Swedish Debate Climate
Jerker Karlsson over at the Swedish blog Allotetraploid wrote an excellent post on the climate of current Swedish religious debate. I have translated it (rather loosely) with his permission, and added a couple of footnotes.
A column in SvD1 on August 5 brings up the heated religious debate of the Anglosphere. The question posed is whether the same debate could rise in Sweden. The answer seems to be a definitive no. The role of religion in Sweden is peripheral, and the power of the religious communities is relatively weak. The major media; our national papers, the big tv channels and the national radio are all expressly secular. There simply aren’t any strong religious counterweights to the secular forces. There’s also a lack of numerous religious grassroots organisations that can mobilise the people in a defense of traditional superstition and bronze age morality. A Swedish (or Scandinavian) debate must therefore by necessity have a different tone and focus than the current Anglo-Saxon debate.
So far, the Swedish debate has had rather a unique focus. It has not touched upon the question of truth as much as to what degree society should even tolerate religiously motivated actions and beliefs. The question was never whether intelligent design (ID) is a scientific theory or whether we should accept the theory of evolution. The question was rather whether we should make room in our schools for any religious explanations of the world whatsoever. When homosexuality has been the topic of discussion, focus has not been on the morality aspect (i.e. whether it is an ethically defendable way of life). Instead, the discussion has been about whether religious organisations should be suffered to express their opinions at all, and if so to what degree. Several years ago the American preacher Charles Ndifon, who claimed to be able to heal cancer, was touring southern Sweden, and was accused of quackery. No one took prayer seriously, the question was instead of whether freedom of religion allows for quackery. The answer turned out to be yes and the police investigation was cancelled.
Traditional religions have low credibility in Sweden and they are viewed with skepticism by the average Swede. Obviously there are plenty of other superstitious practices and beliefs, but these are of a private nature and usually not organised. People visit soothsayers, hire exorcists or take an evening course in self healing. However, this curiosity about the supernatural lacks dogma. It’s apolitical and often agnostic. It’s doubtful that these groups should be interested in defending the traditional religions. The debate in Sweden must therefore be of a different nature.
Personally I think it’s a healthy sign that the question of truth is no longer the prominent one, as it was at the time of Hedenius2. It’s a sign of progress that we have left primitive myths behind us and instead put more focus on the question of tolerance. To what degree can and should we tolerate religious manifestations in public space? That question is both current and difficult, and actually a lot more interesting and relevant than the question of truth, which we may, with strong justification, view as settled.
1 Svenska Dagbladet, Sweden’s third biggest national newspaper. 2 Ingemar Hedenius was a Swedish philosopher who sparked an intense debate about religion in the fifties, leading to the eventual separation of church and state.
Hi again, I somehow missed this article earlier…interesting though
You are surely giving the naive version of swedish politics..Why not cover the whole op behind the process of sweden going from being Christian to becoming seculuar…I mean it seems as though Sweden just turned seculuar…and this is so naive =)
It was hardly a down-up but a top-down catalyzed process with large money being spent, and power being used in an injustice manner, to achieve goals that would help some people to gain more influence on the market and have more to cash in..It was strong lobbyism, a minority of intellectuals connected to the economical elites combined with filtered media working against public opinions and values.
It would be interesting to have an account for who owns what in your country. I’m assuming such an account wouldn’t be that innocent..
Comment by Tom:Just becareful ok? — Friday, August 17, 2007 @ 16:51
Tom, I don’t get your comment. Do you think he should have written a 500-page dissertation on how Sweden became secular on his blog? Have you never seen anyone boil down a complex process into a few lines before?
And regarding who owns what, I can tell you that the Church of Sweden owns lots of land and has lots of money. It still gets its membership fees automatically — if you haven’t explicitly left the church and was born before 1992 (I think that’s the year) you are a member and you pay extra tax that goes to the church.
Comment by Rien — Friday, August 17, 2007 @ 17:26
Tom, do you have any evidence for the “top-down catalyzed process” you are referring to or does it only exist in your head. I’m not quite sure what you are trying to intimate but it sounds rather conspirational.
Comment by Fredrik Bendz — Saturday, August 18, 2007 @ 04:33
Tom, one thing you ought to know about sweden is that it was never particularly christian in the first place. While we did have a state church and while it was illegal not to be part of it for a long time, the swedish population as such has never been much for religion. As it is now, a majority of the millions of people who are members of the former state church don’t even consider themselves believers. They were included at birth and many of them are barely even aware they are members! The separation of church and state a few years ago was simply natural. All that’s left to do is crush the church’s monopoly on funerals, and stop the way the Swedish Church has it’s membership fee collected through taxes - a service no other private organisation gets and which the National Tax Board itself is against.
In short, you don’t know what you’re talking about.
Comment by Felicia Gilljam — Saturday, August 18, 2007 @ 14:37
>In short, you don’t know what you’re talking about
Cute, so now I know =) From what I know Sweden was once catholic, turned protestant/lutheran as a result from a major fascistic operation (well I guess there was a king involved with interests in launching a new version of the religion where he would have more power) with house iterrogations, and later burning of “witches” etc…And so swedes naturally got a less positive attitute towards (lutheran) Christianity after such terror (compared to the rest of Europe not being Lutheran), who wouldn’t? I mean there was hardly any christian values being practised by the ruling elite those days in sweden…
Let’s fast forward. 1922 and Sweden is the 1st country in the world to introduce the Insitute for race biology…hmm nice, or not..Inspiring think-alikes like Hitler who praised Sweden and later waged war against many countries, including Norway, killing millions of innocent people, this while Sweden was “neutral” with plenty of nazis in its establishment…selling iron and making a fortune..you were several steps-ahead
Comment by Tom — Sunday, August 19, 2007 @ 23:43
And after the war we have neighbouring countries like Poland, bombed, destroyed, raped, poor because of all that was lost during war..and Sweden? They had a prosperous economy, based on nazi gold, and the swedes were brain-washed by their own media to believe that this was because swedes were more progressive, a bit better than others, especially thoose poor, dirty polish people…
And this is also how the idea of progressive Sweden was sold to the swedes. What then followed was a history of massive priming, setting the public agenda of debate. The swedish lutheran church was a easy prey for the ruling establishment - the liberal economical power blocks and the social democrats who infiltrated the lutheran church (and so, how much your lutheran church owned and owns is quite uninteresting when regarding that you had lots of atheists among the ones setting the internal agenda for the church!) and step-wise turned it into…well I guess they have lots of concerts nowadays or something…
Comment by Tom — Sunday, August 19, 2007 @ 23:44
From what I heard the typical swede is unconfortable with not being like the rest, a heritage from the house-interrogations once held everywhere in the country. So it wasn’t hard for the think-tanks of minorites with plenty of economical resources to launch one political correct law after another using mainly the media channels to launch their ideology. Attacking christian was made easier by launching “free sexality”, pornography as well as inviting left-wing feminist and queer intellectuals into liberal media and giving them extra space as long as they would attack christian values and not start to talk negative about the 100% men owning media.
Comment by Tom — Sunday, August 19, 2007 @ 23:46
Why? Because when it comes to expanding the market christianity is a hindrance with its teaching on moral and family values, its critical outlook on experimenting with human life, abusing sexuality in direct on indirect commercial purposes etc. And there are huge interests (billions of$$) in removing these “obstacles” and replacing them with the ideology of their choise, suitable for minorites to make a lot more money and gain a lot more power and influence than they already have. And our health? Our GNH - gross national happiness? Well they don’t care - if the people are getting worse than they could always buy the new pill from ‘em.
Comment by T o m — Monday, August 20, 2007 @ 00:00