Leaving a Folk Church: Patterns of Disaffiliation from the Church of Sweden

During the last decade, the populist radical nationalist party, the Sweden Democrats (SD), has gone from being a minor party to become Sweden’s third largest party in parliament. In this article, the author shows how the category of Christianity has come to play a pivotal role in the party’s political identification. Drawing on Ernesto Laclau’s analysis of populism, the author argues that Christianity should be understood as a projection surface for fantasies of an ethnically and culturally superior homogenous nation vis-à-vis constructed national others. In a populist logic, Christianity has thus become a way to distinguish the SD from its articulated external (e.g., Muslims, immigrants) and internal (liberalism, feminism) political foes. By appropriating Christianity, the SD articulates itself as the guardian of true Christianity, the future savior of a Church allegedly hijacked by external and internal foes, and in the long run, the Swedish nation.

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Hidden Ecclesiology: How Statistics Shaped the Church of Sweden

Studia Liturgica ◽

10.1177/003932071504500103 ◽

2015 ◽

Vol 45 (1) ◽

pp. 16-28

Author(s):

Marie Rosenius

Keyword(s):

Church Of Sweden ◽

The Church

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Jacob Tengstrom, First Archbishop of Finland

Church History ◽

10.2307/3164035 ◽

1975 ◽

Vol 44 (3) ◽

pp. 336-351

Author(s):

Toivo Harjunpaa

Keyword(s):

Sixteenth Century ◽

Church Of England ◽

Protestant Reformation ◽

Church Of Sweden ◽

The Reformation ◽

The Church

The Reformation of the sixteenth century dealt a heavy blow to the historic episcopal government of the church. Only two of the national churches which embraced the Protestant Reformation succeeded in retaining their old primatical sees and episcopal polity: the Church of England and the Church of Sweden-Finland. For centuries before the Reformation, the Finnish church had been ecclesiastically part of the province of Uppsala (an archbishopric since 1164) just as Finland itself was politically part of the Kingdom of Sweden. Thus there was no need to establish a Finnish archdiocese while union with Sweden continued. But with Napoleon's concurrence (the Tilsit pact of 1807), the Russians invaded Finland in 1808 and met with such success that all Finland was ceded by Sweden to Russia in 1809.

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Finding Belonging, Finding Agency: Unaccompanied Refugee Minors Converting to Christianity in the Church of Sweden

The Review of Faith & International Affairs ◽

10.1080/15570274.2020.1795410 ◽

2020 ◽

Vol 18 (3) ◽

pp. 40-52

Author(s):

Jonathan Morgan

Keyword(s):

Unaccompanied Refugee Minors ◽

Church Of Sweden ◽

The Church ◽

Refugee Minors

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A Homosocial Priesthood of All Believers: Laity and Gender in Interwar Sweden

Church History ◽

10.1017/s0009640719001185 ◽

2019 ◽

Vol 88 (2) ◽

pp. 440-464

Author(s):

Martin Nykvist

Keyword(s):

Nineteenth Century ◽

Twentieth Century ◽

Church Of Sweden ◽

Priesthood Of All Believers ◽

Gender Differentiation ◽

Early Twentieth Century ◽

Church Life ◽

And Gender ◽

The Church

Around the turn of the twentieth century, there was a growing concern within the Church of Sweden that the church was, to a too large extent, managed by the clergy alone. In an attempt to give the laity a more active and influential role in the Church of Sweden, the Brethren of the Church was established in 1918. Since it was only possible for men to become members, the organization simultaneously addressed a different issue: the view that women had become a much too salient group in church life. This process was described by the Brethren and similar groups as a “feminization” of the church, a phrasing which later came to be used by historians and theologians to explain changes in Western Christianity in the nineteenth century. In other words, the Brethren considered questions of gender vital to their endeavor to create a church in which the laity held a more prominent position. This article analyzes how the perceived feminization and its assumed connection to secularization caused enhanced attempts to uphold and strengthen gender differentiation in the Church of Sweden in the early twentieth century. By analyzing an all-male lay organization, the importance of homosociality in the construction of Christian masculinities will also be discussed.

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