India is home to every sixth person in the world, some 30 million dogs and a quarter of the total world cattle population. A vast majority of Indians are Hindus, and even though the Hindu religion proclaims love, nurturing and worshipping of animals, sometimes the same religion constitutes an obstacle for animal welfare in practice. This paper investigates the significance of historic and religious symbols to the way animals are perceived in modern Indian society, as well as the different social factors which underlie attitudes to animals. The concept of karma, as well as that of good versus bad deaths, is probably the foundation of the general Hindu reluctance to euthanasia in any form. Although in theory all species are generally regarded as equal in Hinduism, in practice there seems to be a differentiation; for cultural, religious, medical and financial reasons.

The relationship between fandoms and religion has become an increasingly popular topic to study within the field of the sociology of religion. In previous studies, there have been different views concerning whether or not fandoms should be regarded as religious from a functional perspective. This issue is especially interesting considering the decreasing popularity of traditional religion in some aspects. The aim of this essay is to study how Harry Potter fandoms are described in previous studies. The study aims at discerning both the empirical data and how the data is interpreted. The material in this study consists of three previous studies about the communities centered around Harry Potter fandoms.

This bachelor thesis is based on interviews with staff from three Egyptian NGOs in Cairo during the spring of 2013. The study examines how three Egyptian NGOs discuss the woman?s situation within the Islamic legal discourse in the contemporary Egypt. The empiric material was analysed through a theoretical framework of gender in Islam, and a discussion of the concept of human rights laws in a local context.The respondents emphasize the societies gender stereotypes as obstacles in the discussion regarding women?s rights.

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.

This study examines how upper secondary school teachers in Västerbotten and Österbotten plan to teach about the Finnish War 1808-09. The study includes written interviews with nine teachers in Västerbotten and eight teachers in Österbotten, who have answered questions concerning school policy documents, content and didactic methods. The purpose has been to examine whether there is a difference in historical culture in how the war is treated in the two regions. Historical culture is here meant within the prospective history lesson, where the pupils encounter history within certain boundaries.The result of the interview study shows that there are differences in structure concerning the school policy documents, but that these differences on the whole are compensated by the widespread interest in the Finnish War by the teachers in both regions. The differences in historical culture can be found within the construction of the content when it comes to the aftermaths of the war as well as the purpose of the teaching.

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 purpose of this essay is to examine and compare narrations by five witnesses, who has written about atrocities against Christians from 1915 to 1919 in what is today south-eastern Turkey, but what was then the Ottoman Empire. I have focused on how the roles of perpetrators, victims, spectators and protectors are featured in the witness narrations. Four questions were posed in the study: Who are portrayed as perpetrators, victims, bystanders and protectors in the various witness narrations? How are these roles expressed in the witness narrations? What differences can be found among the five selected witness narrations from Mardin and Urfa, 1915-1919? What are the explanations of the differences in the witness narrations? The method I have used has been an analysis in which I compare how the different narrations capture the events of 1915-1919. I have used three factors to look at the explanations why there may be differences in the witness narrations.

Aim:The aim of this study is to examine similarities and differences in eating habits in students ages 16-19 in high school.Questions:How do eating habits differ between adolescent athletes and non-athletes?What significance does living conditions and religious background have on the eating habits of adolescents? Method: This study is of a quantitative approach using survey questions.The method used was questionnaires. Three schools participated in the study. The school provided programs with and without athletic orientation. My purpose was to give out 200 surveys but in the end the total of handed out surveys landed on 141.

The role of religion, of religious individuals and organizations, is currently discussed within both a private and public sector of development. I have viewed documents from the World Bank and DFID where the religious presence is a growing fact and previous theories that religion would disappear with economic development have been abandoned. As a result DFID conducted a large study on the importance of religion for development work, RaD 2005-2011, under the directions of Professor Carole Rakodi. Rakodi (2011) concluded that religion was highly related to the success or failure of developmental projects, and to understand the values people had religion needed to be understood within its specific cultural context. She developed an analysis model to conduct this work.

Popular culture is a phenomenon of growing importance in the society today. Children and teenagers are increasingly using popular culture in their everyday life to reflect and answer questions about their identities and the meaning of life. Swedish primary and upper secondary schools are expected to prepare their students for adulthood and to provide them with tools to explain understand and problematize contemporary society. From this perspective it is relevant to question whether the schools achieve this and whether the instruction given there represents the contemporary society. For the purpose of knowing more about how popular culture is perceived and dealt with in the Swedish education system, this study examines how eight textbooks in Religious Education (RE) and the national curriculum for upper secondary school discuss and treat popular culture.  The study focuses on when and in what ways the textbooks mention popular culture and if the curriculum provides any supportive base for including popular culture in religious education.

The Church of Sweden had barely 6.5 million members in 2012. Just over 1% of the members visit a church service regularly every Sunday. The number of visitors in worship services has diminished continuously for a very long time. From 1990 to 2010, the annual number of visitors at the main worship services has decreased by 50% from 9 million to about 4.5 million. The service activities can still be maintained at the current level because the many passive members still pays their membership fee.

This essay focus on Jean-Jacques Rousseau and David Hume and how they in their writings describe the doctrine of the original sin, and what they replace it with. The theoretical framework this essay work form, is Peter. L Bergers theories concerning society and religion as a social construction, were religious systems purpose is to establish order and previewed a meaning for people. From a history point of view religious system and institutions have had a significant role in establish system that will provide people with explanations about the world. In the eighteenth century, during the period in Europe often named as the enlightenment a new sort of criticism took place against religion.

This essay aims to broaden the understanding of intolerance towards people with religious and/or cultural Islamic association or background. This thesis has intolerance and Islamophobia as central components and starts with the question: In what manner do twelve pupils talk about Islam and Muslims in their third year of the vocational program, in small towns and in the countryside? The survey took place in the south of Sweden in a rural municipality where a total of twelve students from the industrial, electricity and vehicle program in the Swedish gymnasiums participated in two separate focus group interviews. The essay will use an intersectional analysis to see where the students position themselves and Muslims in relation to each other and to society. The essay also contains a comparison of Islamophobia in the country side and in the city environment.

This study aims to analyse how sex and sexuality are presented in the Buddhism and Hinduism chapters of religious studies textbooks for upper secondary school. The chosen textbooks are all linked to the new curriculum Lgr 11 which was implemented in the Swedish school system in the spring of 2012. The textbooks were analysed by using two methods; content analysis and discourse analysis. Content analysis was used to examine with which frequency sexes and sexualities appear in the textbooks, while discourse analysis was used to find what discourses surround the two concepts. The discourse analysis used two theories in order to contextualize the several discourses about sex and sexuality.

AbstractThe purpose of this essay is to investigate the views Swedish elementary school teachers produce on the subject of ethics. The teachers? thoughts on selection among ethical notions is described and also how these notions are assessed. The essay proceeds from the central content and the knowledge requirement in the syllabus of religious knowledge.The empirical survey is based on qualitative scientific interviews with four teachers employed in grades 4-6 at different schools.The teachers find ethics in its current state of the syllabus hard to define and they find encounters with parents and pupils difficult in their tasks. The selection of ethics is decided by previously planned basic values education or from conflicts erupting during schools hours.