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.

I wanted to focus this essay on the operative?s perspective of running religious organizations in the city of Karlstad and to see positive and negative aspects of their day-to-day life working with their organization, following up with a comparison of the difference and the similarities between those groups. After delimitating which groups I was going to examine, I implemented a qualitative study of four people, from two different religious groups, whom I performed interviews with. My method of performing these interviews and understanding the perspective of the informants, I had a semi structured interview guide along with a recent study that was opting for similar conclusions, only in a different county and with different input perspective. The result of my study showed a difference in establishment of their region but with a lot of similarities in problems with their religious and structural premises.

This study deals with religious independent schools and its impact on society. The purpose of this essay has been to examine what various teachers from both religious independent schools and public schools have for perception of religious independent schools. The questions highlighted in the study is the teachers´ general view to religious independent schools, teachers´ perception of the Education Act " a denominational education, but a non- denominational teaching", and what teachers believe to be segregated or inclusive.The study has consisted of five qualitative interviews with different teachers, where three of them work at religious independent schools, while the other two teachers work in public schools.The study shows that there are prominent differences of approach to religious independent schools. Teachers who work at religious independent schools avert criticism of religious independent schools and argue that teaching in religious independent schools do not differ appreciably from the public schools. Instead can religious independent schools serve as a good alternative to the public school.

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.

My aim for this essay is to investigate if The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is a religious sect, on the basis of literature and information about the Mormons organisation and their religious standpoints. My conclusion is that Mormon Church is a religious sect. Their organisation has several sect characteristics according to sect definitions; see for example Göran Gustafsson (2000), Mikael Rothstein (1997) and Bryan R. Wilson (1970). Other researchers in religious studies think that the Mormon Church is not a sect but a cult.

This study is based on qualitative and hermeneutic methods. The investigation summarises how four textbooks present Buddhism in (school) subject Religion, such as texts and images. Two of them are used in Religious studies A, the rest is used in Religious studies 1. The study rests on the theories of orientalism and christocentrism, where both can be related to the concept of making secondary. In the research background there are descriptions of how the western world looks upon Buddhism in a historical perspective, but also how Buddhism in a modern age is represented.

The purpose of this essay is to describe what difficulties and challenges are for teachers of religious education at upper secondary school. The essay is written from a teacher's perspective, where the focus is on the teacher's perceptions of the difficulties and challenges of teaching religious education. The methodology for the collection of information was done through qualitative interviews. Previous research shows that one of the challenges in the teaching profession is the interpretation of the curriculum, and then which of those is correct. The essay shows that the biggest challenges that teachers experience in the subject of religious education is the students' prejudice against different religious groups, and also the difficulty of getting students to understand the purpose of what is being taught.

This paper?s main goal is to study how religious studies teachers and religious studies teacherstudents reason concerning armed religious conflicts, with fundamentalism and terrorism ascentral concepts. The study does this with the use of semi-structured interviews. The resultsare analyzed with a phenomenographic analysis with the interviewees? understanding of thecentral concepts being the target of the interviews.

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 study aims to investigate how, in Montesquieu?s Persian Letters (1721), religion and religious structures are presented to influence women?s position in French society.In Persian Letters Montesquieu presents a dogmatic religious life, which proceed from a literal interpretation of the bible. Such a reading raises critical questions concerning the nature of women, and subsequently places man over woman. Persian Letters show how this male dominance gets institutionalized in marriage. The religious life depicted is also distinguished by a non-genuine religious conviction and by acts which take on a simulation form.

This study is an attempt to investigate religious perceptions and its development, function and connection to religious practise within the Swedish extreme metal scene. This is performed mainly by a qualitative method of investigation, studying lyrical content published on a number of extreme metal albums, thereafter relating the lyrical progression to the progession of the scene as a whole and also to the development of individual religious belief and practise.The lyrically expressed manifestations of religiosity within the extreme metal scene prove to be related to religious practise in some cases, most visibly in the Christian parts of the scene.The study also indicates that development of religious expression often is evident regardless of religious preference. This development also regularly relates to an increase in musical evolution and prowess often achieved with increased age and maturity.Musically and lyrically, the extreme metal scene displays transgressive attributes which assist both individual and group in the process of creating identity, meaning and individuality.Experiencing extreme metal, in concert or in the privacy of one´s own home, can be one way of perceiving spirituality in this modern age..

This paper is based on a study of the Christian religious school. In Sweden today, surveys have shown that there is a common fear and negative attitude towards Christian religious schools. Despite this fact these schools increase in numbers, which makes it relevant to investigate what reasons the parents base their decision on when making Christian religious schools their school of choice for their children. The formulation of the question in this paper is therefore based on why the parents choose to place their children in a Christian religious school. Previous research on this topic is very scarce and poor, which makes it a relevant topic to investigate more thoroughly.

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.

In a Swedish classroom today there will be students with different ethnicities, world views and religious beliefs.  The students will be taught religion through a non-denominational education, where as a teacher you are meant to be objective, open-minded and fair in the representation of different traditions. This representation is colored by the outsider-perspective and the students then learn about religion from a party which is not involved in the religion being taught. This essay discusses how to balance the outsider-perspective in religious education in the Swedish school with insider-voices. More specific, the use of Muslim websites when teaching about Islam.The material this essay studies are three Muslim websites: al-islam.se, islaminfo.se and islamguiden.se. In order to make a didactic analysis of the websites, they are compared to a standard Swedish textbook.

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.