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.

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.

The aim of my thesis is to unveil orientalistic powerstructures in the new national curriculum for Religious studies in Swedish upper secondary schools. Western imperialism and modernistic ideals has formed the Swedish perception of what constitutes as Swedish, this perception also influences the Swedish religious understanding. This understanding is imbedded in the national curriculum for Religious studies which enables a western hegemony to prevail..

The aim of my thesis is to unveil orientalistic powerstructures in the new national curriculum for Religious studies in Swedish upper secondary schools. Western imperialism and modernistic ideals has formed the Swedish perception of what constitutes as Swedish, this perception also influences the Swedish religious understanding. This understanding is imbedded in the national curriculum for Religious studies which enables a western hegemony to prevail..

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.

The aim of my thesis is to unveil orientalistic powerstructures in the new national curriculum for Religious studies in Swedish upper secondary schools. Western imperialism and modernistic ideals has formed the Swedish perception of what constitutes as Swedish, this perception also influences the Swedish religious understanding. This understanding is imbedded in the national curriculum for Religious studies which enables a western hegemony to prevail..

Study: Degree project in teacher education, Advanced level, 15 hpUniversity of SkövdeTitle: Religious belief in everyday life ? a study of the effects of a teachingmodel focusing on religious belief in everyday lifeNumber of pages:42Author: Johanna ClaessonTutor: Kennert OrleniusDate: Jan 2009 Keywords: Religious study, students´ understanding, students´ commitment,Buddhism  This paper presents the execution and the result of a project examining how a tutorial model (called the model of everyday religious practice) focusing on how Buddhism is expressed in the daily life of Buddhists believers, affects students understanding of and commitment in Religious studies. In the project, Thai students have partaken by producing sex posters and a picture-show with the help of their own photographs and short texts. However, the picture-show was mainly produced by the author of this paper. These posters and the picture-show were brought to Sweden to figure as teaching material during a lesson in Religious studies for students in year eight in a Swedish school.

Den du är, inte den du förväntas vara ? en kvalitativ studie av läroböcker i religionskunskap och dess behandling av kön, sexualitet och etnicitet (Who you are, not who you are expected to be - a qualitative studie of textbooks in Religious studies and the treatment of gender, sexuality and ethnicithy) is a qualitative study with the primary focus to examine textbooks as a resource for the teacher. Focus is put on how gender, sexuality and ethnicity is portrayed in textbooks for Religious studies in upper secondary school. The textbooks are also examined as a resource based on their usefulness. To do this a hermeneutic approach was taken and the textbooks were studied based on the knowledge they provided and their readability.

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 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.

This paper studies three Swedish textbooks for the A-course in Religious studies, in the Swedish equivalency of high school, to see if the image of Islam and Muslims presented is diverse or homogeneous and exotic. The purpose of the study is to see whether or not the Religious studies can contribute to the forming of islamophobic beliefs in pupils. Studies have shown that islamophobia is widespread in Sweden, therefore it could be interesting to see if the schools play any part in the forming or spreading of islamophobic views. The conclusion reached is that this cannot be excluded as a possibility. There are still some textbooks that present Muslims in a homogeneous and exotic manner to some degree.

Religious congregations and social work have long been a neglected field of research. Although the number of studies have increased during the last twenty years. With a starting point in the situation in this field of research and in the current public debate in Sweden the focus of this study will be on how Christian and Muslim congregations view cooperating with the municipalities, organizations, the religious community to whom which the congregation belongs and how the congregations view cooperating with other religious communities. Qualitative method of research was used. Representatives of four religious congregations was interviewed; a deacon in a congregation in the Swedish Lutheran Church, a pastor in a congregation belonging to the Mission Covenent Church of Sweden, the chairman in a the board of a Muslim congregation and volunteerleader in another Muslim congregation.

The following essay examines if five Swedish textbooks aimed for Religious studies in upper secondary school might show similar flaws to those presented by the Swedish Schools Inspectorate in their review of Religious studies conducted in 2012. The method used in this essay is a qualitative study of Swedish textbooks influenced by Lantz definition of wide and thin ethics. This in practice means that I have analysed the five Swedish textbooks using thin and broad ethics while conducting the analysis of the five. The purpose of the essay was to see if the flaws presented in ?Mer än vad du kan tro? regarding ethics and moral education might be present in Swedish textbooks as well.

The purpose of this study is to analyse and compare how religious and non-religious world views are described and represented in three Swedish textbooks. The main question of this study is: How do three textbooks for the first stage of Religious studies in high school represent non-religious and religious world views based on the text analysis tools: ethos, modality and transitivity?The three textbooks that are being analysed and compared were produced in the years of 2000, 2002 and 2009. The textbooks are used when teaching the first stage of Religious studies in Swedish high school. The text analysis that I´ve chosen to use in this study is a part of Norman Faircloughs critical discourse analysis.

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.