This is a study of American Methodist Mission in Sweden and how this mission eventually formed the Methodist Church in Sweden 1876. The mission began as a consequence of returning Swedish emigrants and sailors who had encountered Methodism in America, mainly through the works of Swedish-American missionary Olof Gustaf Hedström on the Bethel ship in New York. During the 1850?s Methodist missionaries were sent to Scandinavia by the American Missions Society. The first to come to Sweden was Johan Peter Larsson, who spent two years in Sweden in 1854 before he was transferred to Norway.

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.

The purpose of this essay is to examine clergywomen?s experience of discrimination within the Swedish church as to clergywomen?s opinions about their work and their work situation and how they handle contingent discrimination. The method used in this essay is qualitative, and in order to create an understanding of the topic we have used semi structured interviews and text analysis. Three clergywomen have been interviewed and in addition to this we have studied four clergywomen's reports to JämO regarding gender discrimination. The analysis is based upon a social constructivist perspective and Hirdman's gender system theory.

The Church of Sweden sent during the spring 2010 two documents, Teologiskagrundprinciper för arbetet I 2006 års handboksgrupp and Mässans grundordning forconsideration. The documents are parts in the work with writing a new service-book for theChurch of Sweden. After the documents had been sent for consideration by the dioceses therehas been a discussion about the proposal to make the preparation in the service of HolyCommunion facultative. My main question has been to se if there will be any change of theconfession, faith and doctrine in the Church of Sweden if the preparation becomes facultative.I have seen that the service-book is an expression for the confession of the Church of Sweden,therefore there will be no change of the confession of the Church of Sweden, but a change ofits expression.I have seen that there is no consensus in how the dioceses react over what is written in thetwo documents about the forgiveness and the atonement. My conclusion is that it may bydifficult for the Church of Sweden to fix a new service-book without first fix what the Churchof Sweden means with forgiveness and atonement..

Nathan Söderblom, Swedish archbishop 1914 - 1931, understands his role as bishop from an integrated theological conception that episcopacy is a gift to the church and the apostolic succession a heritage of utmost value. Episcopacy is an important tool to make the churches come together. in his work for peace during the Great War it was through his position without any power that he could approach the politicians. His calling was not only for Sweden; he had a responsibility for the whole world. In the Ecumenical Cope for the 1925 Stockholm meeting Söderblom expressed his views on the importance of the Uppsala see.

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 purpose of this thesis is to illustrate how non-profit organizations map the market of potential donors and how they apply their knowledge about the motives of the potential donors. The case-study of Church of Sweden Aid shows how a Swedish non-profit organization applies this in the daily work. In its strategic marketing the organization actively use marketing surveys in different forms. By employing an analyst Church of Sweden Aid has a possibility to make another step forward in order to understand its donor market and to adjust its strategic marketing plan to it. Church of Sweden Aid says that they don?t work with the donor?s motives.

Through the lenses of religion?s role in society, the purpose of this thesis is to examine, the role of the Church of Sweden in providing support to people at the end of life. Questions asked are:  "What types of spiritual support is offered by the Church of Sweden during terminal care provided in patients' homes and how is this support expressed in church orders, assembly instructions, plans of operations and congregation letters?" and " How can the work of the Church of Sweden be understood, based on theories of religion's role in society? The method used is a content analysis of the Church Order, assembly instructions, plans of operations and congregation letters in 17 different congregations within the diocese of Lund. I then engage in a discussion with theories on differentiation and the privatization of religion as a means to interpret my results.

This study is based on the notion of "the postsecular society". I have identified both similar and dissimilar values within current and official publications regarding human rights and gender equality authored by the Swedish Feminist Party and the Church of Sweden. The aim of this study is to identify and review similarities and differences in values, as expressed in definitions and standpoints, and also to try to explain how it is that the actors have similar and dissimilar values. In this context I have chosen the sociologist Jürgen Habermas's theory about "the postsecular society" to increase the understanding how and why similar values within religious and secular actors are presented in, what Habermas calls, "the postsecular society". I have used a qualitative and comparative content analysis for this study. The result shows that the Swedish Feminist Party has a more humanistic view.

This essay describes Marcion, his life, religion and achievements. He was active 120 ? 160and was a leading christian gnostics or a christian extreme paulinist.Marcion regarded himself as the only true interpreter of christianity. He meant that theCreator God was the jews God, while the Superior God of Love and Grace, was the Father ofJesus and God for all people and Gods.Marcions church grew very fast. It was united, widespread with canon and liturgy around 150AD.

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.

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.

At the turn of the century 18/1900 Swedish law looked upon young people as being adults at about the age of 15. At 15, the young person had left school, had his first employment and provided for himself and also had been confirmed to full membership of the Swedish State Church. Thus he was to be considered an adult and responsible for his actions. Parents, society/school and Church had done what was expected of them and now it was up to the 15-years old to live according to the laws and to be punished if the laws were broken. Over the following hundred years, at the time of the millennium, Swedish society changed a lot.

This thesis aims to investigate and discuss the possibility for women in the early Christian church to make music, which in the ancient Roman society was something complicated. Afemale musician was looked upon as decadent and dissolute. This idea, in combination with the music ideals of the church influenced by the Neoplatonic movement, and the Pauline statement (1 Cor. 14:34-36), cast women to be completely prohibited in participating even in the psalmody during the service. My purpose is to discuss how this was looked upon in different Christian regions, using the church fathers as the main material source, since this has not previously been well documented or studied..

This diploma work handles how some parishes of the Swedish Church administrate their building properties.The report also includes how some external property managers in Sweden work with maintenance plans and other maintenance issues. Further, a number of deficiencies have been identified and suggestions to workarounds are treated. The conclusions drawn in this thesis are based on the author´s experience in the field, performed interviews, and literature studies. The result of the work shows a general lack of knowledge in many parishes what concerns regulatory requirements, properties with no maintenance plan and substandard supervision resulting in unnecessary and expensive repairs. Based on these results, different plans for the maintenance of the building properties of the Swedish Church has been proposed..