In Finland the situation is such that people are not so much changing their denomination but leaving the church membership. As you might know, we have a former state church (now a “people’s church”) and almost everyone used to be a member of the church. However, the Sunday service attendance has never been very high and is at the moment ca. 1-2 % of the membership.
ELCF measured by members is roughly twice the size of LCMS. At the moment the members-leaving-the-church rate is about 40,000 a year. Most of this is happening via a website eroakirkosta.fi (freely translated: “leavethechurch.com”) hosted by a certain atheist organisation. At the moment 81% of Finnish people are members of the Lutheran people’s church and it’s getting down. Sweden is a bit ahead of us, they’re in about 70%. In Germany, ca. 10-15% (if I remember right) are members of a church, whose confession at least on paper is excplicitly Lutheran. The number is going down while it is approximately the same as the number of muslims in Germany. And this is the home country of Luther!
Europe is getting more and more secular and more and more islamic. Well, you might know already that.
My reply:
My impression, Snafu, is that these state Lutheran churches are very, very liberal and modernist, that they don’t believe in the Bible or the confessions and that they hardly care about the Gospel. If that’s so, why WOULD anyone go to them? What are they offering that people can’t already get from secularism?
What is your situation as a believing Lutheran Christian in that context? Isn’t there a small confessional remnant in each country?
Whereupon he replied:
You’re very much right, dr. Veith. It is true that the state churches are very liberal. There was a poll a few years ago showing e.g. that 30% of the clergy did not believe hell existed at all. This year we have seen a pastor (female) coming out of the closet and getting full support from her bishop and another pastor “changing” his sex through a surgical operation, also getting full support from his bishop. And let me tell you, it’s not going to stop here.
To answer your (big) first question even a bit: The mental frame of the Finns is still that “to be a Finn is to be a member of the church”. This is also the reason why the older, Bible-believing members don’t know where else to go. However, this is changing and the younger believers are also leaving the church: 1/7 of those 40,000 report they left because the church is too liberal. I have friends who have then switched to Eastern Orthodox or Pentecostal (the next biggest churches in Finland).
To answer you second question (also a big question that no short answer would suffice).: there is a small remnant of confessional Christians in each country. However, these groups can be quite different from each other, others being quite revivalistic or piethistic, others confessional Lutherans, others charismatic. If you rule out the question of baptism, the state churches include almost all the possible protestant denominations.
My home is a confessional Lutheran movement “Luther foundation” that within a couple of years will start as an independent diocese in the church. A corresponding diocese in Sweden is the Missionsprovinsen, to which we have good relations. (and neither is recognized by the heads of the state church). The situation is a bit complex, and would take long time to explain but you can read a bit more in a blog: http://tentatioborealis.blogspot.com/
The writer is a friend of mine who studied in Ft. Wayne last year (a good friend of prof. Pless).
The state church still has baptism; still reads the Word of God in its liturgy; still distributes Holy Communion; all of this still evidently creates believers, though amidst much apostasy. I’m intrigued by that cultural loyalty of ordinary people to the church, which I’m not willing to completely discount. I’ve heard predictions of a Christian revival in Europe. Christ is still in Finland, isn’t he?
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