Research in Religion

Religious studies is a collective term for the broad, multi-disciplinary, scientific study of historic and modern religions and philosophies, their background and historical development, historical and contemporary forms of expression throughout the human cultural sphere. In many academic contexts, the term theology is equivalent to religious studies.

Humanity has always asked questions about the origins of life, meaning and goal. In all times and in all places, religion has played an important role in people's lives and communities. A culture without religion has never existed. Religion has not disappeared with modern society, as some believed. On the contrary, it has gained increasing importance in public debate and in the lives of individuals on both the national and global stage, in some cases with new forms of expression.

Religions can be culture bearing and state bearing. People find identity in religion. Political and ideological conflicts play out in the name of religion, people can be both oppressed and liberated in religious traditions. Strong personalities, such as Martin Luther King Jr., Mother Teresa and Desmond Tutu have been driven by visions characterized by religion. The religious studies or theological research is an inescapable part of modern scientific study of people and their culture.

Religious Studies provides a broad range of research areas within five main areas: History of Religion (non-Christian religions, and religion phenomenology), Religion Behavioural Sciences (psychology of religion, sociology of religion and pedagogy of religion), Exegetics/Biblical Studies (including languages of Hebrew and Greek), History of Christianity (church history, church science and missionary history), and Faith and Philosophy of Life (dogmatic theology/Christian beliefs, ethics and philosophy of religion). Within each of these five main areas there are several research disciplines, all in all approximately a dozen in the Swedish academic world. Only church science, for example, can one find liturgy, deaconship, ecclesiology, homiletics, Christian law, and ecumenism and several sub-disciplines. The research area is thus, at both national and international levels, very extensive and the various disciplines works in different theoretical traditions and with different methodological models.

The research in religious studies at LiU is concerned with the history of Christianity and biblical studies. One research field is the biblical and post biblical literature in its ancient Hellenistic-Jewish world. Special focus is given to the study of ideologically and theologically conditioned (re)use of biblical traditions. Another research field is religion and politics in
the USA where the importance of religion on the American political life is in focus. A third is Swedish church history.

Research

• Bibelvetenskap - Bible Studies (Håkan Ulfgard's web page)
• Religion i USA Religion in the United States (Kjell O. Lejon's web page)
• Svensk kyrkohistoria - Swedish church history (Kjell O. Lejon's web page)
• Ecclesia lincopensis (Linköpings stifts historia)
• The Research Environment for Cultural Sciences