Muslimer och postmuslimer i Svenska kyrkan

This article introduces a special issue that investigates the place of religion in the spatial and cultural organization of west and east European cities in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Discussing different frameworks for a conceptualization of the role of religion within the urban context during the past two hundred years, it argues for adopting a broader perspective that takes into account the multiple and often conflicting processes and practices of religious modernization. Thus, it places particular emphasis on scrutinizing a space in between, that is to say, the area of contact between the outward influence on the spatial development of religious communities on the one hand and the inner workings of such communities on the other hand. Based on an 1880s debate over the way Jewish immigrants changed the religious landscape of New York Jewry as well as on the results of the following contributions, it supports a fresh look at the turn of the century as a period of intensified religious life and visibility within metropolises that contributed to the development of more “modern,” individualized forms of religious sociability and, in the same vein, fostered the emergence of modern urbanity.

Set within the grand and lush surroundings of Mansfield College, OxfordUniversity, and hosted by the Department of Geography, this conference,held between September 27-29,20o0, attracted some of Europe’s key academicsfrom such varied disciplines as human geography, social anthropology,theology, and sociology. They met to discuss the creation andassertion, by minorities, of religious spaces in the West. About thirty tothirty-five participants discussed both empirical data and theoreticaldebates within the contexts of multiculturalism, identity, and minorityrights. Out of twenty-one papers, eight specifically dwelt on Muslim communitiesand spaces, nine were of a more general nature, focusing either onhistorical or general overviews or theoretical issues, while four concentmtedon Hindu and Sikh movements in the West. Much of the work presentedwas derived from projects conducted as part of the ESRC’s ResearchProgram on Transnational Communities, which is directed by SteveVertovec who is in the Faculty of Anthropology and Geography at theUniversity of Oxford. Vertovec, who is editor of Muslim European Youth(1998), and Ceri Peach were joint editors of Islam in Europe (1997).The conference began with a keynote address from Diana Eck of HarvardUniversity describing The Pluralism Project of which she was director. Theproject had three main aims: first, to document the increasing religiousdiversity and changing religious landscape and demography of Americancities; second, to study how religious communities are changing; and third,to assess how American society is adapting to a multireligious reality. Shedescribed how the conversion of old buildings to the development of purpose-built centers such as mosques, temples, and gurdwaras marked anarchitectural reality that served to acknowledge the United States as a pluralistsociety. Muslim communities in the US, she noted, numberedbetween five to seven million-almost as numerous as the Jewish population,and more than some Christian sects. She stressed the dynamism ofcommunity adaptations and the existence of some ‘ethnic enclaving.’ The ...

Muslim communities in the Hindu-majority area of Bali have existed since the 15th century. Since that period, the interdependence between the two religious communities has been something inevitable. This study aims to enrich the treasures of the interdependence discourse that exists between Muslims and Hindus in Bali. It tries to trace the history and early development of Islam in Bali, the relation pattern between Muslims and Hindus, and local wisdom influencing the interdependence in Bali. Data for this study were obtained through observations and interviews with key figures in Klungkung, Bali. After profound analysis, the writer concludes that the emergence of Islam in Bali occurred when Dalem Ketut Ngelesir (1380-1460) visited Majapahit during the vassal royal conference in early 1380 and brought 40 Muslim escorts. This period also marked the early Hindus-Muslim relationship in Bali with Klungkung as the first area with the Muslim community. Later, the relationship between Hindus and Muslims was maintained in the four consecutive periods: kingdom, colonization, post-independence, and the present. Among the local wisdom that has influenced the interdependence and integration between the two religious communities are megibung, ngejot, and religious activities such as the birth of Prophet Muhammad SAW., Nyepi, odalan, takbiran, and Eid al-Fitr.

Compared to other Western European countries, Italy stands out in its rather high level of religiosity. Weekly church attendance has consistently exceeded the one third mark; confidence in the church has increased slightly; belief in God has remained at a high level; and belief in life after death, and in heaven and hell, has increased. The chapter investigates why both church practice and people’s ties to their faith have remained more or less stable since the 1980s. The shorthand answer is diversity in unity. Just as the Catholic movement is supported vertically by the high density of personnel and the developed institutional structures of the Catholic Church, so it is embedded horizontally in a climate of acceptance of Catholicism practised as a habit. At the same time, it is able to give mobilizing impulses both to the church hierarchy and its members.

During the early Cultural Revolution, Christian churches ran into a second wave of repression, more violent than the Great Leap, yet with less severe consequences for the church. Indeed, the political chaos of the time, particularly the factional conflicts crippling the state’s management and oversight capabilities, dramatically opened up space for religious activities. Faced with the state’s intense hostility toward religion, Christian preachers adopted tactics to evade the attention of the state. These tactics ensured not just the survival of the church, but its rapid and dramatic territorial expansion, leading to a fundamental transformation in the institutions of Protestant Christianity in Wenzhou, with the establishment of regional networks and the extensive paidan system for sharing pastoral resources. The Cultural Revolution saw both diversification and unification in the church. There was competition between different churches, even as new collaborative networks started to reduce the importance of denominational lines.

The Communist government after 1949 did not have a systematic program to crack down on religion. Yet the sweeping land reform—Mao’s core revolutionary agenda—dealt a huge blow to religious communities. Land reform, however, did not impact all religious traditions in the same manner or to the same extent. Land seizures removed one of the main sources of livelihood for Buddhist and territorial temples, but salvationist groups and Christian churches, whose “ways of organizing actions” were less bound by locality, were hit less hard economically. The most significant consequence of land reform’s uneven effects on religious life may have been the dramatic expansion of indigenous salvationist groups during land reform, followed shortly thereafter by the swift downfall of the same groups. This marked a critical shift in the local religious landscape since the turn of the twentieth century.

Social reconciliation has received much attention in Christian churches since the late 1980s. Both the Church of Sweden and the Church of Norway initiated reconciliation processes with the Saami (also “Sami” or “Sámi”), the indigenous people of Northern Europe, at the beginning of the 1990s. As former state churches, they bear the colonial burden of having converted the Saami to Lutheranism. To make amends for their excesses in the missionary field, both Scandinavian churches have aimed at structural changes to include Saaminess in their church identities. In this article, I examine how the Church of Sweden and the Church of Norway understand reconciliation in relation to the Saami in their own church documents using conceptual analysis. I argue that the Church of Sweden treats reconciliation primarily as a secular concept without binding it to the doctrine of reconciliation, making the Church’s agenda theologically weak, whereas the Church of Norway utilizes Christian resources in its comprehensive approach to reconciliation with the Saami. This article shows both the challenges and contributions of the Church of Sweden and the Church of Norway to the hotly debated discussions on truth and reconciliation in the Nordic Saami context.

On 11 March 2020, the Danish Prime Minister announced a forthcoming lockdown of Danish society due to the COVID-19 pandemic and shut down all public institutions, including the national church. Instructions for the lockdown of religious minority communities were issued a week later. The total lockdown of the Danish religious landscape is both historically unprecedented and radical in a global context, and it raises questions about mediatized religion and religion–state relations in a postsecular society. Building on quantitative and qualitative data collected during the lockdown and the gradual opening of society in 2020, this article examines the media usage of the Danish national church and of the 28 recognized Muslim communities. It reevaluates Heidi A. Campbell’s ‘religious-social shaping approach to technology’ by examining how religious communities sought to establish continuity between their offline and online practices to maintain authority and community cohesion. We conclude (1) that the willingness of religious communities to cooperate with authorities was high, (2) that the crisis affected religious communities’ organizational framework and societal position, and (3) that Campbell’s approach needs to pay further attention to the conflict-producing aspects of negotiations on digitalized rituals, the importance of transnationalism, and differences between minority and majority religion.

ABSTRACTThis study aimed to determined the resilience of religious people in preventing the occurrence of radicalism in the city of Mataram. This research used indept interview method, field observation, and documentation, while data analysis usedgrounded theory design, that was expressing the experience of the people involved and knowing the problem being studied. This results of this study indicated that the form of cooperation between religious communities in the city of Mataram ran naturally, without any forms of cooperation based on written rules among religious followers. Collaboration based on human values   and traditional customs among Hindus, Muslims and Christians. Collaboration with each other helping other religious people in various religious activities was a call and obligation that had been taught by their respective religions. There was an awareness that religion in the theological domain recognizes the existence of the One God, although the expression of religious people was different in defining the form of God in their midst. These forms of natural cooperation could prevent the emergence of religious radicalism in the city of Mataram.ABSTRAKPenelitian ini bertujuan untuk mengetahui ketahanan umat beragama dalam mencegah terjadinya radikalisme di Kota Mataram. Penelitian ini menggunakan metode indept interview, observasi lapangan, dan dokumentasi, sedang analisis data menggunakan desainGrounded Theory, yaitu mengungkapkan pengalaman orang-orang yang terlibat dan mengetahui suatu masalah yang diteliti. Hasil dari penelitian ini menunjukkan  bahwa bentuk kerjasama antar umat beragama di Kota Mataram berjalan secara natural, tanpa adanya bentuk-bentuk kerjasama yang didasari oleh aturan-aturan tertulis antar pemeluk agama. Kerjasama yang didasari oleh nilai-nilai kemanusiaan dan adat istiadat turun temurun antar pemeluk agama Hindu, Islam, dan Kristen. Kerjasama saling membantu umat agama lain dalam berbagai kegiatan keagamaan merupakan panggilan dan kewajiban yang telah diajarkan oleh agama masing-masing. Adanya kesadaran bahwa agama dalam ranah teologis mengakui adanya Tuhan Yang Esa, walaupun ekspresi umat beragama berbeda-beda dalam mendefinisikan wujud Tuhan yang berada ditengah-tengah mereka. Bentuk-bentuk kerjasama yang bersifat natural tersebut dapat mencegah munculnya radikalisme agama di Kota Mataram.

During the 1950s, the universal ideology of Chinese Christian churches clashed with the universal ideology of the Maoist party-state. Since Christian churches were autonomous moral communities (ideologically self-contained, with members collectively claiming authority to define and cultivate moral norms), they hindered the party-state’s ambitions for control. Christians, especially Christian leaders, experienced intense pressure to adopt the new code of Maoist speech. Documents from archives in Shanghai, Nanjing, and Wuhan and oral history interviews with members of the True Jesus Church in south China show how, despite the True Jesus Church’s native inclinations to resist, between 1948 and 1958 Maoist rhetoric and discursive patterns replaced biblical rhetoric and discursive patterns in the public life of the church. The contest between religious communities and the state to control the terms of public moral discourse demonstrates the significance of such discourse in demarcating and legitimating community authority.