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The Nordic Churches and the Ecumenical Movement
Ecumenical Review, The, April, 2000 by Peter Lodberg
In the course of the development illustrated by the case of Denmark, the Nordic Lutheran churches changed from territorial churches to state churches, folk churches or national churches. These new ecclesiological concepts presuppose that a church is somewhat different from a state and its governance. Along with the concept of "free churches" (which replaced older terms such as "sects" and "separatism") these new concepts reflect changes in the understanding of the church which evolved in Europe during the 19th century. At the same time they expressed the new relations between state, people, nation and church. As a simplification one might say that free church and state church are contrary concepts about the organization of the church, whereas folk church and national church deal with the qualitative aspect of being the church. Dag Thorkildsen points out that among modern ecclesiological concepts, "state church" expresses continuity with pre-modern society, whereas "national church" and "folk church" are regarded as linking with the new popular reality.
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The Nordic vision
In the 19th century and well into the 20th century many people in the Nordic countries shared a common vision of unity and cooperation among the Nordic peoples. Especially after the second world war, it was hoped that the common Lutheran heritage would strengthen Nordic unity. However, attempts to gather Nordic countries in political and ecclesial fellowship had little success, and today the Nordic countries and Lutheran churches are more separated than for a long time.
If the realization of the Nordic vision was a failure, however, the modernization of the Nordic state churches into democratic folk churches and the establishment of social welfare states was more successful. The result was not a separation of church and state, as in other European countries, but both a state-supported national church and freedom of religion at the same time. An important presupposition of this was that Christianity in its Nordic Lutheran shape yielded its function of legitimation of the state and the order of society to a nationalism that was open to religious legitimation. Religious-based nationalism became the new civil religion in the period after the second world war. In this civil religion Christianity and the Nordic national churches came to be seen as part of an historical heritage rather than the Truth, as in pre-modern society.
This development of a new Lutheran-inspired civil religion was supported by the establishment of the social welfare society -- the most important political project in the Nordic countries after 1945. Again, Denmark can serve as an illustration. According to Danish journalist Henning Fonsmark, the Danish social welfare project owes its success to the core of a secularized "love for neighbour" philosophy shared by the Christian part of the labour movement, the Liberals and the Conservatives alike. All wanted the Christian understanding of the human person to be visualized in a non-confessional, secularized way in politics. As a consequence, a deal was struck between the state and the Lutheran folk church, in which the state promised the church good financial circumstances as part of the official state administration and freedom of preaching, and the church would concentrate on its inner life and worship, leaving all diaconal and social work to the welfare state. The church became invisible in public life and concentrated its energy on Sunday. The result was the establishment of a welfare society and a welfare church, legitimated by a welfare theology, of which the major emphases are that no one can speak on behalf of the Lutheran church, that the true church is the invisible church and that the local parish is the real church.
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