"Det finns inga nackdelar" : Fyra religiösa församlingar och deras samverkan med kommun, föreningar och religiösa samfund

Sammanfattning: Religious congregations and social work have long been a neglected field of research. Although the number of studies have increased during the last twenty years. With a starting point in the situation in this field of research and in the current public debate in Sweden the focus of this study will be on how Christian and Muslim congregations view cooperating with the municipalities, organizations, the religious community to whom which the congregation belongs and how the congregations view cooperating with other religious communities. Qualitative method of research was used. Representatives of four religious congregations was interviewed; a deacon in a congregation in the Swedish Lutheran Church, a pastor in a congregation belonging to the Mission Covenent Church of Sweden, the chairman in a the board of a Muslim congregation and volunteerleader in another Muslim congregation. For analyzing the transcribed interviews the method of sentence – categorization was used and institutional theory, political opportunity structure and Bauböcks theory of integration was applied. The result showed the degree and form of cooperation varies between the congregations but all four congregations are overall positive towards cooperating with the municipality, organizations, the own religious community and other religious communities.