Questions about Swedish Lutherans

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From what I have gleaned… Nordic Lutheranism is quite High Church. Many have devotions to the Blessed Virgin even!
 
My Dad was Lutheran, and both of his parents emigrated from Sweden, and they were all Lutheran.

I don’t remember that they were ever especially religious, other than the social events…Sweet Adelines, etc.

I actually remember that my grandmother was somewhat anti-Catholic, however I did attend their church a couple times with my father and them, and it didn’t seem a lot different cosmetically or liturgy-wise than the Catholic Mass.

It caused me to question my Mom for awhile why we never went to Dad’s church because it didn’t seem different from ours!
 
Hi!

I don’t know if this information will be exactly what you were looking for or not but, here goes…

I was an exchange student to Sweden (1980) for one year. My Swedish host father was a Baptist minister in the free church movement. As a result, I learned a little bit more about the religious culture in Sweden than other exchange students did.

Sweden’s Lutheran church, when I lived there, was state run and regulated. It is not today. This changed just a few years ago. This impacted the religion in many ways but the most evident one to me was the fact that the state was responsible for the hiring and firing of pastors. The criteria being that one be able to speak well, have a good theological basis, a degree, etc. One did not, however, need to be a believer themselves. I read many articles written by Lutheran state pastors which contradicted Biblical teaching, printed in religious publications in Sweden.

The impact was quite evident in the culture itself. Most Swedes don’t believe that God even exists. They are quite secular and “science only” driven. The majority of people attending church were the elderly with the most popular days of attendance being Christmas and Easter.

Also, the free church movement is probably a response to state run erosion of religion. The free church is a very tiny percentage of Swedes but very vocal and can be found all over Sweden. At the time that I lived there, I was S. Baptist so I didn’t look into anything concerning the Catholic church.

I know this doesn’t tell you anything about what they believe or how they worship but from my experience, it was run, and seen by Swedes to be, more of a gov’t institution than anything else.

Hope this helps…not sure exactly what you’re looking for. 🙂

Lisa
 
As some of you may know or not the Church of Sweden (Lutheran)is a national church and it’s history is similar to the Anglican Church; in that when it broke it’s relationship with Rome, the whole church went; from bishops, priests, deacons, and religious (brothers and sisters). Yes the Church of Sweden has religious orders !

However unlike the Church of England, the Church of Sweden never asked the Church of Rome if they had vaild orders and as such Rome has never made an official “ruling” of the vaildity of such orders. Like the Church of England, the Church of Sweden and the Old Catholic Church ( which Rome has not ruled on there validity of orders) have “cross-polinated” each other by the laying on of hands of ordination by their bishops and this has included bishops of the Orthodox Church and the Polish National Catholic Church (which Rome has deemed as both having vaild orders).

As to church attendance, Sweden appears to be suffering from the same problems that the rest of Europe is having; this includes Italy, the center for our faith. This is true especially when one compares attendance with the U.S. population.

Br Mark, OSB
member of the Archdiocese Commission of the Lutheran, Anglican, Roman Catholic Conference (LARCC)
 
Thanks for all of your replies so far!

Again, does anybody know if Swedish Lutherans COMMONLY refer to their communion service as “mass”?

Thank you!🙂
 
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