This article analyses six apostasy narratives published on WikiIslam.net and examines how Islam is represented and understood in them. The narratives contain self-referential and autobiographical components, and the truth-claims made in them are often based on the narrator's own experiences as a former Muslim. From the six testimonies it is clear that Islam is presented in a negative and biased way, as summed up in the following three points: (1) Islam is an irrational, illogical way of thought; the beliefs that Islam holds to be true are false; (2) Islam is not about peace, high standards and God; Islam is an evil, selfcentered and morally corrupt religion, and Muslims are hypocrites; (3) Islam is an oppressive, misogynist and violent religion, and is negative for its followers, especially women. These views on Islam, expressed in the apostasy narratives, articulate several themes found in islamophobic discourses and the so called New Atheist movement.

The Church of Sweden decided to introduce a blessing ceremony for same-sex couples in 2005. This article examines how the blessing ceremony was made possible by the invention of a new 'genuine' homosexuality. Theological issues concerning 'sin', 'grace', eschatology, 'God', anthropology and the status of the Bible and historical texts came to be understood and articulated in new ways when the idea of 'genuine' homosexuality began to be discussed and gained acceptance in the Church of Sweden. I argue that the decision to introduce a blessing ceremony not only represented a change in how the Church of Sweden regards homosexuality and same-sex relationships, thereby formulating and reformulating well-established Christian teachings and doctrines, but also that new exclusions were articulated which strengthened the hegemonic and heteronormative order. The behaviours and social forms that were excluded include bisexuality, promiscuity, promiscuous homosexuality, and polyamorous relationships.

Th is article examines two recent expressions of religion in the multi-religious setting of the Norwegian capital Oslo. Th e Muslim group Ansar al-Sunnah's claim of the district Grønland is scrutinized in relation to the public and cultural image of Islam in Norway, and a Christian response to the contemporary multi-religious context is examined via an analysis of the priest Gyrid Gunnes' performance at Th e National Exhibition of the Visual Arts in Oslo. Th ese cases are further discussed in relation to spatial theories and theologically embedded questions about ecclesiology and eschatology. Th is article shows that Ansar al-Sunnah stages an image of Islam that is produced in a cultural Islamophobic discourse, while Gunnes' performance problematizes taken-for-granted notions about God, the church and what it means to be a Christian. Th e prevailing, dominant and culturally embedded ideas of what it means to be a Christian or a Muslim are being challenged in Gunnes' performance through the use of queer theory and apophatic theology.

The world religions paradigm (WRP), often regarded as hegemonic in research and education in religious studies, has long been criticized for being modeled on predominantly Protestant, Christian, and Western ideas about religion, and thus running the risk of reductionism and of a failure to recognize expressions of religion that do not fit this framework. Despite this, it is difficult to get rid of the prevailing WRP, especially in education. In addition, nonconfessional, nonreligious, secular education in religion may be biased by norms and values that assume that religion as such is outdated and irrational. The seemingly neutral, nonreligious, or agnostic position that is present in religious studies at the higher education level can then be seen as aligned with an institutional, not necessarily personal, secular bias that rules out religion from the very outset. Consequently, higher level education about religion runs the risk of presenting religion in terms of flawed stereotypes. In this article, Daniel Enstedt addresses these two interrelated and subject‐specific problems by examining them through the lens of Gert J. J. Biesta's educational philosophy, and in particular in relation to his discussion about the three domains of education: qualification, socialization, and subjectification.