Föredraget utgår från ett enkelt antagande: även vi som inte tror på UFOn borde ta dem på allvar eftersom berättelser om UFOn kan säga oss mycket om livet på jorden. UFO-frågan kan t.ex. belysa politiska och kulturella konflikter, särskilt när den behandlas utifrån ett historiskt perspektiv. Religionsvetaren Martin Lund vid Malmö Universitet diskuterar några av dessa konflikter i relation till forskning om bl.a. konspirationsteorier.

Mindfulness är den mest utbredda engelska översättningen av begreppet sati, och förstås i dagligt tal – liksom i kliniska och experimentella program – som synonymt med medveten närvaro. Inom de buddhistiska traditioner begreppet härstammar ifrån har sati flera olika betydelser, och hänger samman med buddhistiska idéer om etik, jagets obeständighet, frigörelse från återfödelse och upplysning. Dessa aspekter tonas ner när mindfulness saluförs och utövas på sekulära arenor. I denna text lyfts de idéhistoriska rötterna till samtida mindfulness liksom frågor om vilka som utövar mindfulness idag, och i vilka sammanhang. I texten identifieras även områden för framtida forskning.  

De viktigaste slutsatserna är att

• Utvecklingen av mindfulness i väst är resultatet av kulturella utbyten mellan buddhistiska lärda och västerländska uttolkare av buddhism sedan 1800-talets slut.
• Meditation förstås ofta samtidigt som buddhismens kärna och som något som kan frikopplas från buddhistiska läror, ritualer och traditioner.
• I dagens Asien har förståelsen av mindfulness starkare kopplingar till buddhistiska läror än i väst.
• Samtida förståelser av mindfulness formas av utbyten mellan vetenskapliga och andliga arenor.
• Många västerländska lärare i mindfulness är själva skolade i buddhistisk meditation, men betonar vetenskap och personlig erfarenhet när mindfulness utövas på sekulära arenor.
• Den mesta forskningen om samtida mindfulness fokuserar på lärare eller producenter, medan vi vet mindre om människor som utövar mindfulness i vardagen.
• De flesta som utövar mindfulness i väst idag är kvinnor, trots det finns det endast ett fåtal studier av samtida mindfulness ur ett genusperspektiv.

The rapidly growing popularity of Christian Seders in recent years has been accompanied by the equally rapid emergence of a genre of “how-to” guides that tell celebrants, among other things, how to structure their evenings – what to do and when – and how Jesus is supposed to be understood to have fulfilled the hopes and promises embedded in the Seder and Haggadah. This paper positions the genre as a social phenomenon tied to a process of authentication, through which Christian Seders are simultaneously re-positioned as a form of authentically Christian practice and legitimized as such over and against ongoing critiques that the practice is an appropriative and supersessionist one. The paper maps and discusses recurring elements in the guides and analyzes their shared symbols, ideas, and objects to highlight the major constituent parts of supersessionist rhetorics of authenticity about Christian Seder practices. Using a critical form of social semiotics, the analysis highlights how guide-authors navigate both the modal affordances of traditionally Jewish practice and narrative and an historically Christian epistemological framework in their commitment to suturing them into a newly-fabricated and artificially-aged whole. This suturing is an appropriative process that often requires overexplicit Christian or Christianizing anchoring of core semiotic resources for Christian Seders to be legitimized. As historically conceived, neither Seders nor, for example, the conception of Jesus as the Paschal lamb or as Jewish, allow for easy cross-cultural translation; both modalities need to be actively shaped for any claim that they are related to be made. This shift, or suturing, may entail linking the New Testament last supper to the Passover meal or convincing readers how an element of the Seder should be understood to symbolize something Christian, often Easter-related. This is neither a neutral nor self-evident reframing of the Seder; how-to guides allow socially situated, often but not exclusively white US American Evangelical Protestants, to name and claim a Jewish practice as their own in a dual sense: on the one hand, they demonstrate the practice for newcomers and, on the other, justify, legitimize, and mark it as authentic.

Homosexuality, bisexuality, transgender and queer have long been a sensitive topic in Christian churches. As society has changed, some denominations have become increasingly affirming, while others see the changes as incompatible with Christian values.

 A Conditional Community is based on in-depth interviews with 29 lgbtq Christians and is the first Swedish scientific study on the subject. Using a phenomenological approach, the author investigate how sexuality, intimacy and faith are experienced by the interviewees and how their Christian identity interacts with their identity as lgbtq people. 

A Conditional Community is aimed at teachers, researchers and students in fields such as religious studies, sexology, gender studies and psychology. The book is also of interest to professionals who require knowledge on the subject, such as pastors and therapists. Furthermore, it can serve as a basis for discussions and reflection on faith, sexuality and lgbtq in the Free Church contexts.

Denna antologi erbjuder forskningsbaserade och didaktiska perspektiv på religion och samhällsförändringar. Antologin är resultatet av ett samarbete mellan forskare från flera olika discipliner vid Malmö universitet och visar på den mångfald av forskningsperspektiv som ryms inom ämnesområdet religionsvetenskap i Sverige idag.

Antologin vänder sig till studenter och verksamma lärare samt en vidare intresserad läsekrets som önskar få tillgång till aktuell forskning och fördjupa sin ämnesteoretiska kunskap. Genom fyra teman belyses aktuella perspektiv på brännande frågor inom samtida religionsvetenskaplig forskning: Religion, kön och sexualitet, Religion, unga och skola, Religion, möten och förändringar samt Religion, politik och samtid.

I en samtid som präglas av ständigt pågående förändring är religion och livsåskådningsfrågor synnerligen aktuella. Mötet mellan historiska traditioner och nutida samhällsutveckling visar hur inte bara religiösa rörelser, utan också människors trosuppfattningar och identiteter, omtolkas och förändras över tid. Undervisningen i religionskunskap i grund- och gymnasieskolan utgår från att kunskap om religion och andra livsåskådningar är central för vår förståelse av en omvärld som i allt större utsträckning präglas av mångfald och förändring.

Kapitlet behandlar mayas kosmologi, religion och tidsfilosfi i ett historiskt perspektiv i Mesoamerika. Såväl förspanska hieroglyfkodexar som tidigkoloniala källor presenteras och analyseras med fokus på myter och ritualer från förspansk tid till vår samtid. Även mayas tidsfilosofi och de några av de olika kalendersystemen belyses och särskilt fokus ges mytbildningen kring världens undergång som förknippas med slutet på den långa räkningens kalendercykel år 2012.  Kapitlet avslutas med reflektioner kring kontinuitet och förändring avseende nutida andlighet på Yukatan i Mexiko med särskild betoning på eko-turism, shamanism samt healing- och wellness-ritualer.

Översättning av hemsida som samlar Förintelseöverlevandes vittnesmål om livet och erfarenheter i Theresienstadt och illustrerar dem på olika sätt med hjälp av interaktiva kartor. Hemsidan är en produkt av ett forskningsprojekt som letts av Therkel Stræde vid Syddansk universitet i Odense.

Presentation om processen att arbeta med översättning av hemsidan "De danska judarna i  Theresienstadt" till svenska.

In 1920, the Swiss-American music teacher and occultist Leah Hirsig (1883–1975) was appointed ‘Scarlet Woman’ by the British occultist Aleister Crowley (1875–1947), founder of the religion Thelema. In this role, Hirsig was Crowley’s right-hand woman during a formative period in the Thelemic movement, but her position shifted when Crowley found a new Scarlet Woman in 1924. Hirsig’s importance in Thelema gradually declined, and she distanced herself from the movement in the late 1920s. The article analyses Hirsig’s changing status in Thelema 1919–1930, proposing the term proximal authorityas an auxiliary category to Max Weber’s tripartite typology. Proximal authority is defined as authority ascribed to or enacted by a person based on their real or perceived relational closeness to a leader. The article briefly draws on two parallel cases so as to demonstrate the broader applicability of the term in highlighting how relational closeness to a leadership figure can entail considerable yet precarious power.

The COVID-19 global pandemic impacted all social relations, including the way religious communities engage in worship services. Due to strict social distancing protocols, the only viable solution for many congregations was online worship. This article investigates how platforms in cyberspace, such as Zoom, can provide a substitute for the core religious practices found in physical worship services, particularly for African Pentecostal believers who rely heavily-on the aesthetic and sensory experience of their religious environment. Drawing on the theoretic-al concept of affordance, it is argued that digital affordances such as the chat box and emojis are used by believers to communicate affective moments arising from the sensory experience of worship. Members of the congregation become 'digital spiritual hype people-' who render support to leaders in order to create and regenerate an affective environment where the presence of the Holy Spirit can be felt. The Holy Spirit, a fundamental pillar for Evangelical Christians, is understood as an embedded presence within the digital infrastructure. The internet connection, the phone and computers and screens are all re-appropriated as spiritual tools through which miraculous healing can be dispensed to believers in need. This research stands at a critical juncture between what might be termed the `pre-COVID era' and the `post-COVID era'. As vaccination plans continue to roll out and social distancing measures are slowly being lifted, a `post-COVID era' for African Pente-costals means negotiating the boundaries between online and offline spaces to fulfil core religious practices.

This study concerns factors which might lead young Muslims in minority communities in Sweden towards a Salafist understanding of the Islamic message. Previous research, particularly in psychology and psychiatry, highlights adolescent-specific factors such as psychological vulnerability with possible depression, including death wishes, as well as social factors such as family dysfunction and discrimination, as being crucial. The aim of this study is to take a minority perspective in discussing possible reasons for, and consequences of, young members of minorities’ self-distancing from the majority society. The theoretical framework employed is identity formation. The study relies on participation in Muslim communities, interviews with Muslims conducted in the south of Sweden from the late 1980 onwards, and literature and newspaper articles written by or about youths with immigrant backgrounds.

The results of the study indicate that the non-extremist Muslim parent generation’s relationship with the majority society during their children’s formative years might influence these children’s attitudes towards the majority society as they grow older. Muslim immigrants’ insecurity in the new society is conveyed to and transformed by the next generation, and may play an unintentional role in young Muslims turning to Salafist understandings of the Islamic message.

Furthermore, the Swedish policy of ‘diversity’ (‘Mångfald’) tends to create fertile ground for this understanding, as it creates majority acceptance of the Muslim parent generation staying apart from the majority society and raising the next generation with little or no loyalty to the majority society.

In this article, we listen to young people having arrived in Sweden as unaccompanied minors, in relation to how they talk about and relate to religion, belief and practice. There is still a lack of research focusing on these young people's own narratives and experiences in their everyday life. This is particularly noteworthy since this category of young people, and especially those with a 'Muslim heritage', have received increased attention both in research and in public discourse. For two years, we have ethnographically followed 20 young people with asylum status in Sweden, who all arrived as unaccompanied minors and all came from areas of the world where Islam is the dominant religion. The conclusions are that these young people both need to navigate and are affected by the current political and social context questioning Muslim people, and that this is the case regardless of their own personal relationship to Islam. Further, religious faith needs to be related to its social and emotional embodiments, since it is here religious belief, shifts, changes and resistance, take place. Finally, we discuss how physical, temporal and social distance makes it possible to create other identities, and other ways of being religious or not.

The Knutby Filadelfia Congregation, founded in 1921, started out as a Pentecostal congrega- tion. It has, however, been considered a deviant and semi-isolated new religious movement ever since it became known to the public after a murder took place within its community in 2004. The massive media attention it received revealed the presence of a charismatic leader within the group, and the development of a new theology in which the charismatic leader was con- sidered to be the Bride of Christ. After 2004, the congregation reinforced its boundaries with society, and then suddenly began to dissolve in 2016. This study discusses the development of totalistic features within the congregation from the perspective of sociologist Erving Goffman; it highlights the simultaneous presence of in-group as well as out-group social stigma; and it explores the conflicting presentations of childhood in the congregation in performances from before and after the dissolution of the congregation. The results are based on empirical material from 25 semi-structured interviews with children and youth aged 7–25, 2 focus group interviews with youths, and 24 days of participant obser- vations. Goffman’s theoretical framework, including the key concepts total institutions, stigma, and presentations, is used together with an interpretative phenomenological analysis approach in order to explore the experiences of childhoods as presented by children and youth within the congregation. The findings suggest that their individual understandings of and responses to the presence of a charismatic authority, as well as the consequences of such authorities on parent–child relations, are individual. The Pre-Narratives focus on stigmatisation from society, while the Post-Narratives include stigma within the congregation in the form of social exclusion. The study further indicates that the presentations of childhoods given prior to and after the dissolution of the congregation, the so-called Pre- and Post-Narratives, differ due to changing dramaturgical loyalties, although they should both be considered front-stage activity in Goffman’s terms.

Hur är det att vara barn och växa upp i en religiös minoritetsgrupp som Hare Krishna, Scientologi-kyrkan, Jehovas Vittnen, Knutby Filadelfia, Plymouth-bröderna, Enighetskyrkan eller Guds Barn/Familjen? Boken bygger framför allt på ett 70-tal intervjuer med såväl vuxna som barn som vuxit upp i dessa grupper, samt på intervjuer med ett 20-tal föräldrar, men också på fältobservationer och textstudier av gruppernas material kring barn och barnuppfostran. Livsvillkoren för barnen kan vara mycket olika, bland annat för att de olika religiösa grupperna har olika ideologier och syn på barnuppfostran, men också på individuella omständigheter inom olika familjer, fas i gruppens utveckling samt samhällets gensvar och reaktioner på gruppen ifråga. Boken diskuterar teman som socialisation, identitet, avhopp och skolgång, men tar också upp farhågor kring dessa grupper som auktoritär uppfostran, aga, isolering från samhället, separationer mellan föräldrar och barn, och bristande omsorg vad gäller mat och hälsa. Författare är professor i religionsvetenskap Liselotte Frisk, Högskolan Dalarna, fil. dr Peter Åkerbäck, Stockholms Universitet, och doktorand Sanja Nilsson, Högskolan Dalarna och Göteborgs universitet.

Aim of the study The overriding aim of this study is to gain access to recent, experience-based pictures of church leadership in times of organizational change in a Swedish Lutheran context. Additionally, we are interested in the thoughts and beliefs as regards improving organization and successful leadership in times of change. In this paper, we use the theories of post-heroic leadership and of leadership as the management of meaning. Our research questions focus on the experiences and the impact of leadership in times of organizational change as well as on suggestions for improvement.

Based on fieldwork in the United States, the article analyses the social construction of gender in contemporary OTO. The article addresses an important and often neglected area of study in research on Western esotericism, and discusses how the notion of binary gender is both created and challenged in interactions between OTO members. Thelemic divinity as presented in Liber AL is envisioned as consisting of a divine father, Hadit, mother Nuit, and Ra-Hoor-Khuit, their divine offspring. Despite the gender polarity constructed thus, contemporary OTO members stretch the boundaries of binary gender through a plethora of deities, personal gender performances and acceptance of different sexual orientations and lifestyles. The creativity and innovation of contemporary OTO members' gender constructions demonstrates the necessity of greater methodological diversity in research on Western esotericism, in order to allow an understanding of esoteric traditions as lived religions.

This chapter discuss Ritual Space and Speech as central components in Yucatec Maya religion over time. The analysis is based on texts, i.e. manuscripts recording myths, historiography, medical and astrological treatises, as well as empirical fieldwork. In the chapter Post-Colonial Theory is combined with historical ecology. The sacralised, cultural, landscape is seen as a mediator between the physical landscape and the Maya cosmology and articulated in the prophecies that are recorded in the texts. The resilience of Maya belief is explained by a homology between actor, play, and stage and is brought about by tested, multi-layered ritual procedures that are both agricultural and cosmological. These rituals connect the Pre-Columbian cosmology that they make present with the landscape they organise and sacralize, and that are performed by ritual specialists in relation to Post-Colonial powers and a Mayanized, syncretistic Christianity.

The Family International (TFI) is a religious movement that emerged in the late 1960s. It was founded by David Berg (1919?1994), who later came to be perceived by adherents as the End-Time Prophet. The movement is based on Christian theology but has never had more than 10 000 followers. It has, however, made itself internationally famous through a radical interpretation of the Bible and critique of mainstream society. The Family has received media attention partly due to its liberal views on sexuality. The group is well-known within the research field of sociology of religion and new religious movements, and has been extensively studied as a “high-tension” group that has limited and regulated contact with mainstream society. Although there are some excellent in-depth case studies on the Family, the group is constantly changing due to its theology being based on continuous prophecy. This means that the group’s doctrines and praxis have changed considerably over the course of its 40-year history. This article examines the latest change in The Family International, called the Reboot, which was implemented in September 2010, in order to get a clearer picture of what constitutes this shift. This article also aims to show how changes in social boundaries due to the implementation of the Reboot are perceived by some members of The Family International.

Hur man uppfostrar barn inom nyreligiösa rörelser är en ständig debattfråga. Ofta dras vitt skilda grupper över en kam, inte sällan styrs debatten av ett ensidigt perspektiv och gamla uppgifter. När föreställningar byggda på förutfattade meningar får ersätta fakta finns risk för att barn som växer upp inom nyreligiösa rörelser tar skada genom samhällets oförmåga att leta efter likheter snarare än olikheter. Bristen på kunskap om dessa barns faktiska uppväxtvillkor riskerar att underbygga fördomar och i längden medverka till ett ökat spänningsförhållande mellan allmänheten och den grupp barnen växer upp inom. Aktuell forskning på ämnet är därför av största vikt.Syftet med artikeln har varit att beskriva hur barn som växer upp inom Hare Krishna-rörelsens jordbrukskollektiv Almviks By i Sverige idag socialiseras och om möjligt besvara frågan om det finns anledning till oro från samhällets sida när det gäller barnens situation.Utgångspunkten är en lista över orosmoment man från samhällets sida upplever när det gäller barn som växer upp inom nyreligiösa rörelser. Denna är hämtad ur den statliga utredningen I God Tro: Samhället och Nyandligheten (1998). Genom deltagande observationer i Almviks Gård har socialisationen av barn analyserats ur ett socialkonstruktivistiskt perspektiv.Resultatet av undersökningen visar att religiös socialisering integreras i den övriga socialisationen. Inga av de farhågor som beskrivs i den statliga utredningen präglar socialisationen på ett övergripande sätt.