The Nordic Churches and the Ecumenical Movement

Peter Lodberg

The individuals who energized the early 20th-century ecumenical movement, despite their confessional and theological differences, shared the conviction that the crisis reflected in two world wars, the German church struggle of the 1930s, the social disorder in Europe and the upheaval of communism in Russia challenged the churches to respond in cooperation with each other. In the Nordic region, early leaders such as Archbishop Nathan Soderblom of Sweden and Danish pastor Alfred Th. Jorgensen discovered in theory and practice the importance of the church as an essential component of the gospel.

The second world war strengthened cooperation among the Nordic churches. The Nordic Ecumenical Institute in Sigtuna, Sweden, founded in 1939, was an important ecumenical meeting-place during the war, not only for Nordic church people, but also internationally: Dietrich Bonhoeffer and Bishop George Bell met there in 1942. The Ecumenical Council of Denmark, founded in 1939, worked in close cooperation with Danchurchaid, founded in 1922, to provide spiritual and material support for the struggling churches and people in Norway and Finland. These war-time experiences showed the importance of structural cooperation among the churches. Ecumenism challenged the Nordic churches to build up new structures to establish and maintain contacts with other churches. Ecumenism was no longer an issue only for individuals, but for church structures; and the main question was to identify the functions of the church, which led to an instrumental ecumenical ecclesiology.

All the Nordic Lutheran churches took part in the founding assemblies of the Lutheran World Federation (1947), the World Council of Churches (1948) and the Conference of European Churches (1959). The ecumenical movement has given them an international dimension that they did not have and enlarged their theological self-understanding in a new, ecumenical direction. One might say that the Nordic churches and the ecumenical movement helped each other to accommodate to modernism -- the most powerful cultural and political development in the 20th century. Modernism sought a truly global, international culture instead of the divisive national, ethnic and religious traditions prevailing in the past. Ted A. Campbell describes it as a cultural movement that attempts to overcome the particularities of traditions.(1) Modern architecture, for example, rejected traditional architectural style and developed the so-called international style of architecture, with the rectangular concrete and glass and steel monoliths that until recently dominated the skylines of large cities.

A good example of this modernist architectural style is the Ecumenical Centre in Geneva, which houses such international church institutions as the WCC, LWF and CEC. The building itself is made of concrete, glass and steel. The Danish artist Hans Lollesgaard designed the chapel, which is international in its style -- with its organ from the Western church and its altar from a combined Eastern and Western tradition. This chapel functions well as a place for ecumenical worship because it differs from confessional church architecture while at the same time placing recognizable elements from the tradition of the Christian church within a new international and ecumenical framework. The architecture of the Ecumenical Centre points to the fact that the ecumenical movement is a reaction against the particularities of church traditions, against the visible divisions of churches.

But the Ecumenical Centre chapel also indicates that the ecumenical movement does not aim at a complete loss of traditional and confessional identities. A central expression of the ecumenical vision is the "sharing of gifts", in which each tradition brings to the whole church the particular gifts that come out of its own identity and history.

Today the older forms of modernism have come to an end. Since the 1970s -- and especially in the 1990s -- the particularities of tradition, ethnicity and nationality have reappeared in striking contrast to modernism's attempts to overcome them. Whether or not it is appropriate to speak of "post-modernism", the present crisis of the ecumenical movement is part of a general mood of reaction against modern art, architecture, politics and culture. The ecumenical movement as a Christian expression of modernism faces difficult times in a context in which it is once again acceptable to express ethnic, regional, national and religious particularities.

When looking at the Nordic churches and the ecumenical movement in the postwar period we must be aware that this was the period of modernism, in which the ecumenical movement felt at home. The ecumenical movement helped to modernize the Nordic churches in the spirit of modernism, despite their confessional and political particularities.

Paradoxically, the ecumenical movement also helped these churches to accommodate to a more particular post-modern situation by encouraging what Hans Kung has called theologies of particularities. Support for "contextual theology" -- water-buffalo theology, theology of liberation, black theology, etc. -- was regarded as part of the prophetic role of the WCC in the 1970s. Consequently, the WCC, far from rendering the confessional churches like the Nordic churches redundant, has been developed by them to serve confessional purposes. While some churches whose confessional identity is shaky have undoubtedly found the WCC a convenient corset, the stiffening in that corset has been provided by the collective power of those churches which have been in a strong national and confessional position, including especially the Nordic Lutheran churches.

Perhaps in the long run the situation will change, and living within the framework of common ecumenical institutions will create a new ecumenical identity among the churches. But if that were to happen, and if the new ecclesial structure were indeed able to act as a single unit, this would imply not that the WCC had superseded the confessional church, but that it had itself turned into a church on a grander scale -- a development unlikely to be brought about even by confrontation with a common enemy. In this respect the WCC shares a similar fate as such international political institutions as the European Union and the United Nations.(2)

Norden as context for the ecumenical movement

The North, Norden, consists of Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway and Sweden. It is common to speak of the Lutheran churches in these countries as national churches, folk churches or state churches. Especially since 1945, the Baptist, Covenant, Methodist and Orthodox churches have challenged the Lutheran churches to enter into ecumenical dialogue and cooperation -- often as a result of international ecumenical cooperation: if the churches can work together internationally, why not also on the national scene? The ecumenical movement and its theological reflections have thus brought to the Nordic churches the importance of doing theology in a contextual manner. In the process of formulating ecumenical theology (or theologies), concepts like "contextualization" and "inculturation" have become important points of no return. Bonhoeffer's question "Who is Christ for us today?" helped us to seek the fundamental insights of Christian faith and theology in our present-day situation. At the same time, Bonhoeffer's question points towards a more fundamental faith claim that cuts across all confessional or historical traditions. Thus, when ecumenical theologies speak of the importance of contextualization, it is not to be trapped in old historical answers, but to ask for the fundamental theological descriptions of faith claims that all Christians hold in common -- both in and in spite of their particular context. This means that theologians, pastors and laypeople are free -- and indeed obliged -- to bring in the Nordic context as a frame of reference for ecumenical theological reflection. They should not hold back on the ground that the Nordic experience is different from experiences and faith claims elsewhere. In the North we have to ask ourselves: What is important for Nordic Christians when we participate in the ecumenical movement? What is our manifestation of universally lived Christianity?

Here it is important to see how the history of the Nordic churches explains their theological self-understanding. From the 16th century to the 19th century, the Nordic Lutheran churches were basically territorial churches, since both Sweden and Denmark-Norway were multi-nation states. The Lutheran churches were an integral part of the governing of the state. For both religious and political reasons, confession and church order made up an important part of legislation. Confession demarcated the territory of a state and people from other states. For this reason, contacts among the Nordic Lutheran churches were sporadic. There are few traces of consciousness of religious unity in the Nordic region. The feeling of unity went far beyond the Nordic countries and encompassed evangelical churches in many different places.

With the rise of democracy in the 19th century, the religious legitimation of state and society was superseded by nationalism with strong religious roots. The movement was from multi-nation states and multi-nation state churches to nation-states and national Lutheran folk churches. This development took place in all Nordic countries, although Norwegian church historian Dag Thorkildsen distinguished between a West Nordic (Denmark, Norway, the Faeroes, Iceland) and an East Nordic (Sweden, Finland) tradition.(3) The former has tended to be low-church Lutheran, with a strong integration of church and state, while the latter has been high-church and confessionally orthodox, with a lower degree of integration.

Revivalist movements in the 19th century were important in transforming the Nordic countries into modern societies. Of the different types of revivalism, religious revivalism came first -- except perhaps in Iceland. Some would explain religious revivalism as a reaction among theologians and clergy to the Enlightenment and rationalism; others would see it as a new movement, which broke the unity of pre-modern agrarian society, created new social forms and thus represented early modernity. In any case, although the Nordic countries reacted to religious revivalism in different ways, the attempts to suppress these movements led to demands for political freedom such as the freedom of religion. Religious awakening interacted with political liberalism, with the result that the clergy lost their control over the religious activity of laypeople and freedom of religion was gradually accepted. This development can be illustrated by the Danish case.

Freedom of religion and the Danish Lutheran church

Freedom of religion is one of the fundamental human rights enshrined in many international documents. Pluralism, which is a cornerstone of any democratic society, depends on the individual's right to choose religion and exercise it freely. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948) formulates it in this way:

   Everyone has the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion; this
   right includes freedom to change his religion or belief, and freedom,
   either alone or in community with others and in public or private, to
   manifest his religion or belief in teaching, practice, worship and
   observance (art. 18).

It is the task of the state to protect freedom of religion, which is often done through the protection of religious associations. But there is a limit to freedom of religion. In the UN International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (1966), this limit is expressed thus: "Freedom to manifest one's religion or beliefs may be subject only to such limitations as are prescribed by law and are necessary to protect public safety, order, health or morals or the fundamental rights and freedoms of others" (art. 18.3). The state thus has a double function in protecting the individual's freedom of religion: on the one hand, to ensure everyone the right to freedom of religion, on the other hand to protect the public order and the rights and freedoms of others.

Religious freedom has taken on new importance in Europe since the fall of the Berlin wall in 1989. In the aftermath of this peaceful revolution, new nation-states are under construction in the formerly communist countries, and new constitutions have been put into place in such countries as Russia, Latvia, the Czech Republic and Albania, laying the foundations for open and modern democratic societies. In this process of nation-building the right to "freedom of thought, conscience and religion" has proved to be one of the bases of a democratic society, because it protects the individual citizen from discrimination by the state and safeguards the principle of pluralism, which is indissociable from democracy. Freedom of religion is thus an absolute right, not subject to any limitation by the state. But because religious activity manifests itself in public life, religious practice can under certain circumstances be subjected to limitations by the state. Hence, the necessary distinction made in the laws of Western countries and in international human rights conventions between the absolute freedom of religious thinking or ideas and the relative freedom of religious manifestations.

One problem arising in the present European debate on religious freedom is to define what religion is and to decide on the principles for official recognition of a religious community. While there is no generally accepted definition of the concept of religion in either the scientific literature on religion or human rights conventions, Ole Espersen, commissioner of the Council of the Baltic Sea States on Democratic Institutions and Human Rights, notes that the concept has been clarified through interpretation by international human-rights bodies.(4) Thus, Elizabeth Odio Benito, the UN special Rapporteur on Religious Intolerance, pointed out in a 1989 study that religion can be described as "an explanation of the meaning of life and how to live accordingly". This very broad description protects theistic, non-theistic and atheistic beliefs as well as the right not to profess any religion or belief.

I shall use this broad concept in the following analysis of how the present European discussion on religious freedom plays out in a Danish context: how the international discussion takes colour and shape according to specifically Danish religious, political and legal ideas and practices, and how the international dimension illustrates that the Danish debate is part and parcel of a much wider discussion on religious freedom in Europe.

Freedom of religion in Denmark is closely related to the Evangelical-Lutheran Church, because according to the 1849 Danish constitution, amended in 1953, "the Evangelical-Lutheran Church is the established church of Denmark and as such it shall be supported by the state" (art. 4). In order to understand this unique role of one particular confessional church for the regulation of freedom of religion in Denmark, it is necessary to look at some history.

A brief historical outline

The Lutheran Reformation took place in Denmark in 1536. The state would no longer be governed according to Roman law, but according to the will of the Lutheran king. In practice, the result was a Lutheran church governed by a Lutheran king as the embodiment of the Lutheran state. The Catholic population soon became aware that freedom of religion was a principle unknown to the new rulers in state and church. In various ways the Lutheran church and the Lutheran kingdom of Denmark were protected according to the rule of the Augsburg peace agreement of 1555: cuius regio, eius religio. A political and confessional cleansing took place, and those who continued to confess their faith according to Roman Catholic practice had to leave the country as religious refugees. In 1557 the leading Lutheran bishop Peder Palladius formulated a "catalogue of heresy", which prohibited non-Lutheran Protestants and Catholics from entering the Danish kingdom. The Danish law of King Christian V, which functioned as the basic law from 1683 until the democratic constitution in 1849, gave prominence to the refusal of Catholicism: Catholics were forbidden to live in or to enter the country, a Catholic could not inherit and non-Lutheran services could not take place.

During the period of absolute monarchy from 1660, the king did allow some non-Lutherans to enter the kingdom after the Roskilde peace agreement with Sweden. Most were soldiers hired by the king in his ongoing and unsuccessful attempts to overthrow the Swedish king. The royal military adventures had important consequences for Fredericia, built in 1650 as a fortress in the southern part of Jutland. To encourage people to move there, the king decided in September 1674 to allow "freedom of conscience for all Christians" who were willing to move and live within the ramparts of Fredericia; and in 1682 this localized freedom of religion was extended to include the Jews as well.

When liberal democratic ideas began to be formulated at the end of the 18th century, the Roman Catholic Church did not support the idea of freedom of religion, either in Denmark or anywhere else in Europe. As the true church, it did not recognize other confessional churches or ideologies as having equal rights. Consequently, the Catholics did not demand the right of religious freedom in states where they lived as minorities and would have benefited from such rights. This explains why there was no Catholic participation in the Danish discussion of the relationship between state and church and of religious freedom from 1820 to 1849. The right for freedom of religion was fought by another overlooked religious group: the Baptists.

The Danish Baptists and freedom of religion

The first Dane to address the issue of freedom of religion was P.C. Monster. On 16 July 1840, he delivered a "Demand for Full Freedom of Religion" to the free assembly of the Estates of the Realm in Roskilde.(5) According to Monster, a law on religious freedom should not apply to the Baptists -- because, in his words, "they have already taken it" -- but should include all other Danes. Monster proposed three conditions for the introduction of freedom of religion: (1) the Lutheran state church should continue to receive taxes from all citizens; (2) laws on schooling should remain unchanged; and (3) any new religious community should produce a creed to show that it had no intention of being subversive to the state. Monster contended that all parties would benefit from this solution, arguing that freedom of religion was responsible for the spiritual and economic growth of the United States. Just as America had heard the gospel and received it in the freedom of the Holy Spirit, so, too, the time had come for Denmark to listen to the free voice of the Spirit.

Monster's proposal was never discussed, because the secretary of the assembly's petition committee was an old enemy of his: the bishop of Sealand, J.P. Mynster. Instead, in the years that followed Monster was jailed five times for his theological viewpoints and baptismal practice.

During the same period, N.F.S. Grundtvig and his followers were advancing another model of freedom of religion. This model, which Grundtvig called "Nordic freedom", would give the believers freedom to choose their own pastor, while at the same time giving pastors the right to choose their own parishioners.(6) Grundtvig's liberal idea of church practice presupposed an ecclesiology that understands the state church as an establishment (Stats-Indretning) in which all religious life (Lutheran, Baptist, etc.) should live in free and open competition. While this differs from Monster's understanding of religious freedom, it did pave the way for Grundtvig to support Monster. Thus, in 1842 Grundtvig published a pamphlet "On Religious Persecution", in which he maintained that after the Baptist case one had to choose between some form of freedom of religion and religious persecution. There was no longer a middle way.

It is important to note that the new constitution of 1849, which introduced freedom of religion for the first time and broke with the absolute monarchy, represented a compromise solution on state-church relations and freedom of religion. The two fathers of the constitution, D.G. Monrad and Orla Lehmann, combined elements from Monster, Mynster and Grundtvig. Mynster's idea of continuing an Evangelical Lutheran state church was changed to an Evangelical Lutheran folk church which is supported by the state. The close connection between state and church was based on a romantic idea of a "folk church" that goes back to Friedrich Schleiermacher. It was left open how the new church order should be put into practice. Was the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Denmark an "established" church in Grundtvig's sense, or did the term "folk church" signify Mynster's understanding of the close connection between state and church?

This unresolved ecclesiological problem lies behind the fact that the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Denmark is governed by the parliament (Folketinget) and not by the church itself.(7) On the other hand, freedom of religion was introduced in the constitution and has been practised ever since. This did not mean that the Baptist Union was automatically recognized officially as a religious community: that happened only in 1952, more than a hundred years later -- and after many applications to the minister of ecclesiastical affairs. What stopped in 1849 was the possibility of the Lutheran church using force to baptize children of Baptists, which it had been doing since 1828. Thus, the article on freedom of religion did not follow either Monster or Grundtvig. Grundtvig's idea of freedom from the obligation to avail oneself exclusively of the services of the incumbent of the parish (Sognebandslosen) was enacted into law by the parliament in 1855, while a law on the freedom of the pastor to choose whom he will serve has not yet been adopted -- the closest we come is the freedom of the pastor's preaching (forkyndelsesfrihed).

This brief overview shows that constitutionally freedom of religion in Denmark is regulated from the perspective of the Evangelical Lutheran Church as the established church (art. 4). The king or queen must be a member of the Evangelical Lutheran Church (art. 6). Neither the matter of the Evangelical Lutheran Church nor the matter of religious communities dissenting from the established church has been regulated by law as prescribed in articles 66 and 69. Consequently, the life of the established church and of the religious minorities is mostly regulated through administrative acts and by the practice of various authorities.

Freedom of religion is guaranteed by article 67 of the constitution: "The citizens shall be entitled to form congregations for the worship of God in a manner consistent with their convictions, provided that nothing at variance with good morals or public order shall be taught or done." The word "citizen" covers both Danish and foreign citizens, and the term "worship of God" is to be interpreted as to comprise both monotheistic and polytheistic worship. The right to freedom of religion is also elaborated in article 70: "No person shall for reasons of his creed or descent be deprived of access to complete enjoyment of his civic and political rights, nor shall he for such reasons evade compliance with any common civic duty." According to Ole Espersen, article 70 ensures that the state does not deprive any individual of civic and political rights due to religious conviction, but also prevents an individual from being exempted from civic duties due to religious convictions. Thus, the constitution balances freedom of religion as an absolute right and the relative freedom of religious practice.

Until 1969, official recognition of religious communities dissenting from the established church was by way of a royal decree. Among the legal effects of this recognition was the authorization to perform christening and civilly valid marriages. In 1969 this mode of recognition was abandoned, because of the adoption of a new marriage act, according to which church weddings having civil validity can take place not only in the established church and the recognized communities, but also "in other religious communities when one of the parties belongs to the religious community, and the religious community has ministers who are authorized by the minister of ecclesiastical affairs to celebrate weddings".

Thus, since 1969 the basic law that defines the actual content of religious freedom in Denmark is the marriage act! Official recognition of a religious community by the minister of ecclesiastical affairs takes place by giving one of its ministers -- not the community itself -- authorization to celebrate weddings with civil validity. This means that every time a religious community gets a new minister, he or she must apply to the minister of ecclesiastical affairs for a licence to celebrate weddings. In the preparatory work for the marriage act, a religious community was defined as "a genuine religious community in the normal sense of this word, i.e. not only a religious `movement' or a religious or philosophical society, but an association or assembly (a religious community) whose primary aim is worship of God (cult) according to an elaborated teaching and rite".

Until 1998 the consultant to the minister of ecclesiastical affairs on the question of whether a religious community was genuine was the Lutheran bishop of Copenhagen. Now this advice comes from a commission made up of specialists in law, theology and science of religion. This signals a break with the tradition since 1683 of giving the Lutheran bishop of Copenhagen the status of a consultant to the minister. This tradition was criticized by scholars of religion, who argued that the bishop was not an expert on religions outside the established church, and that he might undeniably have subjective interests in an administrative decision that might facilitate competition for his own church.(8)

Seen in historical perspective, the establishment of this special commission on the recognition of religious communities in 1998 indicates that Danish society is becoming more and more pluralistic, which challenges the state to loosen its ties to the established church. Interestingly, this development has not been followed by the loosening of the established church from its ties to the state. The church still depends on the state and the minister of ecclesiastical affairs. All important decisions on its structures and finances are taken by the minister of ecclesiastical affairs and the civil servants of the ministry in Copenhagen.

The Nordic pattern

Dag Thorkildsen sets the Danish discussion on church-state relations within a wider Nordic pattern:

   In simple terms one could say that in Denmark and Norway religious
   tolerance came as a result of an interaction between liberalism and
   revivalism, whereas a high-church and conservative political line
   predominated in Sweden. In spite of this, one might conclude that a special
   Nordic pattern was created during the religious modernization of the 19th
   century, and it consisted in combining a state church with freedom of
   religion.(9)

Thorkildsen calls this Nordic pattern a "functional anachronism", maintaining that "nobody could claim that it has led to less freedom of religion than one will find in nations where state and religion have formally separated".(10)

In this context it is important to note that in the discussion leading up to the vote on the Danish constitution in 1849, the state was not regarded as neutral but as Christian. The majority of members of the constituent assembly in 1849 thought that a Christian state has a special duty to ensure freedom of religion, because Christianity is basically about love and freedom in the Holy Spirit. An example is found in the work of H.L. Martensen, Mynster's successor as bishop of Sealand. In his Ethics (1878) Martensen says freedom of religion is demanded by Christianity itself, because Christianity maintains the right of the individual and autonomy in matters of conscience and salvation.(11) He also calls on the Protestant state to maintain its Christian character and support the national church through legislation on holidays and education. His appeal to the state to protect both the established church and freedom of religion by adopting an act that would limit the number and activities of non-conformists echoed a widespread feeling at that time.

This latter was never carried out. Rather, one can interpret the discussion and administration of freedom of religion in Denmark after 1849 in line with Thorkildsen's question of how a Christian state combines an established church that is popularly based with freedom of religion in new social and political situations. First of all, an administrative practice has evolved in which it is the minister of ecclesiastical affairs who decides on behalf of the parliament which religious persons have the right to issue church certificates (for example, marriage certificates) with state authority and enjoy the right of tax exemption. Technically, this is done through the minister's executive power. This role of deciding de facto the limits of religious freedom through administrative action has recently been severely criticized by Prof. Henning Koch.(12) He points out that the Danish constitution does not regard freedom of religion as a right in itself, but as a minority right defined in the light of the majority right. According to Koch, this negative definition of religious freedom results from the fact that the Lutheran church is described in the article of the constitution on state powers, which puts it in fourth place, after the legislative, judicial and executive powers. Behind this lies Monrad's and Lehmann's understanding of democracy as the minimizing of the power of the absolute monarch in state, church and society in favour of the people as the new power base. The Evangelical Lutheran Church, as both the church of the majority and as the fourth state power, is thus a mixture of old elements from the absolute period and new elements from the democratic period after 1849. Koch describes this mixture of old and new as the "well-ordered anarchy" in the structure of the Evangelical Lutheran Church.

However, one could also interpret the dilemma of the established church in terms of how it could continue under new political conditions to take part in what Tim Knudsen has called "the process of formation of the state".(13) From this perspective, the Reformation in 1536 began a process of formation of the state, and through the secularization of church property the king was able to lay the foundation for a new agrarian economy, build a new fleet and pay his debts. The absolute period from 1660 -- after the defeat by Sweden in 1658 -- was a political response, which the church through theologians like Hans Wandal helped to legitimize. In 1849 the subject for the process of the formation of the state was no longer the king, but the people, and the church allied itself with the new power. After the military defeats by Germany in 1848-50 and 1864, theologically legitimized nationalism becomes the most important issue, and Danes are still struggling to overcome this mentally and socially. Seen from the point of view of the gradual development of the Danish nation-state, the decline of the pastor's official duties as a public servant is not only a result of secularization but much more of democratization and bureaucratization as the driving forces in the Danish process of nation-building.

If this interpretation is correct, the establishment of the special commission to deal with applications for official recognition as a religious community can be understood as part of the old state-church paradigm. In the guidelines published in March 1999 the commission emphasized that ministerial recognition of a religious community has nothing to do with freedom of religion but is based on the understanding of administrative law and the distribution of executive power. In other words, a refusal of recognition is not contrary to international human rights declarations. If one follows Henning Koch's argument, however, the guidelines do not change the basic fact that it is the minister of ecclesiastical affairs who decides on the limits of freedom of religion on the basis of the marriage act. From an international perspective, this gives minority religions an unusual and unacceptable legal status in a multi-religious society.

It is interesting that the special commission, while remaining within the old state-church paradigm, stresses that Denmark as a pluralistic society needs a neutral institution -- and not the bishop of Copenhagen -- to deal with applications from religious communities. This is the first time an official document from the ministry of ecclesiastical affairs has described Danish society as pluralistic. This may well be the social situation, but the use of the term as normative has been introduced without further discussion. The concept of a "pluralistic society" allows the special commission to stay within the old paradigm while trying at the same time to enlarge it to cover a new social reality. The question is for how long it will be possible to operate with the traditional Nordic pattern of an established church and freedom of religion. So far it stands, and in the report of the commissioner of the Council of the Baltic Sea States on Democratic Institutions and Human Rights, Ole Espersen, on "The Right to Freedom of Religion and Religious Associations" (March 1999), the combination of established church and freedom of religion is not challenged. Espersen states that "the existence of a state church is not a violation of freedom of religion in itself", though he does propose more transparency in financial matters, so that non-Lutherans do not pay to the church through the ordinary tax system.

Human rights and freedom of religion are secured in different ways in different European states. Human-rights debates and actions take place in historical and philosophical contexts inspired by various economic and political agendas. We have seen how Denmark has its own part of this debate and is challenged to find a way forward to secure the rights of the minority religions. This must be done on the basis of the debate in the 1840s that lies behind the present constitution. This debate was not at all as old-fashioned as one might think: many of the arguments of today were already heard during the revolutionary year of 1848. The main issue for the Danes is whether to continue the Nordic pattern or to decide that the old paradigm of state church and freedom of religion can no longer meet the pluralistic realities of the present. The answer depends mainly on the continuation of the process of nation-building in Denmark. Will this take place in a more and more European context? Will Danish Christianity follow the nation-state in an international development that automatically involves ecumenical fellowship among the churches in Europe today? So far the established church has been very reluctant to engage itself in ecumenical cooperation, but on the other hand it has always been good at accommodating itself to social and political realities.

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.

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.

The serious implications of this welfare theology for the ecumenical involvement of the Lutheran church of Denmark over the past thirty years can be illustrated by the fact that it was the only Nordic Lutheran church which refused to sign either the Porvoo common statement or the joint declaration on justification by the LWF and the Roman Catholic Church. The responses from Danish local congregations to the Porvoo common statement show what is at stake in the Lutheran Church of Denmark when it comes to making binding decisions on theological matters in a Nordic ecumenical context.

The Danish No to Porvoo

The Porvoo common statement is an ecumenical text that was agreed on unanimously by representatives from the Anglican churches in England, Ireland, Scotland and Wales and from Lutheran churches in Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway, Sweden, Latvia, Estonia and Lithuania, on 13 October 1992 at Jairvenpaa. (Its name comes from the Finnish city in whose cathedral they had celebrated the eucharist together on the previous Sunday.)

Part of the Porvoo common statement is a joint declaration, which sums up the theological context of the discussion and offers perspectives for further work. It includes a recommendation that the 12 churches jointly make six acknowledgments and ten commitments. The acknowledgments are:

* we acknowledge one another's churches as churches belonging to the one holy, catholic and apostolic church of Jesus Christ and truly participating in the apostolic mission of the whole people of God;

* we acknowledge that in all our churches the word of God is authentically preached, and the sacraments of baptism and the eucharist are duly administered;

* we acknowledge that all our churches share in the common confession of the apostolic faith;

* we acknowledge that one another's ordained ministries are given by God as instruments of his grace and as possessing not only the inward call of the Spirit, but also Christ's commission through his body, the church;

* we acknowledge that personal, collegial and communal oversight (episcope) is embodied and exercised in all our churches in a variety of forms, in continuity of apostolic life, mission and ministry;

* we acknowledge that the episcopal office is valued and maintained in all our churches as a visible sign expressing and serving the church's unity and continuity in apostolic life, mission and ministry.

The commitments are:

* to share a common life in mission and service, to pray for and with one another, and to share resources;

* to welcome one another's members to receive sacramental and other pastoral ministrations;

* to regard baptized members of all our churches as members of our own;

* to welcome diaspora congregations into the life of the indigenous churches, to their mutual enrichment;

* to welcome persons episcopally ordained in any of our churches to the office of bishop, priest or deacon to serve, by invitation and in accordance with any regulations which may from time to time be in force, in that ministry in the receiving church without reordination;

* to invite one another's bishops normally to participate in the laying-on of hands at the ordination of bishops as a sign of the unity and continuity of the church;

* to work towards a common understanding of diaconal ministry;

* to establish appropriate forms of collegial and conciliar consultation on significant matters of faith and order, life and work;

* to encourage consultations of representatives of our churches, and to facilitate learning and exchange of ideas and information in theological and pastoral matters;

* to establish a contact group to nurture our growth in communion and to coordinate the implementation of this agreement.

In the foreword to the statement Anglican bishop David Tustin and Swedish Lutheran bishop Tore Furberg note that the conversations leading to Porvoo sought "to move forward from existing agreements towards the goal of visible unity. By harvesting the fruits of previous ecumenical dialogues we hoped to express a greater measure of common understanding, and to resolve the long-standing difficulties between us about episcopacy and succession." Tustin and Furberg identify several impulses which influenced the Porvoo common statement: (1) new links between the Nordic/Baltic and British/Irish regions in commerce, education, tourism and environmental concerns; (2) Anglican-Lutheran theological conversations from 1909 to 1951, Anglo-Scandinavian theological conferences from 1929 to the present and pastoral conferences from 1978 to the present; (3) the new theological climate created by global bilateral and multilateral ecumenical dialogues in the 1970s and 1980s involving both Lutherans and Anglicans; (4) the Lutheran-Episcopal agreement of 1982 and the Meissen common statement of 1988 between the Church of England and the Protestant churches in Germany. Each participating church was asked to discuss and adopt the Porvoo common statement according to its own practice and church law.

The two Danish representatives, Bishop Henrik Christiansen of Aalborg and Gerhard Pedersen, director of the church's pastoral institute, sent the text to the bishop of Copenhagen, who then had special responsibility for ecumenical contacts with churches abroad. Since there was no established practice of how to deal with ecumenical texts and officially adopt them, the bishop of Copenhagen, Erik Norman Svendsen, decided together with his 11 colleagues to send a Danish translation of the text to all 2116 parishes and 2095 pastors on 1 May 1994. In their foreword to the translation the bishops stated: "Herewith the bishops present this statement for open debate and ask for responses before Easter 1995. Thereafter we will decide how to proceed." Since the bishops did not have a plan for the process, they did not pose specific questions about the text but turned it over for a free debate. I think this was because they could not agree on a process and did not agree about the importance of ecumenical texts or the necessity of structured ecumenical cooperation between Anglican and Lutheran churches.

A long and heated debate about the Porvoo common statement took place in many congregations, in the media and in meetings around the country. For the first time in Denmark, ecumenical theology and relations with other Christian churches were discussed on a broad scale at the grassroots. Because the debate was so intense, the bishops had to postpone the deadline for responses. Finally, at a meeting on 28-29 August 1995 they decided that from the responses and the discussion a common consensus about the adoption of the Porvoo common statement had not emerged. Thus, it was a No to Porvoo.

At the same time the bishops went on to say that the close relationships between the churches must be strengthened. They also stated that, seen from the Danish side, there are no differences of a church-dividing character between the faith of the Lutheran and Anglican churches. Anglicans are invited to participate in the eucharist in the Danish church and to become members of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Denmark if they remain for a longer period in Denmark. Anglican pastors are welcome to serve as pastors in the Danish church without reordination, Anglican bishops are welcome at bishops' consecrations in Denmark. The bishops concluded their statement by stressing two issues: (1) that according to the Lutheran understanding of the ministry the office of bishop is a pastoral ministry which has certain obligations concerning oversight of congregations and pastors; (2) that full equality between male and female pastors is a reality in the Danish Lutheran Church. One could describe the bishops' statement as a Yes to the content of the Porvoo text. But the No to the Porvoo common statement came first, not the other way round.

An analysis of the responses may help to explain the Danish No. Some of those who opposed signing the Porvoo common statement argued that it would make the Anglican understanding of the episcopate in historic apostolic succession the theological and practical norm for understanding the ministry in the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Denmark; and that this would introduce two different kinds of ministries (pastors and bishops) into a church which has since the Reformation understood the bishop as a pastor with responsibilities for the enlarged parish (the diocese) without paying any attention to the issue of historic apostolic succession. To sign Porvoo, these opponents maintained, would in effect be to give up our Danish Evangelical-Lutheran identity and to acknowledge that our understanding of the ministry since the Reformation has been wrong.

Paragraph 53, which Gunther Gassmann has described as the most important article in the entire Porvoo common statement, reads:

   The mutual acknowledgment of our churches and ministries is theologically
   prior to the use of the sign of the laying-on of hands in the historic
   succession. Resumption of the use of the   sign does not imply an adverse
   judgment on the ministries of those churches which did not previously make
   use of the sign. It is rather a means of making more visible the unity and
   continuity of the church at all times and in all places.

In the Danish debate, as documented in three volumes of press clippings published by the Council of Inter-Church Relations of the Evangelical Lutheran Church, paragraph 53 does not feature. It is never mentioned in any of the arguments put forward by the opponents of signing Porvoo. Rather, they maintained the opposite: that Porvoo would introduce the historic apostolic succession into the Danish church.

Why? One answer might be that Danish theologians and pastors are not used to participating in ecumenical theological discussion. They do not know how to decode ecumenical language, because their own confessional and national codes are all-dominating. Another answer might be that many Danes resist any ecumenical cooperation that includes more that polite talking and visiting. A third answer is perhaps, as Danish church historian P.G. Lindhardt says, that "in Denmark theological issues are resolved by non-doctrinal factors" -- meaning that we have to look elsewhere than in the circles of theologians and pastors to understand why the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Denmark decided not to sign the Porvoo statement.

The Porvoo discussion offered excellent material for studying these non-doctrinal factors. Many congregations welcomed the invitation to respond in writing to the Porvoo common statement in order to help the bishops to make a decision.

The responses from the diocese of Aarhus

In the diocese of Aarhus, 40 percent of the congregational councils (133 of 326) responded to the Porvoo statement; 73 percent opposed signing it, 21 percent favoured it and 6 percent did not give a clear response. Besides several individual responses, there was a common (negative) response from 12 deans in the diocese and from 7 national church organizations, 6 of which were positive (YMCA and YWCA, the Danish Diaconal Council, the Danish Missionary Society, Danish Santalmission, the Ecumenical Centre in Aarhus, the YMCA scouts) and 1 negative (Kirkeligt Samfund).

The responses from the congregational councils vary a great deal in form, length, degree of theological content and church-political point of view. Very few give a long theological rationale, though the general impression is that those in favour of signing submitted the longest and theologically most comprehensive responses -- perhaps because during the debate they felt put on the defensive. It is also likely that those in favour of signing tried to "translate" the theological content of the Porvoo document into a Danish Lutheran context, in order to make it appear less alien.

Many responses -- from supporters and opponents alike -- mention that the Porvoo document was difficult to read. Both pastors and lay members of congregational councils saw the theological presentation of the problem as strange -- because the Danish Lutheran Church differs fundamentally from the Anglican Church -- or unnecessary -- because the communion of churches is already a reality. The theological language was regarded, especially by the opponents, as pompous and patronizing to the laity, confirming the suspicion that Porvoo was seeking to promote a church governed by bishops, at the expense of the laity and the pastors. Where the respondent's view of what the Church of England or the Danish national church stand for does not correspond to the presentation in the Porvoo document, no self-critical questions are asked, nor is satisfaction expressed for the opportunity to formulate new theological knowledge. Instead, the gap between one's own opinion and the content of the Porvoo text is seen as evidence that the document is misleading or disregards the facts.

The general impression one gets from the responses in the diocese of Aarhus is that most congregational councils are positive about the contacts of the national church with other church communities. The great disagreement is over whether or not Porvoo serves the participation of the national church in international church cooperation.

While only a few of the congregational council members oppose on principle the national church's signing of the Porvoo common statement, the opponents believe there is a "more Danish" way of organizing interchurch work than signing common statements, which ties and narrows the freedom of the national church. At the same time, many congregational councils welcomed the discussion of Porvoo as a contribution to a long overdue debate on the identity of the national church. The bishop and his colleagues were called on to involve the congregational councils in this continuing discussion.

"We are happy as we are"

All responses from the diocese of Aarhus express general satisfaction with the situation, structure and theological identity of the national church. Practically no congregational council speaks of a need to change it. Supporters of the Porvoo common statement argue for an endorsement within the existing scope of the national church; opponents base part of their resistance on the threat they see it posing to the national church.

Theodor Jorgensen has pointed out that Porvoo can be read in two different ways: one he describes as defensive, destructive and confessionalistic, the other as offensive, constructive and confessional.(14) This is confirmed by the responses from the diocese of Aarhus. Much of the opposition is based on a fear of what Porvoo might lead to: a future national church which has become a political power bloc ruled by the bishops. The supporters on the other hand try to read the text on the basis of the current situation of the national church. It is evident that for some opponents the very existence of the Porvoo document confirms their negative scenario; and most of the congregational councils which say that they have not understood the text respond with a No. There is little inclination among those having any doubts to refrain from taking a stand and leave the matter to the bishops' judgment. This "hermeneutic of suspicion" was bolstered by a number of statements from national church organizations.

There are parallels here with the political debate on the European Union. The Porvoo common statement is rejected because it is said to promote a union between the churches that will destroy the local principle which is characteristic for the Danish national church, contrary to the much more top-controlled Anglican Church. A typical response warns that "Porvoo will transform the Danish national church (the folk church) into a bishops' church, governed by officials". Porvoo is seen as a directive from above, conflicting with the nature of the national church, which is ruled from below, starting from the parish. The natural starting-point for the identity of the national church is our parish, in which the neighbour is a concrete living person and it is possible to take responsibility for each other's lives. But the parish does not seem to have any importance in the Porvoo common statement. Thus a closer attachment to foreign churches might alienate us from the concrete church we belong to.

Related to this is a rejection of how the Porvoo document uses the expression "visible Unity". Thus one parish council writes that "the people is the church, and with that the church is visible; therefore, we do not need any Porvoo statement". Here the people of God, the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Denmark and the national Danish people merge effortlessly into a single identity. The starting point for the critique of Porvoo's use of "visible unity" is that it does not take seriously the existing identity in the parish between people and church or, put in another way, the identity between the national people and the Christian people of God, which is seen as the characteristic sign of the identity of the national church. "We care for our broad and comprehensive national church, which is something unique and well adjusted to our Danish tradition and understanding of Christianity. We are happy as we are."

But none of the responses reflects on what it means for the theological self-understanding of the national church -- or for its idea of the parish as the principal administrative and theological unit -- that the identity between people and church is in fact disintegrating. Not only are there parishes in which fewer than half the residents are members of the national church, but an ever-smaller part of the Danish population are members in the legal sense. Yet it is still generally believed in the parish councils of the diocese of Aarhus that the parish church forms the visible unity of the church. This narrow, geocentric determination of the church collides with the ecumenical understanding of the unity of the church, which emphasizes both the unity in the local worshipping parish and the communion in faith, preaching and sacraments among Christians and their churches across confessional and national borders.

Here we cannot go into detail about the origins of the particular Danish theology of the parish, but it should be noted that all church groups share this positive theological assessment of the parish. What belongs to the unity of the church and, more broadly, the official views of the national church are decided from the theology in the parish. Against this background the opponents of Porvoo see it as a sneaking catholicization of the national church and thus rooted in a theology other than that of the Reformation. It may be noted that in so doing these tend to consider the Porvoo common statement as a new confession rather than as a collaboration agreement.

There are differing opinions among the opponents on whether the church in an evangelical Lutheran sense is to be described as invisible, visible or something inbetween. A few parish councils assert, without further argument, that the church is invisible; others are more nuanced, claiming that

   the visible church becomes, in Porvoo, an institution whose Christian
   character is secured by the bishops' teaching authority. To talk like this
   about the visible unity of the church is deeply problematic for evangelical
   Lutheran opinion. Of course the church is is not invisible, but the true
   church is hidden, and it is fortunately not possible for any person -- lay,
   pastor or bishop -- to point it out or to delineate it.

Similar paraphrases of Porvoo, without reference to its own terms, feature in other responses, which create a straw figure only to shoot it down -- for example:

   We believe that our present office of pastors and bishops is as evangelical
   as a church institution can be. We are thus concerned about the authority
   given to the bishops in the document. It is un-Danish, it is un-Lutheran.
   It is popish. It is making an office divine. This is basically what we have
   to say about it!

In short, such responses seek to apply Luther's confrontation with the church of the middle ages to the Anglican Church of today. The basic point of view is that Catholics (and Anglicans) are guilty of "too much church". What the response forgets, due to its polemic form, is that there is much more than this to be said about Lutheran ecclesiology. The Danish version of a Lutheran understanding of the church expressed in most of the responses to Porvoo ends up either in a Platonic separation between visible and invisible church or in a one-sided anti-Catholicism that verges on the fanatical. The opponents who accentuate the visible-invisible dichotomy impose a theological framework on the Porvoo document which the text itself does not use and which has furthermore been abandoned in modern debate on ecclesiology. It would carry us too far afield here to describe how this visible-invisible framework has come to monopolize ecclesiological debate in Denmark and isolate us from the ecclesiological discussion in the surrounding European churches, but it is evident that the national church has a theological deficit in this matter.

Finally, I want to point out another theological deficit revealed by the responses to the Porvoo document. Practically none of the responses is framed in theological terms. The closest one comes from a paraphrase of Luther's claim (in An den christlichen Adel) that anyone who has been baptized is already pastor, bishop and pope. Luther said this in order to accentuate the dignity of the Christian, not as the theological basis of an ecclesiology of the office of pastor or bishop. This was interpreted by Hieronymus Emser and Henry VIII to mean that Luther would ordain without bishop and taught that all Christians have the same authority concerning the ministry of the word and the sacraments. Both were rebuked by Luther, but they were not the last to misinterpret his views. Thus the opposition to Porvoo uses Luther's statement on the dignity of the Christian as an argument against the attempt by the common statement to formulate a contemporary understanding of apostolicity. This was bolstered by a misunderstanding of what Luther said about the ordinary priesthood as a principle of organization for the church; and this wrong formulation of the problem made the Porvoo document look like a mediaeval Catholic text.

But this talk about the ordinary priesthood as a critical principle over against the theological content of the office of bishop fits perfectly with the Danish idea of "the church from below", in which there is an identity between people, nation, state and church. This corresponds to the most fundamental myth undergirding the selfunderstanding of the national church: that it has been built up from the bottom, parish by parish, by independent Danish farmers. Until recently, theologians and historians have not doubted that the farmers together built the many village churches, sharing the expenses in solidarity with each other. The Danish church is thus supposedly not merely a folk church, but just as much a people's church. The people literally built their own church. Despite the doubts cast on this view -- for example, by archaeological investigations -- the beautiful myth has persisted that some sort of mediaeval cooperative created the grounds for a democratic, popularly rooted church. The continued power of this myth is revealed by the overwhelming resistance against the Porvoo common statement.

From the responses in the diocese of Aarhus, one must conclude that the national church said No to Porvoo on account of national motives, substantiated by theological points of views, serving to legitimate the Evangelical Lutheran Church as a national church living on a continued alleged identity between people, nation, state and church. A positive response to Porvoo was thus out of the question from the outset, because its intentions were incompatible in principle with the dominant mentality in the Danish national church.

Conclusion

The Nordic countries are still very homogeneous societies, and the Lutheran churches play a numerically important role in them. But the Nordic scene is changing. The influence of globalization, the presence of Islam and the existence of New Ageinspired religiosity are changing the churches. The close identification between state, church, nation and people, which took hundreds of years to establish, is breaking apart. The Nordic states have chosen different directions and cannot gather around the realization of a Nordic vision of unity. The churches also are choosing different directions. In the ecumenical field, especially, Denmark is now moving in its own direction, away from the other Nordic Lutheran churches. Ecumenically, this will lead in the future to isolation and more diversity than unity in the Nordic region.

NOTES

(1) Ted A. Campbell, Christian Confessions: A Historical Introduction, Louisville, Westminster/John Knox, 1996, pp.5ff.

(2) See Margaret Canovan, Nationhood and Political Theory, Cheltenham, UK, Edward Elgar, 1996, pp. 119ff.

(3) Dag Thorkildsen, "Religious Identity and Nordic Identity", in Oystein Sorensen and Bo Strath, The Cultural Construction of Norden, Oslo, Scandinavian Univ. Press, 1997.

(4) See the report "The Right to Freedom of Religion and Religious Associations: A Survey with Recommendations" (1 March 1999); text at www.cbss.commissioner, org/surveys.

(5) See Bent Hylleberg, "Grundloven, baptisterne og religionsfriheden", in Jorgen Nybo Rasmussen, ed., Religionsfrihed i 150 ar: En jubilaeumshilsen fra danske katolikker or baptister, Copenhagen, 1999, pp.62ff.

(6) N.F.S. Grundtvig, Den Danske Stats-Kirke upartisk betragtet, Copenhagen, 1834.

(7) See Peter Lodberg and Gerhard Pedersen, Kirke -- ar 2000, Copenhagen, 1995, Unitas, pp.75f.

(8) See Margrit Warburg, "Restrictions and Privileges: Legal and Administrative Practice and Minority Religions in the USA and Denmark", in Eileen Barker and Margrit Warburg, eds, New Religions and Religiosity, Aarhus, Aarhus UP, 1998, pp.262ff.

(9) Thorkildsen, loc. cit., p. 151.

(10) Ibid.

(11) H.L. Martensen, Den christelige Ethik, vol. 2: Den sociale Ethik, Copenhagen, 1878, pp. 125ff.

(12) Henning Koch, "Mellem flertal, flerhed og frihed: religiose minoriteters statsretlige stilling", in Lisbet Christofferson and Jorgen Baek Simonsen, eds, Visioner for religionsfrihed, demokrati og etnisk ligestilling, Copenhagen, Naevnet for Etnisk Ligestilling, 1999, pp. 149ff.

(13) Tim Knudsen, Den danske Stat i Europa, Copenhagen, Jurist og Okonomforbundets Forlag, 1993, pp. 151ff.

(14) Fonix, vol. 19, no. 2, Aug. 1995, pp.10ff.

Peter Lodberg (Evangelical-Lutheran Church of Denmark) is director of the Institute for Systematic Theology at the University of Aarhus.

COPYRIGHT 2000 World Council of Churches
COPYRIGHT 2000 Gale Group