The last major review in English of the state of religion in Scandinavia, Lars Österlin's Churches of Northern Europe in Profile, was published in 1995 and much has changed since then, most notably the disestablishment of the Church of Sweden in 2000. An authoritative study of the Nordic scene has been long overdue and Law & Religion in the 21st Century: Nordic perspectives is very welcome on that account.
Unusually, the book begins with not one introduction but three: the editors on the genesis of the book itself, John Witte with an American perspective on church and state and Silvio Ferrari on the European dimension – in the course of which he manages neatly to encapsulate the major justification for studying church–state relations at all: ‘It is difficult to fall in love with a legal framework, but it is possible to recognise that its existence is a matter of common interest’ (p 37).
The contributions range over a wide spectrum: to name but a few, surveys of church–state relations in Denmark, Finland, Norway, Iceland and Sweden; current ethical conflicts within ‘law and religion’; the challenges to Nordic society from increasing religious pluralism and secularism – with two very interesting essays on Jewish and Islamic perspectives on law and religion in Scandinavia – and an illuminating discussion of church autonomy in relation to secular law.
Turning to church–state relations, two things are very clear: that there is no longer a single Nordic model – if, indeed, there ever was – and that there is a general move in the direction of disestablishment or, at least, towards much looser ties between church and state. Sweden has reached the end of that road, while the current relationship between the Evangelical Lutheran Church and the Government of Finland looks like a very much lighter form of the English model. Eivind Smith suggests (p 142), though not without a degree of hesitation, that Norway is heading in a similar direction even though change will entail amendment of the Constitution, Article 12(2) of which still requires that ‘More than half the number of the Members of the Council of State shall profess the official religion of the State’. Tore Lindholm takes the story of Norway further, filling out the detail and explaining the complexities of what he dubs the IPSaC: ‘the Inter-Party State and Church Deal’ (pp 226–229). The crunch will come in 2012 with the expected adoption of the constitutional proposals in IPSaC; given that they have all-party support, their rejection seems fairly unlikely. Even in the case of Iceland, where central government still gives the Church direct financial support in addition to the church tax, Hjalti Hugason describes the administrative links between church and state as ‘insubstantial’ (p 113) and concludes that ‘it is inevitable that in the near future the relationship … will be reviewed’ (p 120).
Denmark remains the exceptional case: home to what is still possibly the most Erastian ecclesiastical body in Europe. Even the Church's name gives rise to difficulties of translation. As Lisbet Christoffersen points out, ‘Den Danske Folkekirke’ could possibly be translated as the ‘established Church’ of Denmark, the ‘state Church’, ‘majority Church’, ‘people's Church’ or even ‘ordinary Church’ (pp 145–146). The semi-official translation of the Constitution Act on the Danish Parliament's website simply finesses the issue: ‘The Evangelical-Lutheran Church of Denmark (Folkekirken) is the established Church of Denmark and, as such, is supported by the State’. In short, the Scandinavian folkekirke/folkkyrka concept simply defies precise labelling in English.
Moreover, Den Danske Folkekirke (however you translate it) is still without a synod, a church assembly ‘or even – at least not by law – a bishops’ council’, and parish ministers, though nominated by the parish councils, are appointed by the Minister for Ecclesiastical Affairs and paid as civil servants (p 152). Indeed, dignitaries of the Church are regarded as part of ‘official Denmark’ (p 153): bishops are members of Rank 2, cathedral deans of Rank 3 and ordinary deans of Rank 4. On that basis, a diocesan bishop in the United Kingdom would rank with a deputy secretary.
Somewhat surprisingly, however, the Danes seem to be content with this situation – a contentment that Professor Christoffersen ascribes partly to the fact that Denmark gained full religious freedom (though not, of course, neutrality as between religious groups) as early as 1843. But there also seems to be at least a subliminal tendency to ‘keep a-hold of Nurse / For fear of finding something worse’: the ‘worse’ in this case being the anxiety that an independent Church leadership might be destabilising for society as a whole and that a self-governing Church would become overtly confessional (p 160). Or as Queen Margrethe told her biographer: ‘I am afraid that if you separate church and state then we will for real get a de-Christianization of the country’.Footnote 1
Some chapters are so specialised as to be beyond the limited comprehension of your reviewer – those on ‘Law, religion and ethics in Christian hymns’ and ‘Messianism and the state of exception’ come to mind – while the prose style of one or two of the contributions rather gives the lie to the assumed flawlessness of Scandinavian English. More seriously, the omission of any discussion of the progression of the Church of the Faroe Islands (Fólkakirkjan) to independence from Denmark in 2007 and its establishment as the newest state church in Europe is a disappointment; nor is there much discussion of the constitutional position of the second state church in Finland, the Finnish Orthodox Church. But these are minor quibbles: for students of church–state relations in Scandinavia the book is absolutely essential reading and one would hope that it would also attract an audience from those interested in the broader issues of law, religion and society in Europe.
