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Abyssinia
Guest
Why is Scandinavia so irreligious?
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puzzleannie
Guest
before you make an accusation against an entire group of people it would first be best to cite some evidence, and it would be even more charitable to couch the question in a manner that does not condemn entire populations. For the purposes of debate on this forum is useless because you don’t define your term, nor do you ask it in relation to a specific Catholic doctrine.
I doubt you will get many answers here because you have posed no question of apologetics.
I doubt you will get many answers here because you have posed no question of apologetics.
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ChadS
Guest
Perhaps this article will help a little, Scandinavian Nonbelievers, Which Is Not to Say Atheists.
The article doesn’t answer the question you are asking, but it gives numbers to the question of how often Scandanavians in general attend church services.
ChadS
The article doesn’t answer the question you are asking, but it gives numbers to the question of how often Scandanavians in general attend church services.
ChadS
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Dave_B
Guest
Here in the UK (I see your location as England/America) we are very similar to Scandanavia. Where people call themselves Christians, without going to church or believing the basic doctrines, but maybe being baptised as babies or getting married in church. This is true for most of Europe.
For example I am the only one amongst my family, friends or work colleagues that goes to church. People dont see it as a good or bad thing here, they are just indifferent. The US is much more religious.
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dcdurel
Guest
They are irreligious because they don’t see the harm of sin, and they don’t know clearly the teachings of Jesus, since only the Catholic Church teaches clearly these teachings.
They started out as Christians, and gradually lost what little they had. They still have some of the values that come from Jesus.
But, as they lose these values, and as they don’t have the grace to follow these values, they will degenerate into drugs, alcohol, illicit sex, etc, which will gradually destroy their society, just as our society is gradually being destroyed by rejecting the teachings of Jesus. Any society which does not vote for those rulers who pledge to defend the rights of the innocent unborn is a society that rejects God as the ultimate good.
As Pope JPII taught, no one is good but God alone and only God knows what is good for us. To reject Jesus is to reject the light of the world.
And the end result is not pleasant for any country.
They started out as Christians, and gradually lost what little they had. They still have some of the values that come from Jesus.
But, as they lose these values, and as they don’t have the grace to follow these values, they will degenerate into drugs, alcohol, illicit sex, etc, which will gradually destroy their society, just as our society is gradually being destroyed by rejecting the teachings of Jesus. Any society which does not vote for those rulers who pledge to defend the rights of the innocent unborn is a society that rejects God as the ultimate good.
As Pope JPII taught, no one is good but God alone and only God knows what is good for us. To reject Jesus is to reject the light of the world.
And the end result is not pleasant for any country.
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daily_dose
Guest
Scandanavians are quite busy designing furniture that is functional and affordable.Think IKEA
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Samuel63
Guest
Their history is not as deeply connected to Christendom and the rise of western civilization as for example France.
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Young_Thinker
Guest
Yes, but even the French and the Spanish (who, of all people, now have gay ‘marriage’) are not exactly part of a Catholic Belt in Europe. Fortunately, there are said to be pockets, such as Burgundy, of commitment to the Christian faith in Western Europe
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Young_Thinker
Guest
Oh, but they and some of their Baltic neighbors (e.g. Estonians) have enough time to propagate lots of children out of wedlock. According the Encyclopaedia Britannica Almanac of 2003, Sweden, Norway, Iceland, and Estonia all have illegitimacy rates upwards of 50%.
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Warrenton
Guest
Among other things, because we are not doing anything about it.
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Young_Thinker
Guest
In addition, some countries that now have a reputation for being irreligious and even blatantly immoral have had a tradition of being “progressive” and valuing liberty. A classic example would be the Netherlands and, to some extent, England.
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mellestad
Guest
@OP:
Well…that is a rather complex question to fit in such a small sentence.
There or lots of correlations regarding religion, but actual causation is a bit trickier.
Those nations have superior eduction, strong social safety nets, low crime, high personal freedoms, high levels of income and low rates of social problems and the highest rates of subjective happiness of anywhere in the world. On a graph, the higher nations rate in those areas, the less religious they tend to be. Since the Scandinavian nations are typically thought to be at the very top of the scale on those metrics, there is a strong link of correlation. Nations with lower scores tend to be more religious.
That doesn’t necessarily mean causation though, there could be many other reasons. Maybe their culture never incorporated religion as strongly as some, maybe the average person is genetically predisposed to an attitude that does not encourage religious pursuit, maybe the religious culture in their societies is not as aggressive, or maybe the culture has some resistance to proselytizing not present in other western nations.
It might also be down to their education system focusing on secular solutions and answers to questions, which fills the same role as some religious systems.
Long story short, the question you’re asking is complex enough you’re not going to get a quick and easy answer. Why some nations are religious and some are not is a topic of active study for sociologists, psychologists and I’m sure, for religious institutions.
What I’ve personally read seems to indicate current thinking is that the more successful and healthy (in a secular way) a society is, the less people turn to religion. Again though, this is a very active area of research.
Well…that is a rather complex question to fit in such a small sentence.
There or lots of correlations regarding religion, but actual causation is a bit trickier.
Those nations have superior eduction, strong social safety nets, low crime, high personal freedoms, high levels of income and low rates of social problems and the highest rates of subjective happiness of anywhere in the world. On a graph, the higher nations rate in those areas, the less religious they tend to be. Since the Scandinavian nations are typically thought to be at the very top of the scale on those metrics, there is a strong link of correlation. Nations with lower scores tend to be more religious.
That doesn’t necessarily mean causation though, there could be many other reasons. Maybe their culture never incorporated religion as strongly as some, maybe the average person is genetically predisposed to an attitude that does not encourage religious pursuit, maybe the religious culture in their societies is not as aggressive, or maybe the culture has some resistance to proselytizing not present in other western nations.
It might also be down to their education system focusing on secular solutions and answers to questions, which fills the same role as some religious systems.
Long story short, the question you’re asking is complex enough you’re not going to get a quick and easy answer. Why some nations are religious and some are not is a topic of active study for sociologists, psychologists and I’m sure, for religious institutions.
What I’ve personally read seems to indicate current thinking is that the more successful and healthy (in a secular way) a society is, the less people turn to religion. Again though, this is a very active area of research.
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anp1215
Guest
I have wondered as well, it seems like all of Europe is getting more and more secular as the years go by…in some places in Europe weekly church attendance (at any place of worship, not just at a Catholic parish) is in the single digits percentage wise.
There are several articles online about this
suite101.com/content/religion-and-secularization-in-europe-a120543
There are several articles online about this
suite101.com/content/religion-and-secularization-in-europe-a120543
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anp1215
Guest
I have wondered as well, it seems like all of Europe is getting more and more secular as the years go by…in some places in Europe weekly church attendance (at any place of worship, not just at a Catholic parish) is in the single digits percentage wise.
There are several articles online about this
suite101.com/content/religion-and-secularization-in-europe-a120543
Note that Scandinavia seems to have the lowest percentage of church goers
There are several articles online about this
suite101.com/content/religion-and-secularization-in-europe-a120543
Note that Scandinavia seems to have the lowest percentage of church goers
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Thorup
Guest
Hi folks on catholic.com-forum
My name is Casper, I am from Denmark. I was born in an atheis familiy. At the age of 16 i came to the church and was baptized, confirmed and received Holy Communion when I was 17 - that was 3 years ago.
Perhaps i can give you a better knowledge of the status of religion i Denmark.
Though 85 percent of the population belongs to the “Danish public church”, which is lutheran, only 5 percent go to church regularly.
The Catholic Church in Denmark consist of:
in Spring 2010 the catholic “priest-scandal” rolled in Denmark. The newspapers were terifying, they persecuted the Catholic Church and especially the priests… Everyone could, with an emai to the newspapers accuse any priest they wanted, without evidence. My own priest was acused under ridiculous circumstances… one priest was called a pedophile in the newspapers, TV-news etc. with a picture of him. His case was: A female colleague has seen him sitting with a pupil, and the priest stroke the pupils nose, another accusation was that he on a picture with his class, had no shirt on, this was called exceeding homosexual behaviour and offence… you can see the picture for yourself and judge: it is posted by his accuser, a former priest and monk, who in reality has nothing to do with the priest, but passes on accusations; it is posted on his facebook wall facebook.com/profile.php?id=1019199007#!/photo.php?fbid=455928761357&set=a.455926031357.252279.598111357 (please delete this if it is not permitted)
many other cases are just as rediculous… the police finished four months ago and the chief of police said that there was nothing in the 34 cases, which had been described as paedophilia. The oldes case was by the way from 1890 AD.
Now all the priests, but one (mine) is back in action. Mine is still waiting but should be back by the end of the month. Though the cases were without any real reason, the “scandal” has damaged the Churchs reputation.
THE EDUCATIONAL SYSTEM
The danish educational system has gone Darwin
We are taught that Darwins theory of evolution is true, that religion is rubbish. Most people don’t know about the author of Big Bang, Father George but believes that Darwins theory and the big bang theory proves that there is no god. Even in religion we are reading Nietzche and Karl Marx (and many other atheists) instead of Aristotle and Thomas Aquinas… We are leaning how religious people, are people who have had bad childhoods or are missing something in their life, that they are plainly poor idiots…
My college payd a professor for a Darwin lecture, but would not grant the group of christians a room, where we could meet and talk about God and pray once a week.
This should give you some insight in the tragic status in Denmark
Casper
My name is Casper, I am from Denmark. I was born in an atheis familiy. At the age of 16 i came to the church and was baptized, confirmed and received Holy Communion when I was 17 - that was 3 years ago.
Perhaps i can give you a better knowledge of the status of religion i Denmark.
Though 85 percent of the population belongs to the “Danish public church”, which is lutheran, only 5 percent go to church regularly.
The Catholic Church in Denmark consist of:
- 39.000 Catholics
- 47 parishes
- 70 priests and 1 bishop
- 3 priestcandidates, two in Rome, and one in France
- 6 permanent deacons
- 189 nuns/sisters
- about 60 conversions each year and about 40-60 resignations
- chuch-attendance: 25%
- only 16percent pay church-taxes which is needed
- the average amount payd each month pr. Catholic is 29 US dollars
- The diocese has deficit of 5-6 millions each year, and are dependent on alms from Germany. The deficit grows each year, and from december 2010 the diocese had to close the only catholic shop in Copenhagen, the other is in Jutland, and has no online shop.
in Spring 2010 the catholic “priest-scandal” rolled in Denmark. The newspapers were terifying, they persecuted the Catholic Church and especially the priests… Everyone could, with an emai to the newspapers accuse any priest they wanted, without evidence. My own priest was acused under ridiculous circumstances… one priest was called a pedophile in the newspapers, TV-news etc. with a picture of him. His case was: A female colleague has seen him sitting with a pupil, and the priest stroke the pupils nose, another accusation was that he on a picture with his class, had no shirt on, this was called exceeding homosexual behaviour and offence… you can see the picture for yourself and judge: it is posted by his accuser, a former priest and monk, who in reality has nothing to do with the priest, but passes on accusations; it is posted on his facebook wall facebook.com/profile.php?id=1019199007#!/photo.php?fbid=455928761357&set=a.455926031357.252279.598111357 (please delete this if it is not permitted)
many other cases are just as rediculous… the police finished four months ago and the chief of police said that there was nothing in the 34 cases, which had been described as paedophilia. The oldes case was by the way from 1890 AD.
Now all the priests, but one (mine) is back in action. Mine is still waiting but should be back by the end of the month. Though the cases were without any real reason, the “scandal” has damaged the Churchs reputation.
THE EDUCATIONAL SYSTEM
The danish educational system has gone Darwin
We are taught that Darwins theory of evolution is true, that religion is rubbish. Most people don’t know about the author of Big Bang, Father George but believes that Darwins theory and the big bang theory proves that there is no god. Even in religion we are reading Nietzche and Karl Marx (and many other atheists) instead of Aristotle and Thomas Aquinas… We are leaning how religious people, are people who have had bad childhoods or are missing something in their life, that they are plainly poor idiots…
My college payd a professor for a Darwin lecture, but would not grant the group of christians a room, where we could meet and talk about God and pray once a week.
This should give you some insight in the tragic status in Denmark
Casper
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GraceDK
Guest
Good question…
And no, the OP can say it… Scandinavia is really very extremely unreligious.
Why? Because the Christians are staying in their own comfort zones. The Catholics and Protestants alike are sleeping. Afraid of evangelising and are not proud of Jesus. Thats the problem. There are some groups that I am proud of in my country for reaching out, but its few.
Eg. an Evangelical couple picking up their kid from day care one day, and the day care lady said she had breast cancer and soon couldn’t work anymore. The Christian man said to her: “we believe in a God who has borne sickness to the cross”. They prayed for the lady and she was instantly healed. We have some humble Evangelicals who pray for unbelievers and believers alike, and people get healed in numbers… I think these people are in the front line.
Also my message with this: It hasn’t got anything to do with Protestant or Catholic. Its about being on fire for the Gospel.
- Subtle Socialistic influence. Scandinavia has never forced itself to acknowlege the crimes of Communism like we did with Nazism…
We were not strangled by Communism for decades like our eastern neighbours, and the cultural/ media-elite have been flirting with/setting the agenda of socialism in many ways. - The societies are rich. Rich people have generelly the temptations to leave God behind because they think the scientific and materialistic world view give answers and provide all their material needs. We really have good well-fare systems…
- Scandinavia are like little villages… when there is one paradigm its difficult to break out from under it. Right now practical atheism, under the flattering words of tolerance and objectivity are the trend.
- Because Scandinavians buy into a lot of the **** that comes out of America in the form of movies full of ungodliness, materialism, lookism, new age and pornography.
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Dave_B
Guest
Welcome to the Catholic.com forum. Interesting post.
Its the same here in the UK people call themselves Christian, but only 2% go to church regularly.
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Dave_B
Guest
I respect your choice not to believe in evolution. But just to say, evolution is not incompatible with faith in God. It is just incompatible with a literal reading of the Genesis account. Many Christians accept evolution.
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Warrenton
Guest
I think what Thor meant was that scientific theory is taught as fact, and that young people are encouraged to dismiss Christianity as a fable.
Just to be clear: I have no problem with Darwin. It is a very interesting response to the Malthusian conumdrum: why don’t predators eat up all the prey? As an explanation for the number of species on the planet, however, the theory suffers from gaps in the math.
The real problem, however, is that evolution is taught as a fact, as if Darwin actually observed mutating tortoises on Galapagos. As a teenager, I was taught that Pythagorean
geometry was a body a theorems. A squared plus B squared = C squared has a much better claim to absolute truth than the theory of specification advanced by Darwinists.
Why the lacuna?
The answer is that those in charge of education have an agenda to push, and they are willing to sacrifice truth to do it.
But have no fear. There is a price to pay for bad education. It goes by the name of ingnorance.
And the west is definately growing more ingnorant!
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ferreus
Guest
yay! rant time!
In the 1930s when the Social Democrats took power (and held it until 1991 with two interruptions), they re-evaluated their policy of separating the Church of Sweden from the state. They realized that they would be more successful in just letting it be controlled by politicians. That’s why the organ that determines doctrines etc since then has been appointed by popular election. If Christianity is similar enough to being irreligious, christianity is not that appealing. These elections are still happening today even though the church has been separated from the state, and from little attention I give it, the candidates have platforms like “zero tolerance towards women priest-opposers”. The “bishops” only speak out publicly when it’s about leftist politics, like pro-palestine and pro-muslim immigration issues. There are other political initiatives against christianity.
Since the 19th century, the non-government congregations have been successful, through various “revivals”, i.e. taking people from the state church but mostly emotions emotions emotions. These groups make the faith even more private, and road to watering down the faith and apostasy becomes more blurred.
The “new atheism” phenomenon is not new to to us here and especially the pentecostalish groups, are ill equipped to counter them, because they are not exactly intellectuals. Many people, of course, are just happy to listen to whatever that would sanction their vices. Media is almost completely leftist and completely radicalist. (80% something of journalists vote for the three left parties)
The lack of confidence from all this has moved the christians close to insincerity. The apologetics is in the style of “please be more tolerant mr. atheist” and “you actually CAN believe even in the 20/21st century”. As a half-related example, the “christian democrats” are pro-choice, with the motivation that they’re pro choice, not abortion. But they initiated a law giving free abortions to other EU-citizens (= abortion tourism from Poland). Even the pro-life organizations do not want to prohibit it.
Sweden is a spiritual and cultural wasteland.
In the 1930s when the Social Democrats took power (and held it until 1991 with two interruptions), they re-evaluated their policy of separating the Church of Sweden from the state. They realized that they would be more successful in just letting it be controlled by politicians. That’s why the organ that determines doctrines etc since then has been appointed by popular election. If Christianity is similar enough to being irreligious, christianity is not that appealing. These elections are still happening today even though the church has been separated from the state, and from little attention I give it, the candidates have platforms like “zero tolerance towards women priest-opposers”. The “bishops” only speak out publicly when it’s about leftist politics, like pro-palestine and pro-muslim immigration issues. There are other political initiatives against christianity.
Since the 19th century, the non-government congregations have been successful, through various “revivals”, i.e. taking people from the state church but mostly emotions emotions emotions. These groups make the faith even more private, and road to watering down the faith and apostasy becomes more blurred.
The “new atheism” phenomenon is not new to to us here and especially the pentecostalish groups, are ill equipped to counter them, because they are not exactly intellectuals. Many people, of course, are just happy to listen to whatever that would sanction their vices. Media is almost completely leftist and completely radicalist. (80% something of journalists vote for the three left parties)
The lack of confidence from all this has moved the christians close to insincerity. The apologetics is in the style of “please be more tolerant mr. atheist” and “you actually CAN believe even in the 20/21st century”. As a half-related example, the “christian democrats” are pro-choice, with the motivation that they’re pro choice, not abortion. But they initiated a law giving free abortions to other EU-citizens (= abortion tourism from Poland). Even the pro-life organizations do not want to prohibit it.
Sweden is a spiritual and cultural wasteland.
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