On Christmas Day 1945, a fire broke lose during the early morning service in the village church of BurtrÀsk in the Upper North of Sweden. Witnesses reports that it was exceptionally cold in church this day and that they therefore pushed the boiler supporting the church heating system to its limits. Unfortunately, the pipes of the boiler were not solid and soon the church stood in flames (Bohman 2018).
The Christmas day fire turned the celebration of an exceptionally joyful seasonâthe first Christmas after the Second World Warâinto a dramatic event. My grandparents were a young couple at the time, happily reunited after my grandfatherâs deployment at the Swedish border. Even though the fear of war was over, times were tough. My grandfather was a carpenter and work opportunities were scarce. So, when he was given the opportunity to join a team to rebuilding the church, he was very grateful. He did not see himself as a very religious man although he was baptized in the church, had attended confirmation, married in church and attended church services every once in a while. Yet, even though he foremost valued the work opportunity, he was proud to take part in the restoration of the church in the middle of the village as it represented tradition and celebration of life-rites and holidays.
There was just one problem. The vicar asked my grandfather and his colleagues rebuilding the church to work without wearing hats or knitted caps. According to my grandfather, this was because the vicar felt that men wearing something on their head in the church was inappropriate and against the proper conduct when visiting the church. The workers tolerated the rule during spring, summer and the warm part of the autumn but considered not wearing a hat a big request for the winter, when temperatures could go below minus 30 degrees Celsius. Since the rebuilding took a couple of years to complete, the no-hat-rule created both problems and discomfort.
When my grandfather told me this story during the 1980s, he did not tell me if they went along and worked hat-less in the winter. Instead of ending his story with this information, he would return to the vicarâs expectation of not wearing hats and caps in a church without a roof. It was frustrating, he would explain, because he felt he could not question the priestâs authority on how to behave in church. If this would have been possible, he liked to say to the priest that having a different opinion about the hat-issue did not make him less pious or a morally inferior person. After making this point, he ended his story about the church fire by pointing out that times had improved since 1945 with the introduction of religious freedom and the implementation of ordinary peopleâs right to choose what to believe and not to believe.
I chose to begin this book with my grandfatherâs story and his way of telling me the story because I believe that it touches upon themes that many today living in Sweden may identify with. Let me elaborate.
Many Swedes may relate to the feeling of being proud over the church in the middle of the village and, react to the extraordinary drama caused by the fire took place on Christmas day. Many probably also side with my grandfather and feel that the vicar was mistaken when he asked the workers to work hatless in the middle of the winter in upper north of Sweden. The reasons why I believe these aspects of the story are relatable is because they sit well with common customs in Sweden. These, in turn, can be traced to a range of sources including the founding documents of the state-church system, current laws and regulations and, popular ways to practice religion and celebrate holidays.
Being proud of the church building in the center of the village resonates with most Swedes because being affiliated with the Church of Sweden has ever since the implementation of the Protestant-Lutheran tradition in the sixteenth century been closely associated with national belonging (Jarlert 2007; Willander 2019). In fact, the church law enacted in 1648 states that all subjects of the Swedish king should have the same religion as the king. The timing of this church-law is noteworthy because in 1648 Finland was a part of Sweden and, as a result of warfare, Sweden also spanned over parts of current day Norway, Germany, Estonia, Latvia and Russia. In these parts of the kingdom the subjects spoke their native languages and were in part governed by local laws. As a result, Sweden was not a kingdom held together by a shared language or a shared civil law. Viewed from this perspective, being of the same religion as the king stands out as the key symbol for being a member of the Swedish kingdom (Jarlert 2007).
The church law from 1648 was valid in Sweden until 1993. A new law then temporarily replaced it until 1999. At the turn of millennia, the Swedish authorities introduced the currently valid law that regulate the relations between the Church of Sweden and the Swedish state. The current law is justified by an ambition of governing the Church of Sweden in a way that treat the former state church as an organization equal to the religious minorities in Sweden. The current law continue to define the Church of Sweden geographically, as a peoples church (in Swedish: folkkyrka) that is expected to provide pastoral care for people living in Sweden (Gustafsson 2003). This geographical reach maintains the centrality of the Church of Sweden as a symbol of Swedishness and cultural heritage. Many Swedes also consider church buildings all over the country to be an important cultural heritage (BÀckström and Bromander 1995).
Swedes affinity with Christian holidays and especially Christmas relates to how many Swedes sustain their religious culture. Christmas is a holyday celebrated worldwide, in ways that are more religious and in ways that are more commercial and less motivated by religious teachings. In Sweden, the most important day of the Christmas holidays is Christmas Eve because this is the night of family dinners and gift giving. During Christmas day, nonetheless, the particular Religio-Cultural heritage of Sweden is for many Swedes maintained as the Early Morning Service on Christmas day continues to be popular (Bromander 2012). This service is one part of a specific way of observing Christmas time that also include observing Advent by decorating windows with paper stars and tringle shaped electrical candle sticks and, celebrating Lucia the 13th of December with homemade gingerbreads and s-shaped buns seasoned with saffron.
Many today living in Sweden would also object to the vicarâs request concerning working bareheaded in a church without a roof in the middle of the winter. At the time of the request, such objection was far from self-evident. In 1945 there were laws that, simultaneously, prohibited Swedish citizens to leave the state church and to criticize this churchâs teachings and its clergy. Being critical of the priestâs request in the 1980s, nonetheless, corresponds to the freedom of religion laws introduced in 1951 and the removal of the laws prohibiting heresy in Sweden in the 1970s (Pettersson 2000; Willander 2019). By the time my grandfather told me his story, he was allowed to leave the Church of Sweden (if he wanted) and express his opinion about its teachings and its clergy.
For the sake of the argument I am about to convey in this book, I hope my grandfatherâs story illustrates that families tend to share stories that simultaneously put words on what is valued in a family and gently invites the ones who listen to become the heirs of the same values. To share stories within families is no sense a phenomenon limited to Sweden. In his book
Inventing American Religion: Polls Surveys and the Tenuous Quest for a Nationâs Faith, Wuthnow (
2015)
writes that it is American children learn âat their parentâs kneesâ:
To respect the individualâs freedom to practice religion, while at the same time prohibiting any particular religion from establishing itself as an element of government. (Wuthnow 2015: 3)
In Wuthnow (2015) view, American children are taught these ideals because they are in line with this nationâs founding documents. In comparison with the clear and concise ideals Wuthnow summarizes for American children, the ideals of stories equivalent to my grandfatherâs story are not clear-cut. Some of these ideals are consequences of several centuries old documents funding the state-church system whereas other ideals relates to new laws that allows for religious freedom. The ideals also relates to the religious practices Swedes continue to observe. Swedish children arguably learn ideals in somewhat confusing and contradictory bits and pieces. Although the ideals constitute bits and pieces and are shared private setting of family homes, the ideals conveyed in stories evoke a more general recognition because they relate to larger patterns of conduct, laws and rules that currently make or, have made, a difference to most Swedes.
The Mainstream: A Collectivity Relating to the Religious
As is underlies much of the argument in this book, I will now turn to explaining how stories make a difference to the collectivity I refer to as the mainstream. In short, the mainstream is conceptulized as a collectivity giving life to stories. In this sense, the mainstream refers to the enduring conduct of a majority, its inner rationale and the social bonds created by this. Accordingly, the mainstream transcends the majority of a specific time and place by passing on their conduct and the rationales to new generations.
Throughout the book, I refer to the mainstream under scrutiny as the âReligious Mainstreamâ. I call the collectivity âreligiousâ because the conducts and rationales I study relate to the religious. Hence, the term âreligious mainstreamâ does not refer to a group within which all members recognize a religious identity or life style.
The collectivity is also referred to as âreligiousâ because it connotes shared experiences of religion in the Swedish society. The older generations of the collectivity have, for example, experienced a time when adhering to the state church was mandatory for Swedish citizens. Moreover, all members of the collectivity born prior to 1995 share experiences of being signed up as members of the Church of Sweden as infants if at least one of...
