A common phenomena in descriptions of Western mission initiatives to the South is theoverrepresentation of depictions of the missionaries and underrepresentation of theindigenous people. It is fair to say that there is a need for new perspectives. This thesisinvestigates the agency of the indigenous people in the Scandinavian Pentecostal mission inTanganyika 1932-1945. It highlights roles and areas of their participation which seldomoccur in western mission biographies, but were tanganyikan people played a crucial part,such as evangelisation, church planting and the forming of contextualized theology. Thepentecostal theology and mission praxis contributed to a large degree to shape that agency..

English abstractTitle: Islam and the limitations of the public will of choice.The purpose of this paper have been to investigate how three modern Islamic theorists view the limitations of the public free will of choice based upon their interpretation of the Islamic theology and doctrine.The paper focuses to highlight how all three chosen Islamic theorist interpret the Islamic doctrine based upon my elected theses and more specifically pinpoint were the free will of choice ends, and Islam as a religion starts to take hegemony. The paper?s aim is to further an understanding that in the modern world and as a effect of increased literacy, Islam has been somewhat inclined to split into several Islamisms, based upon the variety of fatwa?s on the Islamic doctrine that is available online. Therefore it remains to the modern day Muslim, to individually decide whether they choose to follow the message of the Holy revelation in the Quran or trust a mufti?s fatwa in their everyday life as a Muslim.The material used and analyzed in this paper is prime source material.

English abstractTitle: Islam and the limitations of the public will of choice.The purpose of this paper have been to investigate how three modern Islamic theorists view the limitations of the public free will of choice based upon their interpretation of the Islamic theology and doctrine.The paper focuses to highlight how all three chosen Islamic theorist interpret the Islamic doctrine based upon my elected theses and more specifically pinpoint were the free will of choice ends, and Islam as a religion starts to take hegemony. The paper?s aim is to further an understanding that in the modern world and as a effect of increased literacy, Islam has been somewhat inclined to split into several Islamisms, based upon the variety of fatwa?s on the Islamic doctrine that is available online. Therefore it remains to the modern day Muslim, to individually decide whether they choose to follow the message of the Holy revelation in the Quran or trust a mufti?s fatwa in their everyday life as a Muslim.The material used and analyzed in this paper is prime source material.

English abstractTitle: Islam and the limitations of the public will of choice.The purpose of this paper have been to investigate how three modern Islamic theorists view the limitations of the public free will of choice based upon their interpretation of the Islamic theology and doctrine.The paper focuses to highlight how all three chosen Islamic theorist interpret the Islamic doctrine based upon my elected theses and more specifically pinpoint were the free will of choice ends, and Islam as a religion starts to take hegemony. The paper?s aim is to further an understanding that in the modern world and as a effect of increased literacy, Islam has been somewhat inclined to split into several Islamisms, based upon the variety of fatwa?s on the Islamic doctrine that is available online. Therefore it remains to the modern day Muslim, to individually decide whether they choose to follow the message of the Holy revelation in the Quran or trust a mufti?s fatwa in their everyday life as a Muslim.The material used and analyzed in this paper is prime source material.

Within this essay a study is made of an LGBTQ-orientated Christian service in Stockholm called Queer Service. The following questions seek to be answered: What reasons does an individual set for his/hers participation in Queer Service? Which aspects of a queer service highlight the participants as important to them?As a method to answer these questions, the author has observed a number of queer church services in autumn of 2012. Moreover communication within the group of the assembly on the social media page Facebook has been followed and five individuals from the Queer Service congregation have been interviewed. As a background to the study, the European religious climate seen from Grace Davies eyes is depicted.  The reader also learns of how the Swedish church has handled questions about homosexuality and bisexuality and what Liberation theology is.

I uppsatsen jämförs William Paleys Natural Theology : or, evidence of the Existence and Attributes of the Deity, collected from the appearances of nature från 1802 med Michale J. Behes Darwin's black box : The biochemical challenge to evolution från 1996. Jämförelsen kontextualiseras med en skiss över evolutionsteorimotståndets historia under den mellanliggande perioden, som tillsammans med själva den vetenskapliga utvecklingen, antas förklara de skillnader i tilltal och val av argument som föreligger mellan de två verken. I fråga om grundläggande budskap, idéstruktur, syfte och religiositet befinns de två verken ligga varandra betydligt  närmare än vad som initialt kan tyckas vara fallet..

In this essay I present an outline and examination of the Finnish Luther research, withan aim to learn more about some different aspects of Luther?s teaching on justificationas sanctification, and sanctification as the growth of the new man. I will also draw myattention to the formal language of metaphysics, as it is continuously employed by Luther to depict the issues and the content of his reformation theology. Apart from the program of research in Helsinki, I have turned to the writings of Luther himself; and I have as well tried to engage in a broader survey of Luther-scholars, some of which seem to, or in fact, support the Finnish interpretation, others which raise a critical stance towards it. The later portion of the essay picks up on the Finnish critique of dominant 19th and 20th century German Lutheran theologians, such as Albrecht Ritschl and Gerhard Ebeling.

En känsla för Gud ? Komparativ teologi enligt Keith Ward och perspektiv på religionsteologi.(A feeling for God ? Comparative Theology according to Keith Ward and perspectives on Theology of Religion)We all have preconceived opinions regarding people, cultures and especially religion and religiousness, and according to one´s own subjective formed opinion, they are surely truthful and moral. But my main concern with this essay must be thought of as a brief and personal mapping of Christian belief and it´s rational status in relation to both basic philosophy and the other great religious traditions. Furthermore, I am anxious to widen the perspectives of that which theoretically can be considered substantially real, and the existential consequences that follows on such a study. In doing so I must make sure that it´s properly anchored in history of both philosophy and religion, and of course ? with the general idea of God.

The purpose of this C-essay within the subject of religion is to form a notion as to how the attitudes towards women and their position in a theoretical biblical society might have been perceived, based upon a select number of texts from the first five books of the Bible (the Pentateuch).Since this essay was written under the framework of the teacher education programme, it is also integrated with the pedagogy subject. This manifests itself with the didactic reflection at the end of this essay, where I try to relate the subject of this essay to the teaching profession.The material, which consists of excerpts from the first and second chapters of Genesis, and aselection of the laws in the first five books of the Bible (from Genesis to Deuteronomy), wasanalysed according to an ideological model, where themes and patterns have been more important than specific word choices.The analysis showed that the views on women vary depending on who writes and who interprets a specific text extract, and the conclusion was that since laws reflect the society it is likely that they were created to improve women's status to make it as equal to the man's as possible.The didactic reflection offers suggestions for lesson plans on the themes gender, feminism andfeministic theology..

The main discussion in this essay concern what the Emerging Church is, its sociological and theological context, their main critique of modernism and the consequences in theology and praxis. EC is not a new church but wants to be a new way of being church. In England much of the discussion concerning EC has found a context within the report Mission-Shaped Church (MSC). EC differs from Emergent Village which is a continuing discussion from a postmodern philosophical view.EC is born in an evangelical context with the tensions in the postmodern context, the liminal situation with among other items the disussion about a liquid culture and liquid church. Other backgroundfactors are the ChurchGrowth-movement, Willow Creek and the Gospel and Our Culture.EC critisizes its evangelical background and moves the center from justification to incarnation, from propostionalism, individualism, mission and activism to a theology of incarnational community life.Four different proponents are considered; Brian Mclaren, Dan Kimball, Karen Ward and Ben Edson.

The main aim of my research essay is to examine two congregations, one in Sweden and one in Democratic Republic of Congo, how theology and the life in the church shape the cultural context. The analysis uses semi-structured interviews of two pastors responsible for organizing the Easter celebration in their churches. The interviews serve the purpose to reveal how they apply theology in their context, how they interpret the Easter celebration liturgically in relation to the early church and how they perceive the cultural development in the congregations Easter celebration 2010-11. To give complementary insights to the interviews I use computer-aided interviews with members of the congregations. The methodological approach is based on a study of contextual theological theories, Easter traditions in the early church, Easter theologies and then applying these theories in the interviews.

Large areas of forests in the tropical region have during the last decades been lost and converted to new land uses while other areas have been degraded into secondary forests. These secondary forests need to be restored and rehabilitation through enrichment planting and liberation may help to speed up the recovery process. The objective of this thesis was to evaluate a rehabilitation method that includes enrichment planting, slashing of weeds and girdling of unwanted trees. The site for the project is situated in Sabah, Borneo in a secondary forest which had been logged and burnt by a wildfire. The project?s goal is to rehabilitate and increase biodiversity through enrichment planting of seedlings mainly belonging to the family Dipterocarpeaceae (dipterocarps).

Birgitta Stenberg?s autobiographical novel Kärlek i Europa was published in 1981. It takes placein the fifties and is written in a genre popular in Sweden during the seventies, the feministconfession novel. The genre had a strong political purpose, by way of sharing experiences ofliving as a woman in a patriarchal society the aim was to raise consciousness of oppression andmake way for liberation and sisterhood. But there was not room for everyone in the feministstruggle.

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.

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.