The purpose of this thesis is to analyze the writings of Hayashi Ichiz?, a Christian from southern Japan who on the 30th of May 1945 died while carrying out a kamikaze attack against Allied ships outside Okinawa. Hayashi?s writings, most notably his diary and some of the letters he sent to his mother, have been published posthumously by his sister in a volume called Hi nari tate nari. In this thesis, I conduct an in-depth analysis of these writings in an attempt to understand for what Hayashi died.In the two parts of the thesis, divided by two major themes in Hayashi?s writings ? faith/family and nation/emperor, I discuss his thoughts around these issues.

The purpose of this work is to map what musical praise and worship means to different church members. What do they think of today's worship? Are there music styles or any instruments that are not suitable? What do the members think of contemporary Christian music and the regular traditional music in church? Do we need to make changes or not? How does the Christian Music affect their spiritual lives? Finally, what do the members think of what the Bible has to say about praise and worship? My method has been to interview four persons, who all are members in the Seventh-day Adventist church in Malmö. Beside literature and magazines, I have also listened to DVD sermons and searched on the Internet and in the Bible, to find out what others have to say about praise and worship.Syftet med denna studie är att kartlägga vad lovsång betyder för olika församlingsmedlemmar. Vad anser de om dagens tillbedjan? Finns det musikstilar som inte bör finnas med i gudstjänsten? Eller finns det instrument som inte är passande i gudstjänsten? Vad tycker församlingsmedlemmar om den moderna lovsången kontra den traditionella? Behöver vi göra några förändringar eller inte? Hur påverkar den kristna musiken deras andliga liv? Och till sist, vad har de för syn på Bibelns lovsång? Min metod har varit att intervjua fyra personer som alla är medlemmar i Adventkyrkan i Malmö.

The essay has its beginning in the source material that deal with ancient Norse religion before the people in the Nordic countries became Christian. The fact that there are no contemporary written or authentic sources available that can tell us something about the Norse religion during the Viking age is problematic. Archeological source materials is available, but tend to talk more about power relationships and social status than the old Norse religion and the way people practiced their faith. Medieval Christian writers are a source of knowledge of the Norse religion; however, they can only highlight the Norse religion from a Christian point of view and ways of evaluating the pagan faith, making them less reliable.The written sources of this paper are based on the written by two medieval Christian writers, Saxo Grammaticus and Snorri Sturluson. These sources are among the first to treat the Norse religion process after the introduction of Christianity in Scandinavia.

The Swedish government ratified on May 1 2009 an amendment of marital law, resulting in same-sex marriage becoming legalized. With the rights of the Christian Swedish state church to officiate weddings originating from the same law, the church was thereby faced with two options: Either officially include same-sex couples in the Christian concept of holy matrimony and keep the right to officiate weddings; or give up the right to officiate weddings altogether. An official decision to accept the terms was reached on October 22 2009, but not without being preceded by an agitated medial debate.This research attempts to analyze the arguments of the debate in three stages: In the first stage the arguments are categorized according to their respective ideological standpoint. In the second stage these categories are examined from post-modern, social constructivist and socialization theory perspectives. Based on this, the third stage sees the arguments analyzed from a viewpoint based in the Copenhagen school concept of securization.The research concludes that the debate does not only simply feature two sides with differences of opinion; but rather that the arguments of the two opposing sides are founded in a common view of the other side as a fundamental threat to ones conception of a sound society..

According to the directives of Lgr11, learning about Christianity should be an important part of religious education in secondary school (7th-9th grade) in Sweden. A school teacher must therefore have good knowledge of the field and of different aspects of the beliefs of the various Christian traditions.This essay is about how salvation is conceived of by two members of the laity in each of three different Christian traditions: the Syriac Orthodox Church, the Roman Catholic Church and the Church of Sweden (which is Lutheran). As a theoretical perspective for my analysis, I have chosen the official views of salvation of these three churches. That is to say, views of the members of the laity have been compared with the official views of the respective churches. It is thus a very limited qualitative study aiming at finding out how the views of the laity conform to the official creed concerning salvation and whether there are any differences here between the churches.

This essay examines the using of consensus method for decision making within the World Council of Churches (WCC) and the process that led to the decision to adopt its usage. The main question of my essay is why the method was introduced to the WCC and what motives lay behind its introduction. Other questions are how the consensus method works; both in theory and in practice, and what the predecessors and prototypes for the method are.The consensus method belongs to a broad Christian tradition of spiritual discernment and spiritual decision making. The New Testament, in particular Acts, gives examples of decision making in the early church which show that discerning God's will was considered essential. However the most influential model for the consensus method have been the decision making process of the Religious Society of Friends or Quakers, and also the consensus model of the Uniting Church in Australia.

AbstractA Problem to Every SolutionThe Corrymeela Community, René Girard and the ambiguous pluralismThe main purpose of this study is to examine how Girard´s ideas of society, culture andreligion have become part of the reflexion in the praxis of Corrymeela Community through the work of Roel Kaptein and how this praxis can shed light over the work with dissonances of faith and values in education in RE, Social Studies and other subjects.In earlier publications I have studied how dissonances of faith and values can beunderstood in educational settings and in connection with issues of interreligious dialogue.The extensive discussion of how differences in culture, religion and value in a pluralisticsociety are to be analysed and treated in pedagogical reflexion seems to increasingly occupyactors in different parts of the educational system. It is obvious that these issues also arebrought into focus as an important field of research. My main interest in this paper is to study how a reconciliation group in the middle of the conflict in Northern Ireland has developed a view of conflict reason and conflict resolution under the influence of the French researcher René Girard and what aspects of this study that can improve the reflection over pluralism and dissonances of faith and values in everyday praxis in education.For a period of more than a decade I have been in contact with actors in the peace process inNorthern Ireland in connection to different educational projects. The attempts to analyse the different aspects of ?The Troubles? and the efforts to find ways out of conflicts and civil war are many and the literature on subjects related to these tragic history of social, cultural and religious conflicts is difficult to survey.

The Swedish government ratified on May 1 2009 an amendment of marital law, resulting in same-sex marriage becoming legalized. With the rights of the Christian Swedish state church to officiate weddings originating from the same law, the church was thereby faced with two options: Either officially include same-sex couples in the Christian concept of holy matrimony and keep the right to officiate weddings; or give up the right to officiate weddings altogether. An official decision to accept the terms was reached on October 22 2009, but not without being preceded by an agitated medial debate.This research attempts to analyze the arguments of the debate in three stages: In the first stage the arguments are categorized according to their respective ideological standpoint. In the second stage these categories are examined from post-modern, social constructivist and socialization theory perspectives. Based on this, the third stage sees the arguments analyzed from a viewpoint based in the Copenhagen school concept of securization.The research concludes that the debate does not only simply feature two sides with differences of opinion; but rather that the arguments of the two opposing sides are founded in a common view of the other side as a fundamental threat to ones conception of a sound society..

The Swedish government ratified on May 1 2009 an amendment of marital law, resulting in same-sex marriage becoming legalized. With the rights of the Christian Swedish state church to officiate weddings originating from the same law, the church was thereby faced with two options: Either officially include same-sex couples in the Christian concept of holy matrimony and keep the right to officiate weddings; or give up the right to officiate weddings altogether. An official decision to accept the terms was reached on October 22 2009, but not without being preceded by an agitated medial debate.This research attempts to analyze the arguments of the debate in three stages: In the first stage the arguments are categorized according to their respective ideological standpoint. In the second stage these categories are examined from post-modern, social constructivist and socialization theory perspectives. Based on this, the third stage sees the arguments analyzed from a viewpoint based in the Copenhagen school concept of securization.The research concludes that the debate does not only simply feature two sides with differences of opinion; but rather that the arguments of the two opposing sides are founded in a common view of the other side as a fundamental threat to ones conception of a sound society..

Abstract ?The Vampire from past to present?. This essay studies and compares the early historical Vampire as it is presented in some of the Western Europe countries, primarily Greece, but also Romania and how their descriptions of the Vampire have inspired the portrait of vampires in modern films and literature. The essay aims to answer the questions:How has the historical, traditional, European Vampire developed through the centuries into the modern Vampire of today? Which original facts and perceptions about the Vampire from a Christian and pre-Christian point of view can be observed in the modern Vampire, as it is presented in the chosen films and furthermore, can any new ideas be observed in the films?By studying Vampire literature and poems throughout the centuries, a very interesting picture appears.

Denna uppsats handlar om genius loci. Utgångspunkten har varit en tes om att det är ett begrepp som vi landskapsarkitekter intuitivt förstår och påverkas av men skulle ha nytta av att konkretisera. Målet är att hitta fram till möjliga svar på dessa frågor:Hur kan landskapsarkitekten tolka begreppet genius loci?Hur kan landskapsarkitekten arbeta i praktiken för att finna en plats genius?Genom att undersöka begreppet genius loci utifrån både ett teoretiskt och ett praktiskt perspektiv hoppas jag kunna skapa en ökad förståelse för hur och varför vi landskapsarkitekter kan använda det. Genom studier av bland annat Christian Norberg-Schulz verk Genius loci: towards a phenomenology of architecture samt intervjuer och reflektioner över min egen praktik har jag kommit fram till att tesen stämmer.

In the essay the author examines how pilgrimage can be used as a tool to radicalise democracy in a late modern society marked by neoliberalism. Applying a dialectic perspective on social movements the essay puts forward how the pilgrimage movement Pilgrim?s Walk for Future, administrated by Church of Sweden, is working in line with the historical pilgrimage theology - a modern critical ecclesiology- to mobilise political action to prevent climate change. The result of the study shows how PWFF meet the neoliberal hegemony with a mobilisation of alternative values beyond the order of capitalism, in line with Christian theology and tradition. The mobilisation is made possible by new forms of identifications with oneself and the social world that meet a modern power/knowledge- regime based on rational thought, and which questions norms and practises by paying attention to their negative effects on nature and on human life in general.

Den här uppsatsen handlar om de 15 konfirmandböckerna som utgavs mellan 1920-25. Vad böckerna innehåller, hur de är strukturerade och vilka referenser/hänvisningar som författarna gör. Uppsatsen går också igenom 1917 års kyrkohandboks två konfirmationsgudstjänster, deras bakgrund och innehåll. Slutligen jämförs böckernas innehåll med gudstjänstens innehåll..

The purpose of this paper is to analyze the reasons a religious minority leader has to convert to a larger religious group and how the leader chooses to communicate this event in certain daily press. In March 2014 the leader and founder of the Christian and charismatic movement ?Livets Ord? (Words of Life), Ulf Ekman, announced his decision converting to the Roman Catholic Church after a 10 year long process of thinking. The communications of Ekman?s linguistic language in the articles are discussed through two discourse analyzing perspective, Laclau & Mouffe?s and Fairclough?s.

EKHO - The Ecumenical Association for Christian LGBTQ people has existed in Swedensince the 1970's second half. The movement had its ups and downs throughout the years. Inthis essay, I will examine what happened when the movement was formed and how thefirst period developed. By examining EKHO Stockholm´s magazine EKHO-bladet my task isto describe the story from when the first EKHO association was formed until the EKHO organizations of Sweden joined together and formed the National Association, Riks EKHO. My second issue is to look into which role EKHO has played for the development in LGBTQ-issues for the Church of Sweden by analyzing documents from within the church concerning these matters.