BACKGROUND: A jubilee year for the Western Church
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The Evangelical Lutheran Church of Finland regards 1155 as the year when ecclesiastical activity got under way in Finland. This was the year in which the Swedish monarch King Erik VIII (later canonised as St. Erik) came on the First Crusade, accompanied by the ill-fated English-born Bishop Henry of Uppsala.
The intention was to join Finland into the Swedish Church organisation, at that time a Roman Catholic denomination.
A few months later, Bishop Henry met his end on the ice of Köyliönjärvi, allegedly at the hand of the Finnish farmer Lalli, wielding an axe with main force. However, since the stories of this incident only emerged a couple of centuries afterwards, they must be treated with a measure of scepticism. It may also be that the entire matter - and the apparent Finnish ingratitude at the Bishop's overtures - was used by later churchmen to justify the harsh measures employed to guarantee that Finns accepted God in deed and not just in word.
In any event, after this rather gory beginning, Christianity and the Church established itself in Finland throughout the 13th century.
It was not merely from the West that they came in search of converts: there were Orthodox crusades from Novgorod in the East that penetrated as far as modern-day Häme Province.
Finland got its first eastern boundary in 1323, when the Peace of Nöteburg (Pähkinäsaari) was signed between Sweden and Russia. The border formed the dividing line of two cultural spheres, and on the Western side it was the Western Church, the Roman Catholic faith, that exercised religious authority.
In the first half of the 16th century, the Finns became Lutherans.
It was not as if the people's opinions were sought prior to the Reformation, when the King (of Sweden) and the kingdom changed denomination, and the subjects went along with it.
From the 16th century onwards, the majority of the Finnish population have belonged to the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Finland.
In the 18th and 19th centuries a number of revivalist movements (most noticeably Pietism, Evangelism, and Laestadianism) sprung up within the Finnish Church.
These movements - which still today exercise influence within the Church as a whole - took slightly different issue with certain basic tenets, and for instance even now not all the sects or denominations approve of female clergy.
The idea of religious freedom began to take shape in the latter half of the 19th century. The Non-Conformist Act of 1889 permitted membership in other Protestant branches of the Church. The Methodists and Baptists received official recognition.
True religious freedom was pronounced from 1923: henceforth it was possible to found religious denominations freely or to remain completely outside of them.
Although in strict legal terms the Evangelical Lutheran Church is no longer a State church, following the Ecclesiastical Act of 1869, which loosened the ties between Church and State, and following the Act on Freedom of Religion of 1923, when the State no longer formally affirmed the Lutheran faith, the State still retains supervisory rights over the management of the Church and for instance bishops are appointed by the President, even if they are chosen by the diocesan chapters.
The jubilee year now in progress is thus a celebration of the Church organisation. The other Finnish national church, the Orthodox Church, dates back rather further, and its influence was felt in Karelia as early as in the 11th century.
Helsingin Sanomat / First published in print 24.3.2005
More on this subject:
 The church in the centre of the village
Links:
The Evangelical Lutheran Church of Finland
The Orthodox Church of Finland (Virtual Finland)
Helsingin Sanomat
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