The Church of Sweden (Svenska Kyrkan) is bleeding members at an increasingly rapid pace, at the same time as membership rolls in Islamic, Roman Catholic, and Orthodox Christian assemblies are on the rise.
Between November 2008 and October 2009, nearly 72,000 people, or roughly 1 percent of the church’s 6.8 million members, asked to leave, according to church statistics reviewed by the TT news agency.
The number of people abandoning Sweden’s largest church is roughly 20,000 more than the previous year.
More interesting: who are the people joining?
Gosh, and I thought unchecked progressive destruction of Christianity is what the people wanted. Guess not.
Heh Phil, would love to see how conservative Christianity would work in Sweden. I’m surprised more evangelicals aren’t flying there to do their magic.
[blockquote]The decision by the church to allow homosexual couples to be wed in Swedish churches doesn’t appear to have any effect on church membership, according to Pederby.
“The marriage decision had no effect whatsoever,†he said.[/blockquote]
I don’t see where Pederby’s for making this claim.
Sorry. I meant to say that I didn’t see what proof he had for making such a claim.
Although the Church of Sweden is now disestablished (since 2000 if memory serves me correctly) in many ways it is still the state church. Even more so than in England, the existence of a state church raises questions of national identity eg ‘What does it mean to be a Swede?’ In the past answering that also meant answering that you were a Lutheran Christian. However, with large-scale immigration into Sweden, being Swedish in future will reflect a more varied ethnic background. Polish, Filipino, Vietnamese and Iraqis are all among the rapidly growing groups. So, to answer John’s question, I think that nobody is joining churches, but that first and second generation immigrants are showing considerable tenacity in retaining their ancestral faith as Catholic or Muslim or Assyrian Ancient Church of the East or Syrian Orthodox. Anecdotally: one of my friends is a Norwegian Catholic priest. His grandfather married a French lady and converted. The family are still Catholic. And talking about multi-ethnicity, you Anglicans can take a bow, because your clergy here in England are resplendently mixed in ethnicity, ye even unto the Archbishop of York, so you are playing an important part in integration into the national community. Not, of course, that our government which is so dismissive of Christianity would ever recognise that for a moment.
John #3, I have no idea how conservative Christianity or “evangelicals” would sell in Sweden. (Of course, the article says, “…membership rolls in … Roman Catholic, and Orthodox Christian assemblies are on the rise.”) My point is, progressive deconstruction of Christian belief doesn’t, by the numbers.
I don’t know how the tax structure works in Sweden in regards to the no-longer established Church of Sweden, but in places like Germany, many people are leaving either the Catholic or Lutheran church in groves for tax purposes.
If you are a registered Catholic or Lutheran, taxes are directly taken out and given to those churches, even though they aren’t established. I had a friend of mine who is now an Anglican priest in Liverpool who lived in Germany for many years and had been baptized Catholic. When he started working full time, he got to looking at his pay check and was shocked at how much was “taxed” to go to the church. He had to go before a civil magistrate and swear an oath that he had renounced his membership in the Catholic church to get the tax levy stopped. The government then informed the Church and his (still staunchly Catholic) mother of the civil oath. It was bizarre, considering neither of those churches were officially established.
If it’s anything like that in Sweden, I can see why people are leaving in droves.
To Archer of the Forest: I sometimes wish that people would read the article in question before commenting on it. Forgive my testiness – and anyway I myself have sometimes commented without reading, Kyrie eleison – but the article does make it clear that members of the Church of Sweden pay 1 per cent of their tax to that Church. You re right about Germany; the church tax there rises to a fairly staggering 8 per cent of the total. Clergy are paid out of that. We ought to remember, however, that many of the social services we take for granted as the fiefdom of the state are run by the churches in Germany, such as homes for the elderly and disabled. But (and it is a big but) the tax policy there still seems to me to be disastrous, because once you sign out of the church you cannot claim its services and it will even refuse to give you a funeral – indeed, I believe that you are even technically not supposed to received communion. German clergy friends have also commented to me that it is impossible to get people to volunteer to do anything. If asked, they simply reply, What are all those taxes for? Pay somebody to do it! More proof of the American wisdom of the separation of church and state.
Terry Tee: 1% tax in Sweden may not be so very far off the equivalent of 8% in Germany. Sweden must be about the highest taxed country in the world.
From Wikipedia — not the best source but it was what I found on a quick search
t the end of 2008, 72,9% ( or 6,751,952) of Swedes belong to the Church of Sweden, a number that is decreasing by about one per cent every year, and Church of Sweden services are sparsely attended (hovering in the single digit percentages of the population).[6] The reason for the large number of inactive members is partly that until 1996, children became members automatically at birth if at least one of their parents were a member. Since 1996, all children that are baptised become members. [b] Some 275,000 Swedes are today members of various free churches (where congregation attendance is much higher), and, in addition, immigration has meant that there are now some 92,000 Roman Catholics and 100,000 Eastern Orthodox Christians living in Sweden.[/b] Due to immigration, Sweden also has a significant Muslim population. As many as 500,000 are Muslims by tradition[8] and between 80,000 – 400,000 of these are practicing Muslims. (See also Islam in Sweden)
So 72.9 are members of the church of Sweden — but hardly attend
3% are members of independent churches — and more of these attend
1% are Roman Catholic
1% are Eastern Orthodox
5% are muslim — with a wide estimate on attendance.
John I think that partially answers the question about how evangelical type denominations might go — better than Catholic and Orthodox but less than Muslim.
Now to attendance — unfortunately the ISSP dataset doesn’t split out the different denominations – everything is Protestant not otherwise defined other than Catholic and Non- Christian. It is also 1998 data – it would be nice to have the up to date ones but they won’t be online until early next year.
It shows attendance across the nation to be with Roman Catholics RC after the total population and the USA figures in brackets for comparison
Once a week 3% RC 27.3% (28.2%)
2-3 times a month 1.4% RC 18.2% (6.1%)
Once a month 1.3% RC nil (7.7%
Several times a year 39.1% RC 18.2% (10.1%)
Less than once a year 26.6% RC 36.4% (22.5%)
Never 28.6% RC nil (24.8%)
What I would take from this is that the Roman Catholic membership is attending much the same as the USA — but that the rest are not. It is likely that the evangelical churches (being not the established church) are more similar to the Roman Catholic. But, and this is interesting, there is no real difference in the proportion of the popualtion that goes less than once a year or never. The difference is between those who go every week — or near to it– and only occasionally.
I would imagine that Church of Sweden attendance is about the same as the percentage of non-immigants who attend Church of England services in England, something like 3%; the difference being that the Swedes who attend pay a lot more than the English do, which would seem to me a sign of commitment, surely.
Having worked in the Church of Sweden years (decades) ago, I understand the difficulties of a national church in a secularized country. Those of us who belong to either the Catholic or Orthodox churches should not gloat over the difficulties of the Church of Sweden and those “poor, deluded” Protestants who keep on making more and more ecclesial blunders. The Catholic Church in France and parts of Austria and Germany, as well as the Orthodox Church of Greece, for example, have increasingly low attendance at services, and the process of secularization on Catholic or Orthodox home turf is not going to go away. The latest demographical study in the USA (the PEW Forum report) shows that the Roman Catholic Church is the biggest loser in terms of Church membership, which is not obvious because of the influx of Catholic Hispanic immigrants- but we have lost 20% of our people in the last few decades. My point is actually very simple- we are all in the same boat- probably for a variety of differing reasons, but we are still here together. As Christians committed to the Baptismal Covenant of the Triune God and to the Eucharistic renewal of that Covenant our task should be, as much as possible, to “bear one another’s burdens and so so fulfill the law of Christ”. That, it seems to me, cuts across ecclesiastical boundaries even when we think that a brother/sister is in error. And who knows, if we really learned to do that well, those on the outside might actually see something of a community worth joining. The time of ecclesial triumphalism is surely ended!
Fr. Chrysostom Frank