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María de Jesús (1690s-1776) was a white-veiled Discalced Carmelite nun of the San José convent in Santa Fe de Bogotá, founded in 1606. She professed in the year 1714, and her spiritual journal was printed in a chronicle about the convent in the 1940s. The aim of this study is to examine the love of God and of neighbour, as expressed in the spiritual journal of María de Jesús. In this study I will proceed from the understanding of love as charity. In Christian thought God Himself is love, and its source. Charity, the third, and greatest, of the theological virtues, is a state of being in and responding to God’s love and favour. This way of loving consists in loving God wholeheartedly and loving our neighbour as ourselves. Included in loving our neighbour are acts related to his or her spiritual benefit and salvation. These are all present themes in María de Jesús’ text, but my aim is to examine how she incorporates these themes in her spiritual testimony by analyzing the imagery she uses, and the affective language in her spiritual journal. I will also seek to understand her way of writing by analyzing her text against the background of the tradition of women’s spiritual writings. Being a Discalced Carmelite, it will also be interesting to discover the Teresian presence in María de Jesus’ text, i.e. the influence of her predecessor and the reformer of the order, Teresa of Ávila (1515- 1582). I suggest that this can be noticed in certain rhetorical techniques. I also aim to examine if there are any similarities and differences in their expressions of love of God and of neighbour.

In 19^th century Sweden women preached in the popular revival movements as they did in the other Nordic countries, in Great Britain and the United States. One of the most famous preachers in Sweden was Nelly Hall (1848–1916). Internal and external evidence of her public life is the main focus of the study, and in this way it seeks to uncover the origin of her inspiration and to specify her connection to the spiritual movements of the time, at the same time that it analyses the reception and the debate of women as preachers in the period when she was active.

Nelly Hall studied at the Royal School for Women’s Higher Teacher Education and worked as a teacher for ten years before she decided to enter into the ministry of preaching. She was influenced by the Anglo-American Holiness movement and had close contacts with the Salvation Army in London. From 1883 she travelled in the southern parts of Sweden. Thousands of people listened to her and as part of her ministry she practised faith healing. She went on preaching tours to Finland, Norway, Germany and the United States. When the Swedish Holiness Mission started as a small mission society in 1887 it was to some extent a result of the preaching work carried out by Nelly Hall. She was elected a member of the first board and worked as a mission secretary for ten years. Around 1900 there was a shift in her theological thinking and she became more absorbed by apocalyptic ideas. In 1901 she went for the second time to the United States and lived there until 1916 when she died in Brockton, Massachusetts. Little is known about the last fifteenth years of her life.

The ministry of Nelly Hall and other women raised considerable public interest and in the Swedish context her time of ministry coincided with the emerging movement for the emancipation of women. Many were against women preaching in public and the discussions often occurred in the press. Parts of these discussions as well as several pamphlets in favour of women’s preaching are analysed in this study.

The quest for theological education is embedded in the history of the churches in sub-Saharan Africa and is, at the same time, inherently linked to how the churches continue to evolve and shift in character over time. It relates to the self-understanding of the churches and their role in society, including their academic and pastoral obligations to adequately educate and train leaders to work in the localities. With its estimated 6.5 million members, the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Tanzania (ELCT) is today one of the largest Lutheran churches in the world. The role and impact of institutions for theological education are high on the agenda in the ELCT, not least as the various educational institutions for ministerial training are often seen as important means in the processes of theologising and strategising for the future.

This qualitative study draws heavily upon interviews with Lutheran bishops and theological educators in Tanzania, and identifies leading motives and ideas behind their current engagements in the field of ministerial studies. More specifically, it shows how the informants reflect upon, argue about and negotiate their perceptions of higher theological education. It demonstrates by what means, techniques, and practices they claim to govern, guide, and form the students in theology. Formal ministerial studies are not carried out in a vacuum but in and through certain institutions, appropriately designed to serve their purposes. In order to gain academic accreditation, institutional and theological recognition, and to oversee the processes of quality assurance, the ELCT cultivates its links with relevant actors and institutions in Tanzanian society. Even the global networks and connections, such as other churches and missionary organisations abroad, play a significant role in this regard.

Drawing inspiration from governmentality studies and the notion of governmentality, this study focuses on ‘how’ questions; it examines how the interviewees think about governing, and how they calculate, strategise, or respond to certain problems linked to the multiple forms and models of theological training. As such, the study focuses on how government operates, and examines what claims, hopes, and visions the informants have in mind when educating a new generation of clergy in a rapidly changing society.

A survey of developments within Nordic missions during the first 50 years period of the Nordic Missionary Council. ln consultation with Heads of Institutes of Missionary Research in the difrferent Nordic Countries, the present volume was conceived. A committee of three was given responsibilities to prepare and edit the volume.

The paper studies the degree of engagement in questions of HIV in the local Anglican Church in Ocean View, Cape Town, using a triangulation design combining participant observation, survey results and interviews. Survey results from two other parishes in the Cape Town area and from clergy in the dioceses of Cape Town and False Bay are used to extend the material and to establish wider patterns in an extended case study approach. The findings show that people in the congregation of St Clare of Assisi in Ocean View are generally aware of HIV. The “buzz” around HIV has however subsided. The congregation is not directly engaged in work relating to HIV anymore and HIV is more mentioned than talked about in the church. HIV stigma continues to pose a challenge to the response to HIV at the local level. Conceptualisations of HIV vary markedly among members of the congregation with a majority seeing HIV+ people as living positively. There is also a group that strongly associates HIV with death, dirt and filth. The results are confirmed to hold also in other parishes of the Anglican Church of Southern Africa in the Western Cape. To work towards the prevention of HIV, the local church needs to put HIV back on the agenda and continue to speak about the virus by integrating HIV perspectives into the current framework.

Sweden boasts a rich history of cooperating with civil organisations in advancing international development cooperation with high rates of support from its citizens. Religious institutions are an active component of this government-civil society cooperation. In fact, the early beginnings of Sweden’s development work were closely intertwined with Christian mission enterprises, especially in the areas of education and health ministries. This background circumstance has led to an increasing unease about the interface between the secular exercise of public authority and religious groups’ vested interests. This dissertation aims to explore Swedish development cooperation policies for the presence of religion and for the evaluation of religion’s impact.  It is theoretically placed within the sociological shift that emphasizes the visibility of religion, rather than secularising of religion. The dissertation analyses nine government development cooperation policies plus additional documents that further explore policy issues. While using quantitative and qualitative content analysis, the study searches for explicit references to: 1) religious agency, 2) religious identity, 3) religious rights as part of human rights, and 4) religious ideas.  The results indicate that religion, in the four analysed categories, tends to be poorly represented, non-existent or anonymous under the generic term ‘civil society’. Evaluation of religion’s impact varies according to policy area, with the overall conclusion that Swedish development cooperation has an ambivalent relationship with religion. The dissertation further analyses the specific policy areas of civil society, economic growth, and sexual and reproductive health and rights. It finds higher sensitivity to religious components in parts. It compares results with those of other studies that have focused on religion in the selected areas. The dissertation concludes that Swedish development cooperation needs to develop a higher sensitivity to the religious aspects of development work. This will mean that the ‘secular’ and the ‘religious’ in development cooperation need further clarification from the theoretical premise of the new visibility of religion.