A Watered-Down Christianity in Sweden

on the other hand…if you asked my mom about these celebrations she would focus on the ceremony more and the presents less. and talk about it as if it was some epic day, when it reallly wasnt

The only issue I have is that you’re lying. There are other celebrations you could have that are not religious in nature. For your coming-of-age (confirmation) you could go out into the jungle alone until you kill a tiger and bring it back home..you know – secular practical celebrations.

One big difference between Sweden and the U.S. is that the Church of Sweden is the state church. As taxpayers, they’re already paying for the facilities, so why not?

One result of church-state separation in the U.S. is that religious rituals become that much more fraught with extraneous meaning, because choosing to participate in any one religious ritual amounts to “taking sides.”

Whereas ritual participation in the Church of Sweden is, for a Swede, entirely normative. I doubt that most Swedes would treat a ritual at the local synagogue or mosque or Baptist church with the same cavalier attitude. In America, there is no “regular” church to which “factional” churches might be compared. All we have are factions.

I really don’t have a problem with this. My family gets together for Christmas and Easter every year, but do we sing hymns, pray, or read the manger/resurrection stories? No. We meet up at my aunt’s or grandma’s house and sit around sipping drinks, catching up on each other’s lives. We cap it off with a big dinner and presents for Christmas, or a big brunch for Easter, all without so much as a mention of Jesus. More than anything, these are our days to celebrate being a family and to reconnect after months spent apart.

I totally understand why some skeptics and atheists might feel uncomfortable with observing traditionally religious holidays and rituals like baptism, and I obviously respect their choice not to. But for some of us, it’s just part of our cultural heritage that we’ll continue to practice, only rebranded with the focus on the things and people that matter to us, rather than the superstitions and beliefs we no longer hold.

As an atheist living in California, I will be going to a Santa Lucia festival this year. I’m not there for the religious part, but because the daughter of a friend will be singing, and for the potluck smorgasbord beforehand.

We won’t get our kids baptized or confirmed because it would get our parents hopes up that we were considering returning to the fold. I don’t care how fun the after-party is!

No, I think it is dangerous, in Mexico it used to be like that, baptisms and communion were about parties and reunions, but then there is always this generation that thinks they have to do “what is right” and force everybody to remember the original meaning and there you go, back to the beginning. Same case with the motto in the coin, it can always be used as precedent.

I’m from Germany and essentially, it’s like the reader from Sweden describes it as well. With a slight twist perhaps, as lots of people from the formerly communist GDR (eastern Germany) are (unsurprisingly, as it was a communist nation) atheist with their respective atheist coming-of-age ceremonies as well (which, to my knowledge, no people from the “west” partake in due to generally negative associations with the GDR).
So Germany’s situation is basically 1/3 catholic, 1/3 protestant and not quite 1/3 atheist (state-collected “church tax” as well, so these numbers are quite reliable), but, as described by the reader from Sweden, no one cares.

I’m an atheist myself, but I was baptized and confirmed, which does bother me from time to time (especially the latter), but it’s hard to get any sensible impulse for actually thinking about your (non-)beliefs when society doesn’t make a fuss about it. This seems to me like a fundamentally different view than in the US, where lots of attention is brought to religious views; generally, that’s not the case in Germany. Even RE classes in school (plain vanilly, secular, state-funded school; which is, from an atheist viewpoint, just plain wrong) focussed more on general discussion or philosophy than on explicitly hardcore christian content; if this had been the case, I would have begun seeing myself as an atheist much, much earlier.

So, to make a long story short: Religion (generally; we have our fair share of religious nutjobs as well) isn’t taken as seriously as it is in the US. On one hand, that’s good for obvious reasons, but on the other hand, it creates far less incentive to actually become an atheist, as you’re essentially not provoked enough to start thinking.
I hope this wasn’t too confusing alltogether, but it’s hard to describe.

The real issue is the culture wars.

In the US, the ‘high holy holidays’ are the battle fields in our culture wars. And the reason we fight the wars is that the religious want to see their religion based morals turned into laws that govern everyone. Thus, everything religious is seen with derision and scorn by the secularists.

In Sweden, they would laugh at the idea of creating laws based on a holy text. They are already a largely rational group, so they can have harmless ceremonies based on religious themes without worrying that the clergy will try to meddle in the affairs of the body politic.

Ramon Caballero’s point is a good one. If the prosperity and security of Sweden were ever to falter, the seeds of religion could be used by the Church to regain political power there.

Punto bueno amigo.

I read a fascinating book about religion in Sweden and Denmark a few months ago.

Society Without God: What the Least Religious Nations Can Tell Us About Contentment by Phil Zuckerman

Hemant, I’d love to see you do a book review of this one. It’s definitely one of the most interesting and educational books I’ve read all year.

Regarding the topic at hand, there was quite a bit of information on how watered down Christianity is in Scandinavia, and a lot of discussion about why atheists in those countries choose to have their children baptized and also why they decide to be confirmed and married in the state church.

I don’t oppose rituals at all. They serve a real practical purpose, which is to give our lives some structure, if we feel we need it. It’s the same reason we have graduation ceremonies and marriage ceremonies.

With that in mind, nobody should feel obligated to participate in rituals they do not enjoy. I myself generally don’t enjoy rituals, for instance. I find them boring.

Well, actually, he got that part about confirmation wrong. It’s actually about the gifts.

I actually just wrote a piece about this (sorry for the self-linkage, but it really is relevant): What if People Actually Treated Religion as Just a Metaphor (Like Trekkies and Secular Jews)? The gist: What would religion be like if it really were just a metaphor, the way that many progressive believers insist it is?

And the main example I use for what this might look like is secular Judaism in America. Which is very much like what Patrik is describing in Sweden. It’s about the connection to family and history and tradition, about the need for comforting and beautiful rituals… but it’s not about belief in the supernatural.

And I, for one, am totally in favor of it. I think it’s a great way to keep a lot of the stuff that is genuinely useful and good and comforting about religion… without tying it to the unfalsifiable and unsupportable belief in an invisible friend. If I could convert to secular Judaism without feeling like an idiot, I’d seriously consider it.

Wait. Easter has something to do with Christianity? Who knew?

Next you’ll be saying Pancake Day is religious too.

It’s more or less the same in the UK, many families go through the ritual of baptism like they gather for Christmas dinner, the religious significance is a side issue.

Both my niece and nephew married this year, and both ceremonies were held in hotels licenced to hold the ceremonies.\, this is common practice these days. What we now need is a similar ceremony for baptism to be held as a family gathering to celebrate a new life.

If the child chooses to take up a religion later in life, they can go through the ceremony of their chosen religion then. It used to be common practice for adults to be baptised, exactly when it moved to infant baptism I’m not entirely sure, but it removes the child’s choice, and so it’s very wrong to baptise a child into any particular faith.

Here in France, it’s approximately the same as in Sweden. Everybody will tell you that it’s “a Catholic country”. But apart from the fact that there’s an important minority of atheists and agnostics, most so-called Catholics are actually heretics. They all take what the pope says with a grain of salt, and criticize him when needed. Some mix their beliefs with new-agey, buddhistish stuff. Quite a lot think that animals have souls and that their dead pets will join them in the afterlife. And I’m sure many of them would laugh at the idea of transsubstantiation, if it was spelled out clearly to them.

I rarely comment here but I feel like I have to share my perception of religion in France since it is rather different from Christophe’s above 😉

Some actual evidence first : the most reliable source I could find (http://www.insee.fr/fr/ffc/docs_ffc/ip570.pdf) dates back to 1998 and already has 25% of the population saying they neither practice nor feel they belong to a religion. More recent sources (namely a CSA poll from 2007) say 31% of respondents identified as “non religious”; 51% as catholics. Of these, only 8% said they regularly attended mass.

And now for some biased anecdotes and personal not-data 😉

Easter is celebrated but for most people it only involves eggs and the easter bunny with no mention of Jesus. Christmas is likewise celebrated (even amongst all the atheists I know) but it only involves Santa and presents. I have never seen a manger outside of a church. Even the word for it (Christmas being called “Noël” in France) seems non religious (although it is, etymologically speaking, but I doubt many know that. I certainly didn’t until I looked it up a minute ago).

I am personally not baptized. I do not know anyone who is religious amongst my close friends or my work colleagues.
I have been two a church for something other than the historical value only twice in 27 years (both funerals). Of three deaths in my immediate family, two did not have a church service at all, simply a meeting at home and a burial. My father was baptized, my mother was not. Both are atheists, as were two out of four of my grandparents.

I have never personally encountered anyone who believes animals have “souls”, either 😉

I’m American and I live in Denmark with my Danish husband and our daughter. My husband has officially left the church and does not pay the church taxes.

Like Lagunatic, my problem is with the lying. I don’t want to lie about believing in God or about raising my child in a faith when I know full well that I don’t and won’t. For this reason, we skipped the christening and just had a first birthday party. We still got presents and family reunion without having to lie.

Note that no one cared that we did it this way. We got no flak at all for skipping the religion, and in fact it has been socially acceptable to have a ‘nonfirmation’ instead of a ‘confirmation’ for a long time. The fact is most people don’t care either way. They don’t care enough to buck convention and NOT get confirmed, but they also don’t care if other people choose not to. Danes are so laid back. 😉

I have zero issues with, say, singing a song about Jesus at Yule, because to us, it’s just a story. It’s no different than singing about Santa. I’m not singing that I believe he’s real or that I worship him. I’m just singing that some baby was born in a barn, and a few breaths later I’m singing about a fat guy in the sky with reindeer. I’m fine with that. Christenings and confirmations go beyond that, IMO.

Why not skip the religious rites and just throw the party?

That serves the need for the rite of passage or celebrating a major event. Most people just squirm through the religuous ritual anyway waiting for it to be over so they can get to the real celebrating anyway.

So I say, skip the b.s. and go right to the party! Celebrate!

The monotheistic religions have based their main holidays, ceremonies and sacred sites on top of ancient pagan – pre-monotheistic sites/rites and dates.
Christmas and Easter are the ones I know the best. Christmas is actually “Yule”, or “Solstice”, as has been noted by other posters. Easter is the spring rite of birth and renewal. Thus the fertility symbols of eggs and bunnies.
The Islamic temple mount is built upon the temple of Solomon, and if there were archaeological studies of underneath the Temple, I’m sure we’d find pagan relics.
I’ve been to places where a Christian cross is blatantly on constructions that date waaaaay before Christianity arrived.
It is how a new meme is created to obscure, usurp and deny the original intent of the local people.
People who ask me about why I am celebrating Xmas get an earful. As far as I’m concerned the Christians and others have stolen the history of my pagan ancestors and can go ^*(%&^ themselves!
Humans have an anthropomorphic need to mark the passage of milestones in our short linear lives.
We are taking those human elements back form the theists, one holiday at a time.

I’m baptized but not confirmed and a few days a go i left the church of Sweden

I wouldn’t celebrate those holidays/events if I lived in Sweden (as I don’t celebrate them here in Croatia) because I’m not a fan of kitsch and consumerism.

But while I think you bring up some good points Greta, I disagree that progressives getting offended by anti-theistic critics claiming the mere existence of progressive Christians somehow enables fundamentalism and that no matter what they do to challenge fundamentalism, the anti-theists won’t be satisfiied until they join the true religion of anti-theism even though no one ever presents any evidence that their mere existence somehow enables them. If you have fundamentalists on the one hand accusing you of being evil and hellbound because you don’t belong to the true religion and anti-theists on the other hand accusing you of being insincere, liars, and untrustworthy on the other hand, wouldn’t you be offended too when it seems like people on all sides always have a complaint about you minding your own business? And before anyone suggests, yes, I have read Sam Harris and he still makes no sense to me.

Here’s my two cents about religion in general. I tend to view the phenomenon much like the famed mythologist Joseph Campbell did. We are coming (and will come) to a point where religion will be viewed much as it is in Sweden — a collection of myths that can nonetheless provide a framework for deeper philosophical discussions.

In short, as long as people don’t literally believe in the content behind these rituals, it seems rather harmless. Of course we are not yet to the point where everyone simply takes them as myth but we are getting there. A Baptism, for example could be seen as a simple initiation into a larger community. One thing I think American culture lacks is any kind of real ritual for entering adulthood (beyond college). Our families don’t usually have any kind of shared rites of passage. I’ve been trying to think of some for my 14yo son (ideas are welcome — a secular bar mitvah?)

The future of religious thought will very likely be like some of those “The Philosophy of” books you see.

You know, “The Philosophy of the Simpsons,” “The Philosophy of House MD,” etc. People read those books because they are curious about the philosophical framework behind these shows or movies — not that they believe they are real but they want to know how the author weaves real philosophy into a fictional work.

That’s how we will all someday view the ancient “holy” texts — interesting, possibly insightful but not literal. The same goes for rituals. We geeks, for example, may have parties or events in which we dress up as Star Wars characters (or Harry Potter). Even though we live out the philosophy of those characters to some degree, we all recognize it’s just a fun party (kind of like what the Swedish person was saying). We don’t literally believe we are part of the Empire or the Rebellion. However, such an event may bring up useful philosophical discussions (what lessons can we learn from Yoda, for example — What Would Yoda Do?).

In short, as Sweden is, so will the rest of the world be one day. Anytime you want to see the future for the rest of us, I would recommend looking at the Scandinavian countries.

I am a secular, atheist Jew, I guess…???   Well..the thing is that Christianity, for me, carries a legacy of persecution against my ancestors and as such is a detestable institution.   I don’t much care for Jewish traditions  either, but at least they don’t carry a legacy of hurting anyone like the church does.  Think of the Inquistion, for starters.   What it did to Jews, Muslims, and thousands of native Americans.   And think of Luther and his fierce anti-semitism … it carries a legacy.  Etc Etc.   And so the church is not free of associations that make it quite evil.   If  “Christian countries” ignore their churches’ pasts, they are still committing injustices.   It’s time for the ‘Official Churches’ in European countries to come out and speak of their pasts and make sure their members KNOW what they at least ONCE stood for, if they are free of such attitudes now (which I tend to doubt….).  The world is so marred by religion…how I would LOVE to see it gone for good!