In this study, we looked at how balanced the various christian denominations in Sweden were raised in the news, on the basis of the requirement for balanced reporting. To measure the balance, we utilized Harcup and O'Neill?s news values and studied to what degree these values occurs in association with news articles that address the various denominations. The following denominations were selected for this study; Word of Life, the Pentecostal Church, Jehovah's witnesses, the Catholic Church, the Salvation Army and the Swedish Church. These denominations were then studied on the basis of news values in four of Sweden?s largest news organisations, in terms of audience numbers.

For almost a century the debate about women as ordained servants in the Church of Sweden has raged on and on. The decision to open up the priesthood for both genders in 1958 was a milestone in the women?s liberation movement as well as it marks an important time in the church history. The debate has mainly been about how to interpret scripture, who has the right to do so, and so on. Feminist theology has become one way in recent decades to paint a wider and more nuanced picture of history and how to interpret the texts often used to repress women.This essay surveys some of the steps towards that decision, as well as it paints a rough picture of what leadership among women in the church could involve before ordination became an option.

For almost a century the debate about women as ordained servants in the Church of Sweden has raged on and on. The decision to open up the priesthood for both genders in 1958 was a milestone in the women?s liberation movement as well as it marks an important time in the church history. The debate has mainly been about how to interpret scripture, who has the right to do so, and so on. Feminist theology has become one way in recent decades to paint a wider and more nuanced picture of history and how to interpret the texts often used to repress women.This essay surveys some of the steps towards that decision, as well as it paints a rough picture of what leadership among women in the church could involve before ordination became an option.

This study deals with questions about male and female, power and church, related to the Mariologies of three prominent leaders in the Church of Sweden in the last century: Erling Eidem, Paulina Mariadotter and Cristina Grenholm. The mentioned topics are important for conservative High Church people as well as for radical feminists, and they are therefore necessary to address in the context of discussions about the church´s identity and the search of greater unity.Each Mariology is related to contemporary ideas about the relations between male and female, and to the tradition of the church as the leaders themselves see it. During the years 1920-2010 the relations between the sexes changed a lot as a result of the impact of modernity, which also affected how people perceived the relationship between the individual and the tradition/authorities. The present study concludes that there is a connection between Mariology and contemporary ideas about male and female. However, the Mariologist´s attitude to the tradition of the church seems to decide which perspective is allowed to dominate.

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 Christianisation of Sweden is not much about religion. Instead, there is much to be gained by looking at it as a colonial situation with changing social identities and power structures. This is evident by the prevalence of hybridisations in the archaeological material.Some of the material categories that show the clearest example of changes are the burials from the 9th century up until about AD 1200. This is exemplified by two different Iron Age burial sites in Stockholm county, Uppland, Sweden: RAÄ 59, Valsta, in Norrsunda parish and RAÄ 40, Lilla Ullevi, in Bro parish; They both show hybridisation by involving older elements with newer ones during a time period when the church was not quite established in the region yet.The Christianisation of Sweden is a colonial situation, but the research tradition has often also used a colonial lens from the 19th and early 20th century in its approach to the period. This means that the same questions, interpretations and conclusions, often based on written sources, have been continuously reused for a long time, which has had consequences for the archaeology in Sweden..

Our purpose was to investigate if Swedish University educated social workers, living as active Christians, in any way might be influenced by Christian values. The main questions; Can Christian values be a factor in the choice of career to become a social worker? How does a personal belief in Christ impact the relationship towards the clients? Is Christian belief a support in the work? In this paper we used a qualitative method and interviewed eight persons, with a background as above, four of them employed by a church organisation and the other four working in the social sector. The result we present is that the eight Christian social workers Christian belief influenced their work very individually. How much this supported them was a choice about how official and open they wanted Christian values to be.

This essay studies the christening rites in Church of Sweden and what theological motives that are present herein, and how the current revision of the rites have brought in new theological motives with the basis in the contemporary theological debate about the liturgy and theology surrounding the christening rites.The conclusion of the essay is that the revised christening rites have not included any new motives, but has rather restructured and re-emphasized the motives to adopt the christening rites to the findings of contemporary research regarding the christening..

The objective of the essay has been the studying of the importance of religion for children. To answer and satisfy my objective, I have some questions: How do children talk about their own and others? religions? In what way do children associate themselves to religion? Which meaning does religion have for children?s identities? Which thoughts rise about religiontuition in the school?To answer the problem formulation, I have done a qualitative interview study with five children of different religious and cultural backgrounds in a Swedish communal school. The results showed that children?s thoughts about religion are mostly inherited from the parents.

Archbishop KG Hammar has attracted attention for his liberal position in theology. His view on the role of language and communication is central in several books and articles he has published as leader of the Church of Sweden. One of his main theses is the fact that meaning is created in the encounter between text and reader. He often reiterates: God is relation. This non-traditional dynamic stance has a broad impact not only on theology.

From being an exotic small religion that has existed at a fading presence in southern Iraq and Iran mandeism has moved to the West and Sweden. As more and more Mandaeans encounter a new culture and a new society in Sweden it affects not only them as individuals but also their religion mandeism. In this essay, I have begun to examine how Mandaeans think about their identity and religion. I have taken my starting point in a broad theoretical discussion of identity, religion and secularisation. Mandeism is a gnostic religion that probably has its roots in today?s Israel / Palestine and sees John the Baptist as the last prophet.

This Master?s thesis concerns the information behaviour of pastors in nonconformist churches (especially new evangelical and Baptist church communions) in Sweden in their spiritual service to the local parish. The thesis also looks into how the information flow functions in the pastors? context and why the information need appears as it does. The theory used in this study is contextual analysis based on Buckland?s, Weber?s and Patrick Wilson?s theories on authority and power structures.

The following essay aims to determine what textbooks and teaching media educators in the county of Västerbotten use when teaching the relation between religion and science. Based on educational science theory and through analyzes of factual texts, the teaching materials was examined to determine how much focus they put on the thematic of religion and science. The result shows how the different teaching materials affect this thematic differently. The main conclusion is therefore that students in Sweden could, depending on the teaching materials used in their education, be taught by different standards to reach the same requirements..

The purpose of this work is to map what musical praise and worship means to different church members. What do they think of today's worship? Are there music styles or any instruments that are not suitable? What do the members think of contemporary Christian music and the regular traditional music in church? Do we need to make changes or not? How does the Christian Music affect their spiritual lives? Finally, what do the members think of what the Bible has to say about praise and worship? My method has been to interview four persons, who all are members in the Seventh-day Adventist church in Malmö. Beside literature and magazines, I have also listened to DVD sermons and searched on the Internet and in the Bible, to find out what others have to say about praise and worship.Syftet med denna studie är att kartlägga vad lovsång betyder för olika församlingsmedlemmar. Vad anser de om dagens tillbedjan? Finns det musikstilar som inte bör finnas med i gudstjänsten? Eller finns det instrument som inte är passande i gudstjänsten? Vad tycker församlingsmedlemmar om den moderna lovsången kontra den traditionella? Behöver vi göra några förändringar eller inte? Hur påverkar den kristna musiken deras andliga liv? Och till sist, vad har de för syn på Bibelns lovsång? Min metod har varit att intervjua fyra personer som alla är medlemmar i Adventkyrkan i Malmö.

The aim of this essay is to investigate the attitudes towards religion and religious people held by a group of Swedish high school students. The main questions are; what causes these attitudes andhow do they shape the students? encounter with religion and religious people and in what way could religious education help the students problematize these attitudes?The method used is a quantitative method using a questionnaire, with a Likert scale, posing different questions about religion as such, world religion and religious people. The theoretical basis, in order to discuss the result of the questionnaire, is a gender theory and the theory of social psychology.The result of the study confirms earlier studies of youths both in Sweden and Western Europe. The result shows that there is a certain degree of negative attitudes towards religion, most of all againstIslam.