This essay describes the phases of funeral rituals between the Syrian/Assyrian, and compares the homeland with Sweden. It describes the stage of rituals according to Victor Turner schema of separation, margin or limin, and aggregation. The rituals religious significance agrees with Clifford Geertz’s theory about the importance of religious beliefs for the human being

As in most European countries the schools in Sweden historically have had close relations to the church. That was true to the medieval cathedral schools and to the first Swedish university, that of Uppsala founded in the 15th Century. That was also true when the 'gymnasia' were established in the 17th Century in the cities with cathedrals as a part of organising the Swedish 'empire' of that time preparing not only clergymen but also judges and officers for the new civil service. The lecturers of the gymnasia got their living as prebendaries of parishes around the cathedrals from that time into the 20th Century and formed the Protestant chapters of the dioceses of the Church of Sweden until the 1930s. The bishop was eforus (a kind of inspector) of the gymnasium until 1957.

Att undervisa om religion, etik och livsfrågor hör till skolans svåraste uppgifter. Den här antologin är ett bidrag till utvecklingen av ett professionellt lärarkunnande i frågor som gäller skolans undervisning på livsåskådningsområdet. Texterna har skrivits särskilt för lärarutbildningen. Författarna är erfarna pedagoger verksamma inom lärarutbildningen

Skolans värdegrund har på senare år lyfts fram i många olika sammanhang. Uppgiften att undervisa om religion, etik, och livsfrågor har också debatterats. Detta undervisningsområde hör till skolans svåraste uppgifter - men kanske också till de viktigaste. Denna antologi ger ett bidrag till utvecklingen av ett professionellt lärarkunnande i frågor som gäller skolans värdegrund och undervisning på livsåskådningsområdet.

Författarna ger utifrån sina respektive kompetensområden en belysning av några av ämnesområdets centrala aspekter.

De texter som ingår har skrivits särskilt för lärarutbildningen men kan också användas i andra sammanhang. Avsikten har varit att via texterna föra de studerande i kontakt med såväl aktuell forskning som professionell lärarkunskap av annat slag.

The Alexander I. Herzen State Pedagogical University of Russia, St. Ptersburg, was asked by the Russian Ministry of Education to prepare for a non-confessional religious education within Russian post-perestroika schools, and its scholars asked colleagues from University of Wales, Lampeter, and Linköpings universitet for assistance. Within the Tempus Tacis Pre-JEP project PETER (Promoting and Establishing a Teacher Education programme on non-confessional Religious studies) they 1995/96 gave their contributions the form of PPIs (Presentations and Problem Inventories) in which they not only described non-confessional religious education in Britain and Sweden but also clarified those problems this education is supposed to solve and the historico-cultural background of these problems. In relation to these PPIs the Russian contributors described those problems in the contemporary Russian situation which a new Russian non-confessional re-ligious education should address.

The main contributors to the PPIs are Dr William K Kay, Dr Edgar Almén, and Dr Vladislav Arzhanoukhin. These PPIs are commented by Professor Ninian Smart, then at University of California, Santa Barbara, and by Professor Berit Askling, then at Linköpings universitet. Mutual comments between the PPI-groups complete this book.

This essay is about marriages in an urban setting in contemporary Turkey. It exemplifies how a marriage arrangement is done and whether the migration into cities from the country has influenced them. I will mainly give an insider perspective by interviewing Turkish women but the essay also relates to articles about modernization’s effects on marriage forms.

For many people, Göta Canal is a tourist attraction for people on their holiday. Not so many know that the canal was originally built for trade purposes and to secure the Swedish import during times of war. Göta Canal was built 1813-1832 by Swedish workers, Swedish soldiers and Russian deserters. This essay denies the myth saying that the canal was built by Russian prisoners of war. Instead it indicates that they were deserters from Russia. The essay shows how these Russian men were greeted by the Swedish Lutheran Church. In Russia, the majority of the people belonged to the Russian Orthodox Church. This essay’s purpose is to give a first insight about who the people were that came from Russia to Sweden to work with the canal. It will also give a basic understanding about how they were integrated into the Swedish Church and if they accepted the Lutheran beliefs or if they were allowed to practise their Orthodox traditions. This essay is the very first study of all the Russians who worked with Göta Canal and lived in the county “Östergötland” close to the city “Söderköping”. The congregations in Söderköping that I’ve chosen to study closer are “S:t Laurentii” (during that time called Söderköping), “Skönberga”, “Drothem” and “Västra Husby”. I have excluded the other congregations since I haven’t been able to find any Russians moving to their areas. When the building of Göta Canal was finished, many of the families probably sought other work - either at the canal or at farms around Söderköping. I believe that the prospects to find more interesting information about these people are very good. There is a great need to control the files that this essay doesn’t take part of. To seek the roots of people can give a feeling of them coming back to life and a wish of getting to know them better. The Russians that I’ve followed came to Sweden for a reason, probably in hope of a better life. But their life didn’t become as good as they hoped for since many of them lived under very poor circumstances.

This paper examines the potential for teacher education institutions to implement a "reflection in and on action" strategy in their training programs. A central argument is that the academic context of teacher education and the "reflection" approach can support a professionalism of teachers. However, a necessary precondition is that teacher education establish fruitful co-operation with local communities and their schools. Introductory sections look at educational trends in many countries, government role, and teacher professionalization. Section 2 examines the literature on the current trend toward professionalism through reflection. Section 3 describes Swedish teacher education as an example of the implementation of this strategy. This section covers the progressive decentralization of comprehensive schools, the tradition of teacher educators as advocates for better schools, an integrated program with a diversified curriculum and staff, traditional notions of teachers' professionalization, new research-based notions of professionalization, research as a bridge between the two traditions, the agents that will shape and define professionalism, and a summary of the Swedish model. Section 4 argues that dynamic teacher education is a source for professionalism and an indirect tool for state steering.

In Melanchthon’s house in Wittenberg visitors of our days can read the following lines on a sign: “Without a knowledge of history human life is really no more than a remaining childhood, it could also be said that it is no more than a continuos darkness and blindness”.

What happened in Wittenberg almost 500 years ago is definitely history. Does it concern us at all?The history of the Reformation is certainly important for us to know about, as it had such big after-effects, not least for Sweden and the Church of Sweden. It is not the only cause for entering deeply into this part of our heritage, though. Our heritage of belief is rich and may contain unused possibilities for the Church of today, such as may be of help in the basic task of interpreting the Gospel for our time.

This book is an attempt to emphasize the most central part of the evangelical movement – its very core. It refers how this movement was inspired by Luther, how it was expressed in the congregations, and how it made markings in the confession that was read out to the emperor at the Diet of Augsburg in 1530.

This paper is mainly a discussion of Augustine’s combination of the idea that human beings have a free will with his doctrine of predestination. According to the definitions of “determinism” and “free will” suggested in this paper, the actuality of predestination excludes the possibility of human free will. Since Augustine takes starting-point in his belief in God and his assumptions about the attributes of God and human beings, such a conclusion is impossible for him. The actuality of both predestination and human free will is an important feature of his view of the relationship between human beings and God. This paper investigates how Augustine’s line of argument in De Libero Arbitrio (On Free Choice of the Will) manages to hold against a modern criticism. The primary aim is to show why Augustine’s assumption that human beings have free will is inconsistent with his assumption that God has predestined all events of the world.

This paper analyses the debate between Donald Davidson and Jaegwon Kim concerning Davidsons idea of the supervenience of the mental upon the physical. This thought is part of Davidson's general theory of the relation between mind and body; anomalous monism. The author asks wherther Kim is right that mental supervenience is insufficient to gurantee the mental causal power. The paper analyses the standpoints of both philosophers, especially regarding their definitions of "supervenience" and argues that Kim, to some extent, can be said to have misunderstood Davidson's notion of supervenience. Kim has offered definitons of "weak" and "strong" supervenience and interpreted Davidsons supervenience as being of the kind last mentioned. The author takes a standpoint opposite of Kim's and argues that Davidson's notion of supervenience is better understood as weak supervenience, but at the same time notes that it is by no means obvious that Davidsons supervenience can be said to belong to either of these categories since these refer to "possible worlds", which Davidson refuses to accept.

This thesis deals with two species of a very well known and popular method of moral justification called the method of reflective equilibrium. These two species are narrow and wide reflective equilibrium (NRE/WRE). More specifically, the thesis looks at the roles so called background theories are expected to play in WRE. The use of background theories distinguishes WRE from NRE. Whether background theories can fulfil all these roles, and whether these roles are needed at all, is discussed. One conclusion is that whether WRE is preferable to NRE or not, depends to large degree on how the key concept of coherence is understood. Given a common understanding of coherence as something thicker than mere logical consistency though, WRE is clearly preferable to NRE as a method of justification.

Many critics of non-cognitivism have argued that the existence of ‘thick moral concepts’ constitutes a serious challenge to non-cognitivist views of moral language. While this argument is frequently invoked, it has never been clearly articulated. Hence, the argument is often misinterpreted by both friends and foes of non-cognitivism. In this thesis, John McDowell’s forceful rendering of the argument is reconstructed and evaluated. According to the argument, non-cognitivism is not an adequate metaethical view because it cannot both provide an adequate analysis of thick moral concepts and construe moral discourse as rational. It is argued in this thesis that there are several ways in which non-cognitivists can avoid this conclusion. The thesis also contains a survey of various non-cognitivist views on thick moral concepts.

Föreliggande text är en analys av talet om identitet och pluralism i Olaus Petri och Södertälje-Tveta församlingar. Studien utfördes under åren 2003 och 2004 och har efter det strukturerats och analyserats. Materialet från Örebro Olaus Petri har redan använts i min licentiatavhandling, Den här presenterade texten utgör ”källmaterial” för den doktorsavhandling jag kommer att lägga fram under 2008 med titeln Gemenskap och mångfald. Den som enbart är intresserad av det empiriska materialet kan läsa texten fristående från avhandlingen och på så sätt få en bild av undersökningen. Metodkapitlet tjänar funktionen att göra denna text läsbar och möjlig att förstå. Den som också är intresserad av den teologiska analysen av materialet hänvisas till avhandlingen, där det också kommer att finnas ett mer utbyggt metodkapitel.

Niclas Blåder

This thesis in social anthropology is based on interviews with four hunters from the middle of Sweden. It is about how the hunters get their traditional knowledge and how important it is to grow up and live in rural areas for the knowledge and understanding of hunting. The essay is also about the difference between the hunters from rural areas and the hunters from urban areas. It also examines how the rural hunters speak about the true and real hunter.

The publication is based upon the first English translation of some essential parts of Professor Anders Nygren’s dissertation Religiöst Apriori. Dess filosofiska förutsättningar och teologiska konsekvenser [Religious Apriori: Its Philosophical Presuppositions and Theological

Consequences], 1921. In this work, Nygren established the foundation for his subsequent philosophical and theological thinking. Important theoretical and methodological perspectives that laid the groundwork in the thinking of Anders Nygren have hereby been made accessible for the English-speaking world.

A short biographical introduction to Anders Nygren is given, followed by an comprehensive introduction to the Religious Apriori, including an assessment of Nygren’s achievement.

The extensive bibliography includes works in English by relevant Swedish theologians.

Ingen fråga har väckt så stor uppmärksamhet i Svenska kyrkan på 1900-talet som frågan om kvinnliga präster. Då och då under årens lopp har frågan kommit i fokus och förmedlats till allmänheten genom TV, radio och tidningar. År 1958 fick kvinnan genom kyrkomötets beslut tillträde till prästtjänst på samma villkor som en man. Lagen trädde i kraft den 1 januari 1959. Kvinnans väg till den prästerliga tjänsten har varit lång och föregicks av nästan fyrtio års diskussioner på kyrkomöten och i Riksdagen. Diskussionerna startade år 1919 d.v.s. betydligt senare än diskussionerna i den statliga debatten som gällde kvinnans tillträde till statsämbetet. Diskussionerna i den "världsliga" debatten startade på 1860-talet. Idag, drygt fyrtio år efter 1958 års beslut pågår fortfarande, inom kyrkliga kretsar, diskussionen om kvinnans rätt och hennes lämplighet till prästtjänst. De som är emot kvinnliga präster hävdar bestämt att deras övertygelse inte handlar om att de har en patriarkal nedvärderande kvinnosyn där kvinnan är underordnad mannen. Tvärtom är motståndarna till kvinnliga präster noga med att upphöja kvinnan. De menar att deras ställningstagande i stället bygger på bibliska och teologiska grunder. Många av dem som är motståndare till kvinnliga präster menar att kyrkans beslut 1958 endast var en eftergift mot staten. Idag har diskussionen bland motståndarna i hög grad ändrat fokus från kvinnans rätt att inneha prästtjänst, till den utsatta position de manliga prästerna upplever att de befinner sig i då de på grund av sin bibeltolkning och tradition inte anser sig kunna tjänstgöra tillsammans med kvinnliga präster. Motståndarnas kamp handlar idag mycket om att kunna utöva sitt ämbete enligt sin trosövertygelse.

Syftet med denna uppsats är att undersöka vilka argument som fördes mot kvinnliga präster under 1900-talet med betoning på de argument som kom fram under kyrkomötena år 1957 och 1958. Jag kommer också att undersöka vilka argument motståndarna använder sig av idag. Vidare kommer jag att jämföra argumenten som fördes i debatten på 1920- och 1930-talet om kvinnans tillträde till det statliga ämbetet med de argument som fördes mot kvinnliga präster på 1950-talet. Slutligen vill jag undersöka hur motargumenten har förändrats över tid.

   The utilization of information and communication technologies in almost all spheres of modern society has changed the social picture in significant ways while simultaneously leading to tensions with regard to traditional ethical and legal practices—particularly given the global context of its application. Where these technologies impact on the practice and implementation of healthcare, it is vital to recognize the extent and nature of the ethical and social impact both at the level of professional practice and the patient. Ethical, Legal and Social Issues in Medical Informatics presents a fundamental compendium of research on the ethical, social, and legal issues facing the healthcare industry as it adopts information technologies to provide fast, efficient, and cost effective healthcare. An essential resource for every reference library, this comprehensive book offers a multidisciplinary perspective, drawing from the expertise of a wide variety of global industries including law, ethics, medicine, philosophy, and computer science.