More than 50,000 people left Finland's Evangelical Lutheran Church in 2008

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According to the church’s membership statistics, a total of 52,203 members resigned from the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Finland in 2008, while the number of remaining church members was 4,294,199, or 80.6 per cent of the entire Finnish population.
     
The church reported earlier that according to advance information, the number of resignations was only 48,268, but the figure did not contain those Finnish Lutherans who submitted their resignations at the last moment.
      Apparently, the door out of the church opened quite often at the end of last year, as an additional 3,935 resignations had been added to the advance report.
      The numbers, both before and after the extra leavers, are conspicuously higher than were reported at the beginning of 2008, already seen as a record figure.


Previously in HS International Edition:
  More Finns leave Lutheran Church in 2005 than ever before (22.2.2006)
  Helsinki residents´ eagerness to leave Lutheran Church above national average (6.3.2006)

See also:
  Record number of Finns quit Lutheran Church in 2007 (3.1.2008)

Links:
  Evangelical Lutheran Church of Finland

Helsingin Sanomat