In the prison of Kumla, Sweden`s highest security classified institution, spiritual retreats are pursued since 2001. The aim is to offer the inmates a possibility to enter deeply into spiritual contemplation. This spiritual contemplation is made possible through the fact that the prisoners carry out a retreat designed after guidelines written by Ignatius of Loyola in his Spiritual Exercises. The purpose of this examination is to study how ordinary institutional life in comparison to monastic life defines and creates different attitudes and roles amongst the inmates. A secondary aim is to describe the consequences of the retreat on individual basis.

Denna uppsats består av en jämförande studie av två ärkebiskopar ? KG Hammar (Svenska kyrkan) och Rowan Williams (Church of England) - ur ett postmodernt teologiskt perspektiv. Syftet var att söka finna postmoderna influenser hos de båda ärkebiskoparna i såväl teori som praktik och undersöka konsekvenserna av ett postmodernt teologiskt agerande.  Undersökningen visade att båda ärkebiskoparna influerades av postmodern teologi i teorin. Hammar förde också som ärkebiskop fram sina personliga postmoderna insikter, medan Williams av olika anledningar generellt valde att endast föra fram kyrkans åsikt. Båda handlingsalternativen medförde såväl kritik som uppskattning.

Since the Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV) that causes Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome (AIDS) was discovered in the 1980s, the condom has scientifically proven to be the only technological device that can prevent transmission of the virus during sexual intercourse. This technical approach to the HIV has strongly emphasized that prevention is only possible if the condom is properly used. However, as a technological artifact the condom has shown that its use is laden with values. The question of values on condoms has brought in a heated debate on the moral justifications of its use. In Malawi, just as in other African countries, the Faith Community has rejected the Governmentsplea to promote condoms as the preventive measure against the virus.The Faith Community has emphasized on abstinence and mutual faithfulness as the only reliable means to the prevention of HIV/AIDS.

The Purpose of this essay is to seek an answer to whether or not a conflict exists between priests of the Assyrian Church, the Syrian Orthodox Church and the Coptic Church in contemporary Swedish society, as well as to examine the environment between the three. The theological dissimilarities will be studied (from a historical standpoint), along with the interviewed participants views on the division in Christianity which will be presented also. I choose to interview six priests/chorbishops who live and work in Sweden, and the result was analyzed according to the senior professor of peace- and conflict, Peter Wallensteen?s theories on conflict and conflict resolution, where important issues are laid out to identify the core problem, and theological differences are discussed and compared from a union perspective.The result of the interviews illustrate a clear response that the participants experience a lack of functioning collaborations (from the Assyrians Church view, a collaboration is absent from the Syrian Orthodox Church and the Coptic Church, and vice versa) and most of the participants experience negative consequences from the divide in churches, as they strive for unity in Christianity as a whole. The theological differences between the churches proves not to be as significant as expected, the actual predicament lies partly in language-and phrase division along with a general rejection of each other?s interpretations.

The purpose of this paper consists of examining the different ways of thinking about death and life beyond death conveyed in the game Grim Fandango Remastered. This was done by using a theoretical framework consisting of a self invented definition of death called "Bodily death". This definition consists of common notions about death such as cessation of life functions like movement, metabolism, respiration and overall cessation of brain functions. It also included cessation of vital processes, which includes the ability to make energy transfer, making reparations, for example by cell replication, as well as the waste system of the body.  Besides this, the study examines the prevalence of dualism, a conception that views the soul essential to the individual's mental state. Two kinds of dualism were investigated, simple dualism with the assumption that the individual is made up of the soul, and compound dualism, where soul and body are dependent on each other for the survival of the individual.

This thesis examines the use of history, historical narratives and the relation to Venezuelan historical consciousness in Libro Rojo, a publication of The Unified Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV). It consists of four parts: an introduction, a declaration of principles, statutes and finally what is called the programmatical bases (bases programaticas) of the party.A starting point for this thesis is that this is an under prioritized area of research about the Bolivarian revolution in Venezuela. It aims to show the centrality of history in these fundamental documents of the biggest left-wing party in Latin America.The thesis finds that symbolically charged historical figures ? mainly national icons of Venezuela´s struggle for national liberation - are mobilized to back up contemporary aspirations and influence public perception of what kind of future is possible and desirable. Libro Rojo structures the relationship between past, present and future in order to influence historical consciousness.It also finds that Libro Rojo constructs a vision of socialism which aims to show that the ideas and actions of Venezuela´s symbolically charged historical figures are compatible with the ideas of 19th and 20th century western Marxism.

The overall purpose of the essay is to initiate a survey and highlight, on the basis of sufficiently material, the dealings between Dietrich Bonhoeffer as a member of the resistance and the Swedish Church and/or its representatives. The purpose of the survey is to structure Dietrich Bonhoeffers activities in Sweden and highlight its implications.The following research questions have been used:1: What was Dietrich Bonhoeffer doing in Sweden and what persons did he meet?2: What was the role of the Swedish Church during the Second World War? 3: What was the impact of Dietrich Bonhoeffers visits to Sweden?In conclusion, this study of the contacts between Dietrich Bonhoeffer and the Swedish Church has shown: Dietrich Bonhoeffer was in Sweden on two occasions. He met representatives of the Swedish Church, which was engaged in issues related to ecumenism, resistance and peacework. Although the persons he met were representatives of the Swedish Church they sometimes acted as individuals with a Christian philosophy.

Denna kandidatuppsats analyserar hur den svenskkyrkliga självförståelsen ser ut inom Guds hus-projektet i Nacka församling utifrån ett religionsteologiskt perspektiv. Användandet av en empirisk teoretisk modell nämligen ?4 voices of theology? framtagen av Action Research ? Church & Society (ARCS) i Storbritannien har gjort det möjligt att beskriva hur den svenskkyrkliga självförståelsen ser ut inom Guds hus-projektet och hur denna självförståelse påverkar den religionsteologi som förmedlas ur ett svenskkyrkligt perspektiv. Genom att använda den empirisk teoretiska modellen bestående av fyra olika aspekter av teologi; adopterad, normativ, formell och operativ teologi har bilden av den svenskkyrkliga självförståelsen blivit tydligare. Den empiriska teorin har sedan ställts mot ett material från gruppintervjuer där företrädare för Nacka församling involverade i Guds hus-projektet; både anställda och förtroendevalda har blivit intervjuade utifrån frågeställningar som berör den svenskkyrkliga självförståelsen av Guds hus-projektet och religionsteologi. Efter att ha analyserat materialet är slutsatsen att Guds hus-projektet religionsteologi i synnerhet är en kontextuell och erfarenhetsgrundad religionsteologi. Guds hus-projektet har lett fram mot Diapraxis, vilket innebär att religionsteologin har omvandlats och blivit praktik. Församlingens företrädare uttrycker själva att vad man gör inom Guds hus-projektet är att vilja ta ett steg bortom religionsteologin till vad man själva beskriver som en ?uppenbarelseteologi? eller ?kärleksbudets teologi?. Begränsningarna i analysen är att den enbart baseras på företrädare från Svenska kyrkan, Nacka församling, vilket är ett av de tre samfund som Guds hus-projektet utgör.

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.

Denna text vill ge en inblick i vad romansinterpretation är, och vilken roll man som pianist spelar i tolkningen av både text och musik. Den musikaliska utgångspunkten är sångcykeln ?Hjärtats sånger? av Gunnar de Frumerie, med texter av Pär Lagerkvist. För att kunna belysa så många sidor som möjligt av arbetet som romanspianist studerade jag in alla sex sånger med två sångare som har helt olika rösttyper: Åsa Lansfors Lindblom, en lyrisk sopran som främst sjunger romansrepertoar och Nils Guste?n, en bas som utbildar sig till operasångare.Varje sång i sångcykeln beskrivs dels utifra?n mina personliga tolkningar av texten och musiken, dels utifrån de diskussioner jag haft tillsammans med sångarna i övningsrummen.

Denna studie behandlar de fyra böckerna Brott och straff av Fjodor Dostojevskij, Kråkflickan, Hungerelden och Pythians anvisningar alla tre skrivna av Jerker Eriksson och Håkan Axlander- Sundquist. Jag utför en illustrativ komparativ analys av mördarnas psyke och böckernas struktur samt undersöker det didaktiska värdet av att göra denna studie.Genom att psykologiskt analysera böckernas mördare har jag kunnat göra en psykologisk profil till de fyra. Raskolnikov som är dubbelmördare i kriminalromanen Brott och straff har en narcissistisk, schizofren läggning som beror på att hans omedvetna strider med det medvetna om det moraliska i att mörda. Viggo Dürer, den onda mördaren av ett femtiotal barn, som figurerar i trilogin är klart psykopatisk med en könsidentitetskonflikt. Victoria Bergman, den trasiga föräldramördaren som är huvudperson i Kråkflickan, Hungerelden och Pythians anvisningar lider av dissociativ personlighetsstörning till följd av upprepade övergrepp i barndomen.

Unlike previous research, this thesis considers the possibility of regarding the morning prayers in Swedish schools as preaching, rather than teaching. 28 morning prayers, delivered in the church of S:t Johannes in the city of Malmö during 1939-1954 by the religious teacher Astri Heimer (1889-1986), constitutes the material for analysis. The purpose of this thesis is to examine if Heimer's morning prayers may be regarded as preaching, and to discuss the significance of this, in particular considering her role as leader of morning prayers.The examination is conducted in three steps. The first step investigates how morning prayers in general ought to be understood - as teaching or preaching? This is done by describing and comparing the literary genres of religious teaching and preaching, looking into the rules and principles which define the field of application.

Denna uppsats försöker beskriva Johan Magnus Wickelius (1817-1867) livsförståelse. Eller hans teologiska typ. I det arbetet har jag använt Benkt-Erik Benktsons typologiska metod, inom vilken man arbetar med schematiserade typer som Wickelius är jämförd med och placerade inom (eller inte) under arbetes gång. Denna typologiska metod är inte en klassificering där individen, som undersöks, är placerad i ett fack för alltid. Individen är istället placerad i ett landskap där de schematiserade typerna är som kullar emellan (eller på) vilka individen sedan placeras.

Within the field of cinema studies, the question of visual representation is a fundamental pillar. An immense volume of theoretical work has been written on the subject, with various academic approaches such as feministic, postcolonial and gay/lesbian. Yet there is a large social group that seems to have been overlooked within the representational discourse: the elderly. This group of people appears to be a blind spot on the multicultural retina, too often neglected within the area of cultural studies. But as the baby boomer generation, who has always redefined the different stages of life (youth, adulthood, middle age), is entering old age, things are slowly changing.

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.