Private religion is a faith that isn?t practiced in an organised religious community. Many people do not want to accept a religious concept that is already defined. To choose a conception of faith based upon personal preferences fits some modern man better. The purpose of this thesis is to examine if it?s possible to create a personal religion and how such a process looks.

The premise for this study is the question how we should relate to people with different religious beliefs. The aim is to examine if an existence characterized by a religious diversity should affect the certainty and confidence in our faith. To answer my question I have turned to the philosophers David Basinger, Mikael Stenmark, William Lane Craig and Robert McKims different views on this issue. Using an approach based on a comparative method and argument analysis I have then assessed their different opinions in the matter. Based on my own discussion of these arguments I conclude that a religious diversity should imply a reduction in our own religious confidence and that it should be reduced in relation to the amount of disagreement that exist between conflicting religious perspectives in an specific case and matter.

Faith is a phenomenon that engages the individual into emotional, social and daily manners.Religion tends to engage the individual in different levels in the daily life. In the church communion, there is a belief to the traditional and the repeteated behaviour. This shared group is strength by ceremonies and rituals and people in this collective somehow experience another type of reality. This study has a social - psychological perspective and the purpose is to study people?s know-how of faith and why they seek religion in today´s secularized society.

The Swedish state and educational system are secular, so to say they do not depend on the former protestant state church anymore. Many people in Sweden are also secular. Even so, in school teachers meet students with a Religious Faith. The purpose of this study is to examine how teachers without a religious belonging experience the encounter with religious students. The method used was semistructured interviews with five teachers in a upper secondary school in a multicultural suburb of Stockholm.

In 1809 the citizens of Sweden where given the freedom to practice their Christian faith through the Swedish constitution of 1809, 16 §. This proclaimed that there should be religious freedom in Sweden, albeit restricted to Evangelical-Lutheran faith. Although after the law regarding dissenters was passed in 1860 by choosing another church than the Evangelical-Lutheran church you lost some civic rights, for example you could not become a public official. The freedom to choose religious affiliation was given through the Law of Religious Freedom in 1951. The purpose of this study is to evaluate in what way the concept of religious freedom has developed in Swedish law between 1809 and 1951.In the background I treat two historical events and one era, with focus upon religious freedom, which have in my opinion influenced the view of religious freedom in Sweden during the chosen period of 1809?1951.

En bättre värld genom faith? En studie om hur organisationen DIAN Interfidei arbetar för att skapa fredliga relationer i Indonesien [A better world through faith? A study about how the organization DIAN Interfidei works to pursue peaceful relations in Indonesia]. The aim of this study has been to analyze how an Indonesian NGO called DIAN Interfidei works with peacebuilding through faith in order to bring harmony between the various ethnic and religious groups of people that inhabits the nation. Through interviews and the study of Interfideis own source-material could their methods and problems be explored, and later on related to contemporary research in the field of conflict-resolution and peace-making. The conclusions that could be drawn from this study is that Interfidei primarily targets two specific groups (teachers of religion in schools and future religious leaders) in their programmes, because these groups in turn have the potential to affect several people in their own work.

In 1809 the citizens of Sweden where given the freedom to practice their Christian faith through the Swedish constitution of 1809, 16 §. This proclaimed that there should be religious freedom in Sweden, albeit restricted to Evangelical-Lutheran faith. Although after the law regarding dissenters was passed in 1860 by choosing another church than the Evangelical-Lutheran church you lost some civic rights, for example you could not become a public official. The freedom to choose religious affiliation was given through the Law of Religious Freedom in 1951. The purpose of this study is to evaluate in what way the concept of religious freedom has developed in Swedish law between 1809 and 1951.In the background I treat two historical events and one era, with focus upon religious freedom, which have in my opinion influenced the view of religious freedom in Sweden during the chosen period of 1809?1951.

The Swedish state and educational system are secular, so to say they do not depend on the former protestant state church anymore. Many people in Sweden are also secular. Even so, in school teachers meet students with a Religious Faith. The purpose of this study is to examine how teachers without a religious belonging experience the encounter with religious students. The method used was semistructured interviews with five teachers in a upper secondary school in a multicultural suburb of Stockholm.

The Swedish state and educational system are secular, so to say they do not depend on the former protestant state church anymore. Many people in Sweden are also secular. Even so, in school teachers meet students with a Religious Faith. The purpose of this study is to examine how teachers without a religious belonging experience the encounter with religious students. The method used was semistructured interviews with five teachers in a upper secondary school in a multicultural suburb of Stockholm.

Johanna Petrén, a prospective teacher of religion, has examined how a couple of students view Christianity as it is presented in a Religious Education classroom. Furthermore, how this image matches their experience of Christianity outside of school. The key questions of this essay are: How do the students generally describe Christianity and what it means to be a Christian based on the image they have acquired from outside of school, or from Christian friends, confirmation or their own faith? How do the students describe Christianity according to what they learn in Religious education at school? What potential differences do the students perceive between the image of Christianity conveyed by the school and the image they have of Christianity from outside of school? Does the school's teaching influence the credibility and interest in Christianity? The questions have been discussed in focus group interviews, in which the students way of reasoning and talking about religious matters were analysed based on previous research. References used in the analysis includes research on topics such as science of religious history, religion in multicultural and postcolonial rooms, secularism and discourse analysis have.

This essay analyzes the doctrines of the revival preacher E.W. Kenyon (1867-1948), such as perfect health, faith and positive thinking. Two of his late works from 1941 and 1942 is analyzed and contextualized referring to the contemporary New Thought movement, Christian revival movements and religious pragmatism in America during the late 19th century continued into the 20th century. Kenyon?s anthropology, his soteriology and epistemology is showed to be pneumocentric in a way that can be compared with the New Thought movement, but also has connections to Christian revival theology and Christian mysticism.

The aim of this essay is to study diaries and letters from Swedish soldiers during the Great Nordic War, more specifically those written during the campaign 1707-1721 against Russia, in search of religious coping and religious parables. The theoretic framework is evolved around Kenneth Pargament?s theory about religious coping, and Ana-Maria Rizzuto?s theory about object relations. The method used can be described as hermeneutic.The questions at hand were:- How did Swedish soldiers during the war against Russia relate to God, and express image of God and religious concepts?- Did the soldiers express themselves in terms of spiritual coping and in that case to what extent?The conclusions were that the soldiers used religious coping as a method of survival.

AbstractThe aim of this study is to examine how individuals, part of a rural Christian parish,express their religiosity and beliefs in a Swedish context. Furthermore this study seeksto understand these religious expressions through different views on social construction,secularization and the privatization perspective, such as lived religion, in particular. Byusing qualitative interviews with 8 individuals analyzed with the theories mentionedabove my results show that secularization has provided many individuals with aChristian identity, however, not necessarily a Christian faith. Instead several of theparticipants show a self-developed religious expression not automatically connectedwith Christian religious practices. One of the participants has, despite a Christiansocialization, developed a non-religious identity.

This essay describes the phases of funeral rituals between the Syrian/Assyrian, and compares the homeland with Sweden. It describes the stage of rituals according to Victor Turner schema of separation, margin or limin, and aggregation. The rituals religious significance agrees with Clifford Geertz?s theory about the importance of religious beliefs for the human being.

This essay studies what has been written about religious experience and visions both in the past and now. It deals with both the religious experience and tries to explain how and if there is any place in the modern society for religious visions and experience. The essay has a strong theoretical perspective to psychology of religion as presented by Anton Geels whose writings in the subject have been of one of my main sources.The study shows that people of all times and cultures have had religious visions and the feeling of a divine experience even if this has changed because of tradition, time and place. Religious experience and visions can furthermore occur both in a spontaneous, unprepared way as well as being cultured through ascetic practice in order to facilitate the divine reception. The study also shows that religious experience in no means is reserved for special ?chosen ones? but can occur to each and every one, no matter what class, race or position in life.