Academic literature on the topic 'Ortodox kristendom'

Påsken är Greklands överlägset största högtid. Den har en enorm betydelse för den grekiskortodoxa kyrkan och den grekiska traditionen. Påsken firas såväl i kyrkan som i hemmen med familjen. Maten har en central plats med fasta som inleder påsken, vilken sedan kulminerar i Jesus Kristus lidande, död och uppståndelse. Familjen samlas kring en stor påskmåltid på söndagen för att fira uppståndelsen. Glädjen över uppståndelsens mirakel är ett bevis och en påminnelse om den kristna trons kärna. Varje vår sker detta firande hos miljontals greker och jag vågar påstå att den grekiska påsken är en större högtid än den svenska julen jag känner. Det religiösa samt de sociala funktionerna fylls både i kyrkan och genom av samlandet av familjen. I centrum för den religiösa påminnelsen och den sociala festligheten, står maten. Syftet med denna uppsats är att genom en fallstudie undersöka hur fasta och påskfirande kan se ut i det moderna Grekland, med fokus på matens symboliska betydelse. Samtliga av följande frågeställningar avser att gälla endast det avgränsade område som jag undersöker i min fallstudie: Hur firar greker påsk i kyrkan och privat? Vilka ritualer förekommer? Fastar man fortfarande? Vad är tillåtet att äta under fastan? Med vad bryter man fastan? Hur ser man på fastan? Vad äter man för mat under påsken? Vilken roll och symbolik finns i påskens mat? Hur ser förberedelserna ut och vem gör vad?

This essay is about the representation of orthodox Christianity in Swedish educational material. With the help of my analytical approach inspired by Michel Foucault, I have studied material used in school for the subject Religion. I have limited the educational material in two ways. First, the main reason for this is that I am only interested in material written and produced from the year 2010 until today. Secondly, the material I have chosen to focus on is written for the grades 7-9 and for high school. My goal is to define how orthodox Christianity is presented to the Swedish pupil. The aim is to create a discussion about the ways a religion, generally considered as foreign, is presented in school and what kind of picture of the said religion is thereby created.

 

Uppsatsen handlar om kristendomens syn på inkarnationen och dess betydelse för ikonen. Det är en studie av ikonens teologiska och historiska bakgrund, kopplad till kristologiska frågor som uppstod redan under den tidiga kristendomen. Synen på inkarnationen, Guds människoblivande i Kristus, är inom kristendomen skiftande även om det finns en gemensam trosbekännelse. Studien behandlar ikonens teologi och inkarnationsfrågan i samband med Gamla testamentets bildförbud och hur detta påverkar delar av den kristna tron. Under en längre period fanns ett stort motstånd gentemot heliga bilder inom kyrkan som till viss del påverkade brytningen mellan ortodox och katolsk kristendom. Kyrkans splittring kopplas här till inkarnationsläran och Bibelns bildförbud. Uppsatsen visar att skillnaderna i tolkningen av inkarnationen ledde till strider inom bildfrågan. Den visar även att en del av åsikterna inom kristologin, läran om Kristus, går att koppla till ett semiotiskt system, där likheterna med tankarna om inkarnationen och treenigheten går att sätta in i en modell för att synliggöra ikonens teologi.

 

I denna uppsats studeras begreppet ortodoxa ikoner och hur dessa används i ortodoxa församlingar i södra Sverige. Syftet med denna uppsats är att få större kännedom om ikoner som fenomen och hur dessa används i ortodoxa gudstjänster, samt vilken syn ortodoxa församlingsmedlemmar har på ikoner. För att uppnå syftet med studien kommer jag att besöka tre ortodoxa församlingar på olika orter i Småland. Utifrån dessa församlingar genomförs intervjuer med totalt sex stycken personer. Resultatet av studien visar bland annat på att de intervjuade har olika förhållningssätt till ikoner. Vissa ser ikoner som något man ska vörda, medan andra ser det som vackra målningar och som har en historisk betydelse bakom sig, men inte mer än så. För majoriteten av de intervjuade betraktas en ikon som ett medel för bön och ritualer, ett sätt för människor att integrera sig med det gudomliga. De kan även användas som en guide i livet och i olika situationer. För många ortodoxa ikoner är inte bara vackra porträtt som hänger på väggen hemma eller i kyrkan, men det är också en del av deras vardag, en del av deras tro. En ikon behöver inte bara vara en bild, målning eller dekoration, det kan vara något mycket större enligt ortodoxa teologer.
In this paper, the concept of orthodox icons is studied and how these are used in orthodox churches in southern Sweden. The purpose of this paper is to gain more knowledge of icons as phenomena and how these are used in orthodox worship services, and which view orthodox church members have on icons. I visit three orthodox churches and interview a total of six people.The results of the study show, among other things, that the interviewees have different approaches to icons. Some see icons as something to be revered, while others see it as beautiful paintings and which have a historical significance behind them, but no more than that. For the majority of the interviewees, an icon is considered a means of prayer and ritual, a way for people to integrate with the divine. They can also be used as a guide in life and in different situations.For many orthodox icons, icons are not only beautiful portraits hanging on the wall at home or in the church, but it is also part of their everyday life, part of their faith. An icon not only needs to be a picture, painting or decoration, it can be something much bigger according to orthodox theologians.

Religious education in Swedish schools aims to be as objective and non-confessional as possible. This sort of education can lead to that the different religions are presented in a way which is unfamiliar to the followers of the different religions. This problem is what I have focused on in this essay since I myself was a victim of a similar situation. As a syriac-orthodox youth I felt that my Christianity was not the same as the one presented in school. I felt that it had nothing in common with what I learned in my church, therefore I asked myself the question: Whose Christianity is being represented? Therefore I have focused on the syriac-orthodox church in this research. The purpose of my essay was to enlighten the differences between religious education in syriac-orthodox churches and Swedish community schools. I choose In addition to that I also wanted to enlighten how religious syriac-orthodox youths are affected by the difference in the religious education in both the churches and schools. To gain the necessary information for the research I used qualitative studies in form of semi-structured interviews and observations. My informants were made up by five girls and three boys, all of them being eighteen years old and living in areas close to Stockholm. The conclusion of my research was that there are several differences between the religious education within churches and schools. One of the differences is the approach towards religion, and the churches have a more positive and personal approach towards religion while the schools have a more negative and distant approach towards religion. Another one is that the churches seem to have more knowledge about Christianity than the schools and therefore the churches can provide a more in depth study of different topics regarding Christianity than the schools. Regarding how the students were affected by the differences the result was that the aspect of knowledge had made the religious youths to lose their trust in the education given to them by the school. This was an effect of how they experienced that the teachers taught the pupils wrong facts about Christianity and therefore they felt that they could no longer trust the teachers in school, because if they taught wrong thing about Christianity they could also teach wrong things about the other religions as well.

The Purpose of this essay is to seek an answer to whether or not a conflict exists between priests of the Assyrian Church, the Syrian Orthodox Church and the Coptic Church in contemporary Swedish society, as well as to examine the environment between the three. The theological dissimilarities will be studied (from a historical standpoint), along with the interviewed participants views on the division in Christianity which will be presented also. I choose to interview six priests/chorbishops who live and work in Sweden, and the result was analyzed according to the senior professor of peace- and conflict, Peter Wallensteen’s theories on conflict and conflict resolution, where important issues are laid out to identify the core problem, and theological differences are discussed and compared from a union perspective. The result of the interviews illustrate a clear response that the participants experience a lack of functioning collaborations (from the Assyrians Church view, a collaboration is absent from the Syrian Orthodox Church and the Coptic Church, and vice versa) and most of the participants experience negative consequences from the divide in churches, as they strive for unity in Christianity as a whole. The theological differences between the churches proves not to be as significant as expected, the actual predicament lies partly in language-and phrase division along with a general rejection of each other’s interpretations. In many instances all the churches mean to express the same things, but it is the explanation of expressions that vary and cause misunderstandings. Consequently it is imperative for these churches to develop functional communication to (amongst other issues) solve their interpretations. If not to unify, then to develop an acceptance for each other and the different understandings.

The separation between Judaism and Christianity is a subject which a large number of scholars within the study of religion have invested time and effort in. The field can surely be described as massive, and to figure out what has been said and done, and why so, is perhaps not the simplest of tasks. Here, however, an attempt to do so has been made in order to try and debone parts of a very large fish and se what it actually consists of. In what terms have some of the prominent scholars within the field described the separation between the two religions which have been considered to, at one point, be the one and same? By using a textual discourse analysis method, the aim for this thesis is to map some of the currents which have been dominant in the field of said separation and to seek the explanations behind them.