round timber transports.

This paper examines how Hinduism and Buddhism are portrayed in three textbooks for an upper secondary school course in religion and is limited to a selection of books published in 2009. Based on a qualitative content analysis, the paper examines the extent to which there is an intentional division, that is to say a line between ?them and us? in the ways in which the religions are described, and to what extent the description of these religions in the textbooks are Eurocentric. The study focuses on whether or not there is a ?them and us? perspective in the different books and if so, the ways in which this approach is evident.The result of this study shows that traces of a ?them and us? perspective can be found in all three books.

Religious congregations and social work have long been a neglected field of research. Although the number of studies have increased during the last twenty years. With a starting point in the situation in this field of research and in the current public debate in Sweden the focus of this study will be on how Christian and Muslim congregations view cooperating with the municipalities, organizations, the religious community to whom which the congregation belongs and how the congregations view cooperating with other religious communities. Qualitative method of research was used. Representatives of four religious congregations was interviewed; a deacon in a congregation in the Swedish Lutheran Church, a pastor in a congregation belonging to the Mission Covenent Church of Sweden, the chairman in a the board of a Muslim congregation and volunteerleader in another Muslim congregation.

The purpose of this thesis is to investigate whether or not capitalism, viewed here as the system that is currently the dominant economic system in the Western world, can be seen as a modern myth or not. An author, Brian Tracy, of several popular self-help books is the target of this investigation and the language he uses in his books have been scrutinized in order to see whether or not he uses a religiously influenced, and more importantly, myth-creating language. In order to do so, Bruce Lincolns theories of myth have been used in correlation with Stefan Arvidssons definition ov myths. Also of interest is whether or not Tracy in his books uses any of the instruments of power defined by Michel Foucault to support his claims.The investigation shows that capitalism indeed can be seen as a modern myth. This claim is supported by the facts that Tracy not only uses a language heavily influenced by Christian texts and belief but furthermore because he descirbes himself and the people he claims to have helped in a way that strongly resembles the narratives of myths.

This paper examines the power producing dams along the Ume-river as an integral part of and a result from the urbanization process in Sweden during industrial capitalism. The aim of the paper is to contribute to the knowledge of the urbanization process in Sweden in general and of its traces along the Ume river in the county of Västerbotten in particular. The paper applies the theory of concentrated urbanization and extended urbanization put forward by Neil Brenner and Christian Schmid (2015) and argues that the building of power producing dams along the Ume-river is part of an extended urbanization process. This becomes particularly evident when examining the vast physical structures that is the dams, situated in an otherwise remote and sparsely populated area. These vast physical structures are also very well connected to a nation wide electric grid that has connections to bordering countries as well.