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Editorial in Svensk Pastoraltidskrift (SPT, March 10, 2006)

One worried observer cannot avoid the impression "that the Swedish Church tends to estrange itself from the wider ecumenical community". The principal explanation he finds in "the politization and close ties to the political parties of the delegates to the Church Assembly. It is natural that church politicians think in national political terms instead of identifying themselves as part of a world wide Christian community. Vital forces within the church are needed to compensate for this deficiency." (Per Beskow in Signum number 1/2006.)

Once the Church Assembly adopted the Borg agreement that includes a clause about consultations before crucial decisions. This clause was then ignored by the same Church Assembly, when the proposal of blessing of homosexual partnerships was prepared and the decision taken. Both the Finnish and the English church have criticized this high-handedness. But this is only a particularly obvious example of the "tendency to provincialism and self-sufficiency" that worries the recently retired bishop of Str‰ngn‰s, Jonas Jonson (Kyrkans Tidning number 47/2005.

This indifference toward ecumenism and toward Christian brothers and sisters engaged in this work is only one side of the self-sufficiency of the church politicians. Equally serious - and dangerous - is their distrust toward what we (SPT number 1/2006) called the spiritual movements within the church. These are quite different from each other concerning origin and presentation. But most of them have in common the desire to help people discover and grow into the faith that once and for all has been given to the Church of Christ.

From the perspective of those in power in the church, it is bad enough that they on concrete issues may find themselves contrary to the commonly accepted ideology of the day. The major example is of course the so called opposition against women priests, the latest one the so called homophobia. About those in opposition on these kinds of issues, it is said that they have excluded themselves from the "democratic community". That way they can be ignored. It is trickier to get hold of the religious conviction itself that for instance makes a distinction between belief and unbelief. That kind of conviction is contrary to the principle of equality, and of course that is not good.

Worrying, maybe threatening, from the perspective of the new state religion, is the fact that behind the view points of the opposition there is something that does not automatically follow what the majority thinks and what is commonly accepted. Christian faith is not legitimized by the sovereignty of the people and has a base all of its own.

The other day the attitude of the powerful became clear, completely unrehearsed and in clear language, by Morgan Johansson, Minister for Public Health. Replying to the question if the Christian couldn't be allowed to participate in the public debate, he answered: "Yes of course, but only if they do not argue from out of the Bible". In the secular state the Bible is not a heresy. It is a foreign religion. And as such it has to be given minimal attention.

If you think in totalitarian terms - and every government in power enough long time develop totalitarian tendencies - every competing ideology has to be neutralized. (To eradicate ways of thinking is difficult, and attempts to do so most often counter productive.) Already in the beginning of the 1930th, for some it was clear that in Sweden there was only space for one way of thinking about community, "the ethnically-nationally based People Home (Folkhemmet) under Social-Democratic leadership". (Sven Thidevall, quoted from K. Bl¸ckert in Signum number 8/2005). Since then that vision has only become more decisive.

The tools locally to neutralize the Swedish church as an independent factor in society, were found in a series of laws about Governance of the Parish (Fˆrsamlingsstyrelse), copied from the laws about the local secular community, laws that were instituted by the Parliament alone, and thus not a church law. The government became the Board of the Church and limited the number of positions for priests. With the help of the power to appoint it screened out bishop candidates among those elected. With the reform of the Church Assembly 1982, the church received a "highest decision making organ" that guaranteed that the conclusions of the Church Assembly never would be different from those of the state. At last even the dioceses became like the secular communities.

The platform for the church by Engberg-HallÈn, to assure liberal theological dominance and empty the church of spiritual power before letting it free, has been extraordinarily successful. See Press quotations in SPT number 4/2006. (Translator's note: Article by Yngve Kalin ).

In this whole process the church has been inconceivably unsuspecting. Bishops and other theologians have been panic stricken by the risk of being accused of Biblicism and literal biblical faith. That way they have become defenseless against the proposals from the Kingdom of Man. With less and less people in the pews, the preaching has become more people oriented, more aiming at giving comfort for the day than giving help for eternity. The elected delegates of the laity have been impressed that the purpose of their election is to share in the power, not in the faith. Lately there has appeared a fashionable idea, from the highest level in the church, that, for instance, the texts in the Bible mean nothing in themselves, but receive a meaning first when they are read and interpreted. The idea is tailor made for a thinking monopoly that with as much obvious as self-assumed authority decides what Bible interpretations are "democratically" acceptable.

The spiritual impoverishment of the Swedish church is not merely an unavoidable natural process. Included in it is also the result of a conscious and utterly effective church-political program. It is useful to see this reality straight in the eye. If you have made this insight your own, a new light falls over the quotation in the beginning of this editorial, asking for "vital forces within the church". These "forces" are nothing you then piously will expect somebody else to deliver. There is no "somebody else". Everyone who has the slightest awareness that the Kingdom of God is something more than the religious sector of the Kingdom of Man is already called to participate in the fight for the survival of the Christian faith in this country.

 

2006-03-10