Vad är detta märkliga som jag känner igen som religion? Varför tycks det spela en så stor roll i mänsklig kultur? Och varför skrämmer och lockar det mig på samma gång?

Genom historien har religion format världsbilder, livshållningar och samhällen, gjort tillvaron svårtolkad, mångbottnad och motsägelsefull för människor, men också levande och meningsfull. Och oavsett vad vi tycker om den, visar religionen inga tecken på att försvinna. Varför är det så? Vad är det för längtan den svarar mot?

Tillvaron är full av sådant vars orsaker och verkningar vi kan överblicka och förstå. Men för många rymmer den också dimensioner som inte lika lätt låter sig fångas, sådant som bryter mot vardagens profana ordning: stämningar, känslor och upplevelser som tycks peka mot något bortom det vanliga, något förtrollat och besjälat.

I En lockton i ödemarken fortsätter David Thurfjell att utforska och upplösa gränsen mellan religiösa och sekulära uttryck. Det blir en personlig berättelse som rör sig mellan olika världsdelar, tidsepoker och perspektiv, med nedslag i författarens egna erfarenheter såväl som i myter, riter och maktstrategier i världens olika religiösa traditioner.

This article employs ethnographic material from Sweden and Estonia to examine the relationship between religion and the love of nature in Northern Europe - a region known for its widespread secularisation. We propose that the existential depth that is often ascribed to nature experiences in this part of the world points to a facet of the secularisation process, indicating that love of nature among today's Northern Europeans is deeply entangled with the processes of modernisation. The article provides a historical analysis of how this phenomenon arose and explores ways of approaching it that move beyond the religious-secular dichotomy. It concludes by construing love of nature as belonging to an 'existential field' in the Northern European cultural landscape.

The demographical changes during the last decades have created a sit­uation where Sweden has become one of the most secular and one of the most multireligious countries at the same time. This situation stands in stark contrast to the country's modern history in which its population have been largely homogeneous, and its religious landscape almost completely dominated by state-church Lutheranism. The growth of Sweden's Muslim population is what has caused most debate. According to calculations made by the Pew Research Center, one fifth of the country's total population is likely to be Muslim by 2050. This change also has consequences for the former state church, which now finds that also Muslims take part in its activities. In this article we present and analyze a novel survey-investigation on Muslims who self-identify as members of the Church of Sweden. In our analysis we differentiate between Muslims and what we call post-Muslims. While the former of these categories refers to those who self-identify as Muslims, the latter refers to people who do not refer to themselves as Muslims but who come from a Muslim family. These categories are mirrored by the Christians and post-Christians, who are selected by equivalent criteria. We conclude that most Muslims and post-Muslims have no affiliation to organized religious communities in Sweden and that among those who do, Christian churches are as important as the Muslim congregations. Among the churches, the Church of Sweden is the one in which most Muslims and post-Muslims are members. The Muslim and post-Muslim members of this church, we find, differ from each other. The Muslims are mostly Swedish-born 50–65-year-old women. They do not take part in any religious activities, and they celebrate Christian, but not Muslim, holidays. In terms of beliefs, they believe in a life after death, but mostly not in God or hell. The post-Muslims are mostly 30–49-year-old men who have come relatively recently to Sweden from the Middle East. They take part in congregational activities and celebrate both Muslim and Christian holidays. They also largely believe in God, a life after death, and hell. In terms of representation, they feel represented, primarily, by Muslim communities.

Inherited or acquired secularity? Secular identity among post-Muslims and post -Christians in Sweden Sweden is both secularised and multi-religious. This article analyses the secularity of Swedes with Muslim and Christian family backgrounds. Survey data were collected from people living in Sweden with a family background in Iraq, Iran, Yugoslavia, or Turkey, as well as from a control group of Swedish origin. We first present the extent to which respondents agree with the statement "I see myself as secular (non-religious)". This is followed by an exploratory regression analysis of what is associated with self-identification as secular. Country of origin and secularity in the immediate family were the variables that correlate most clearly with a secular self-image. Length of residence in Sweden, exposure to majority Swedish culture and socio-economic factors also have some influence. We conclude that secularity is mainly something that Swedes with a Muslim family background bring with them from their countries of origin, rather than something that they acquire in Sweden. The article concludes with a discussion that opens up the results for further theorising in the field of secularisation studies.

This article empirically explores the interplay between the secular, post-Lutheran majority culture and Muslim immigrants in Sweden. It presents the ambiguous role of religion in the country's mainstream discourse, the othering of religion that is characteristic to this, and the expectations of Muslims to be strongly religious that follows as its consequence. Four results of a web-panel survey with Swedes of Muslim and Christian family background are then presented: (1) Both groups largely distance themselves from their own religious heritage - the Muslims do this in a more definite way; (2) the Muslim respondents have more secular values and identities than the Christians; (3) contrary expectations, Christian respondents show more affinity to their religious heritage than the Muslims do to theirs; and (4) the fusion between the groups is prominent. The article concludes that equating religious family heritage with religious identity is precipitous in the case of Swedish Muslims. 

Under de senaste decennierna har Sverige genomgått stora demografiska och politiska förändringar. Tillsammans har dessa inneburit att Sverige idag samtidigt är ett av Europas mest sekulariserade och mest mångreligiösa länder. Den snabba demografiska förändring Sverige har genomgått har ställt många inför nya, stora och i vissa fall skyndsamma kunskapsbehov samtidigt är forskningen om situationen delvis eftersatt. I denna rapport identifieras hur den nya situationen relaterar till det lagstadgade uppdrag som svenskt polisväsende, vård, skola och offentlig förvaltning har. Den forskning som gjorts inom dessa områden sammanfattas och de viktigaste forskningsbehoven identifieras.

Vad du nu håller i din hand är 366 sidor som alla på ett eller annat sätt syftar till att hylla vår vän och kollega Gunilla Gunner. Bokens bidrag rör sig över stora avstånd både i tid och rum, mellan olika ämnen och områden – men har det gemensamt att de behandlar framträdande kvinnor i olika religiösa sammanhang. Tanken bakom ämnesvalet är förstås att kvinnligt religiöst ledarskap är en röd tråd i Gunilla Gunners eget akademiska författarskap. Som framgår av flera av bokens bidrag har hon själv också spelat en framträdande roll både som ledargestalt och som inspirationskälla för vänner och kollegor i alla de olika sammanhang där hon rört sig.

Gunilla Gunner är docent i religionsvetenskap och har sedan 2005 varit verksam i en rad olika roller på Södertörns högskola.

Denmark, Estonia, and Sweden are, if measured by certain sociological criteria, considered to be three of the world's most secular countries. Nature-forests, pristine beaches, and the countryside-plays a specific role in the allegedly secular discourse of the mainstream populations of these nations. Not only is it almost without exception deemed as a positive asset worthy of protection, it is also thought of as holding certain existential qualities. Based on ethnographic fieldwork and interviews, this article suggests that Alfred Schutz's conceptualization of transcendence-further developed by Thomas Luckmann-can be used to describe the existential experiences in nature of contemporary secular people. The article results in a suggestion for an operational definition of transcendence.

Euologists (madah) and the folk-religious movement that surround them are playing an increasingly important role in the religio-political landscape of the Islamic republic. Circling around the practice of chest beating and ritual mourning of the martyred household of the Prophet, the structure of this movement has changed during the last decade. In presidential period of Mohammad Khatami, the madahs were mobilised in the campaign that led to the victory of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in the presidential elections of 2005. Since then what may be described as a new type of charismatic folk-religious culture has flourished in certain layers of Iranian society and has frequently been a matter of controversy. Today, the madahs can be described as charismatic alternatives to the religious authority of the clerical establishment. Based on interviews and ethnographic observations in Qom, this paper describes and analyses the role of the madahs in Iran today.

Är svenskarna världens mest sekulariserade folk? Hur kommer det sig att många känner sig obekväma med att kalla sig kristna trots att de firar jul och är medlemmar i en kyrka? Varför finns det till och med något lite genant över innerlig kristen tro? Och varför upplever många att buddhismen känns sympatisk medan islam – trots att man vet att det är viktigt att inte generalisera – känns hotfull och främmande?

Det gudlösa folket söker svaret på dessa frågor i den svenska religionshistorien. Boken handlar om den sekulära svenska majoritetskulturen och om den historia som ligger bakom de hållningar, tankar och föreställningar om religion som finns inom denna grupp. Från reformationen på 1500-talet – via pietismen, upplysningen, teosofin och kolonialismen – till 2000-talets religionsdebatter, följs uppkomsten och utvecklingen av de idéer om religion som vanliga svenskar idag tar för givna. De historiska exposéerna förankras i vanliga svenskars berättelser insamlade genom ett hundratal intervjuer med stockholmare utförda 2009-2012. Resultatet är en berättelse om vilka vi – de sekulära svenskarna – är, varför vi tänker som vi gör och om hur vår internationellt sett unika religionssituation har uppkommit.

Boken vänder sig till en intresserad allmänhet men kommer också kunna användas som kurslitteratur för högskolor och universitet, företrädelsevis inom ämnet religionsvetenskap. 

Based on fieldwork in Qom, this paper explores the ritual and theological meanings of death among members of a Shi’ite revivalist movement in contemporary Iran. The heyyati movement represents a charismatic development in the religious landscape of the Islamic Republic. The movement expanded on massively during the last decade and played a pivotal role in the mobilisation of popular support for former president Ahmadinejad. The movement circles around an independent type of preachers known as zaker or madha. Although the heyyati movement represents a form of Iranian folk religiosity that in connection to certain holidays entertains broad popular support, it has also developed into a particular subculture with its own lifestyle, ritual repertoire and ideological profile. Lately this development has created controversy as some preachers, more or less openly, have challenged the clerical establishment in the country. Stories about the martyrdom of historical Islamic heroes, ritual manifestations of one’s own readiness to die and meditations about death, constitute important features in the religious life of heyyati men. Despite these mournful expressions in their ritual life, however, present and former members of the movement predominantly speak of their engagement in terms of joy and friendship. In this paper the amalgamation of politics, joyful youth culture and death awareness is presented and analysed.

The discipline of History of religions has changed in Sweden over the latest decades. Its traditional connection to text and language has weakened and its emphasis shifted towards social and contemporary aspects of religion. In this article the societal trends and the reforms in Swedish university politics that lie behind this change are pinpointed and discussed. It is argued that the transformation has been twofold. On the one hand the discipline has grown considerably and expanded into empirical fields, methods, and theories that were alien to it only twenty-five years ago. On the other it has been forced to adjust to a political climate focused on direct social relevance, measurability, and quantifiable efficiency. The article presents the transformation as consisting in four parallel processes labelled the efficiency turn, the altered knowledge contract, the replacement by religionsvetenskap, and the loss of prestige, respectively.

The heyyati-movement is a folk-religious movement in Iran circling around the practice of chest beating and ritual mourning of the martyred household of the Prophet. During the last decade, since the presidential period of Mohammad Khatami, the structure of this movement has changed. The heyyati-groups were mobilised in the campaign that led to the victory of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in the presidential elections of 2005 and since then what may be described as a new type of heyyati-culture has flourished in certain layers of Iranian society and it has frequently been a matter of controversy. Today, the movement can be described as a charismatic alternative to the religious authority of the clerical establishment. Based on interviews and ethnographic observations this paper describes and analyses one heyyati-community in Qom.

A Pentecostal revival is sweeping the Romani communities of Europe. The dominant religious orientation of European Roma, Pentecostalism has become one of the major factors behind Romani social development in the wake of the discrimination, marginalization, and growing anti-ziganist sentiments of the latest decades. Through this form of charismatic Protestant Christianity, Roma have overcome social problems and internal conflicts as well as battle against the hostility and exclusion of the 'macro gajo' (non-Roma) society.Based on interviews and field work, this original ethnographic study offers a unique presentation and analysis of the Pentecostal revival in one of Europe's many Romani communities - the Kaale Roma of Finland and Sweden. Through individual life stories, historical exposés, sociological interpretation, and ritual and discourse analysis, Thurfjell provides a vivid, accurate portrait of the multifaceted and complex situation of contemporary Roma.This study of the Pentecostal movement is of interest to anyone who seeks to understand the religious, historical, social and discursive processes that underlie the complex and difficult situation of European Roma today.

The text discusses romani ethnogenesis, media and Pentecostal revivalism

Boken beskriver de shiamuslimer som finns i Sverige, deras antal, demografiska särdrag, aktiviteter och organisationer.