Meet the World’s Confessional Lutherans

November 9, 2021 By Gene Veith

A long-time reader of this blog, Roger James, a pastor and missionary whome I met in person some years ago, wrote me recently saying that he now serves with the International Lutheran Council (ILC). He is the Assistant to the Secretary General, an office held by Dr. Timothy Quill, whom some of you will know as a professor at Concordia Theological Seminary in Fort Wayne, Indiana.

Roger noted some of my references to global Lutheranism and the ILC and said that he has been surprised that his organization and its work are not better known among American Lutherans.

One current project is sponsoring a lecture tour by Bishop Juhana Pohjola of the Evangelical Lutheran Mission Diocese of Finland, whom I have blogged about (here and here and here) for his being criminally charged for teaching what the Bible says about homosexuality. Here is the schedule of his American appearances:

November 10, 2021 (10:00 a.m.) in Washington, D.C at the office of the Alliance Defending Freedom
November 13, 2021 (9:30 a.m.) in Fort Wayne, Indiana at St. Paul’s Lutheran Church
November 16, 2021 (10:00 a.m.) in Boston, Massachusetts at First Lutheran Church

Note that his lecture in Washington, D.C., is tomorrow. If you are in the neighborhood, I urge you to attend. Because space is limited, those who would like to attend are asked to register here. (At that site you can also find more information, including the address and a description of the lecture.)

The Fort Wayne lecture will be live-streamed and available for later viewing here. then be available at our website for view (ILCouncil.org).

The ILC describes itself like this:

The International Lutheran Council is a growing worldwide association of established confessional Lutheran church bodies which proclaim the Gospel of Jesus Christ on the basis of an unconditional commitment to the Holy Scriptures as the inspired and infallible Word of God and to the Lutheran Confessions contained in the Book of Concord as the true and faithful exposition of the Word of God.

The by-laws state the doctrinal commitment to the Holy Scriptures as the “inspired and infallible Word of God” and “the source and norm of doctrine and practice,” and that the confessions of faith in the Book of Concord “are true statements that accord with the Word of God.” The ILC also gets specific about the moral issues that are in contention today, as well as issues of ministry such as the ordination of women:

D. Other Matters of Doctrine and Practice. The Holy Scriptures not only guide doctrine but the life and morals of the Church. The Holy Scriptures and the Decalogue are binding upon the life of the Christian. As a result, the following matters are here explicitly defined as true and binding:

1. Ethics and Morality

a. Human Life. The command not to murder applies to any type of deliberate harming of innocent human life, including abortion and euthanasia.

b. Marriage and Sexuality. Marriage was created by God as the life-long union of a man and a woman for their mutual help and joy and for the procreation and nurturing of children. A man and a woman enter into marriage by the public promise to live faithfully together until death. Conjugal relations are intended only for marriage.

2. Church Fellowship and Ministry

a. Fellowship, Unionism, and Syncretism. [Saying that while all Christians should work together when possible, altar and pulpit fellowship must be based on a common confession. (Rev. James told me that the various member churches are not necessarily in fellowship with each other.)

b. Office of the Ministry. Though all Christians—men and women—are redeemed and able to serve the Church in many ways, Holy Scripture requires that only men who are spiritually qualified in life and doctrine are to be called and ordained as pastors to preach the gospel and administer the sacraments.

The ILC consists of sixty church bodies that affirm these commitments, with over 7 million members. These include 22 in Africa (including Nigeria, Kenya, Madagascar, and Tanzania); 10 in Asia (including India, Japan, Korea, Indonesia, and Taiwan); 12 in Europe (including England, Scandinavia, the Independent Evangelical-Lutheran Church of Germany, and two historic church bodies in Russia, one associated with the Ingrian ethnic group and one in Siberia, where ethnic Germans were exiled by Stalin); 11 in Latin America (including Mexico, Argentina, and Brazil); and 5 in North America (including Haiti, the Lutheran Church of Canada, and the Lutheran Church Missouri Synod).

Recently the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Latvia voted nearly unanimously to join the ILC. The largest church body in that Baltic republic, with over 700,000 members, experienced a dramatic revival–despite decades of persecution during the Soviet occupation–and has moved decisively to Lutheran orthodoxy, to the point of reversing its former practice of ordaining women.

The ILC is not the only global association of conservative Lutherans. There is also the Confessional Evangelical Lutheran Conference (CELC), which consists of 34 church bodies aligned with the Wisconsin Evangelical Lutheran Synod and the Evangelical Lutheran Synod, with their stricter fellowship rules.

American confessional Lutherans may feel beleaguered at times, but they should realize that they have Biblically-faithful counterparts all around the world.

Photo: LCMS president Matthew Harrison praying before preaching at the 2018 ILC Conference in Antwerp, Belgium. Used by permission of the ILC.

Premium Content

Of Course the Church Is Going to Be Small

November 1, 2021 By Gene Veith

0 Comments

“A church is like a human being,” I have often heard. “If it is not growing, it’s dying.” But is that really true? Our models and our expectations for “successful” churches tend to focus on growing in numbers. But is that realistic? If our culture is becoming increasingly secularized, the number of Christians, by definition, is going to get smaller. But Christian minorities gathered into small congregations can still function effectively as the Body of Christ. In fact, that may be the Biblical norm.

Jeremy Hoover is a Canadian minister and church planter who writes about his frustration that the Ontario congregation that he had started–while in some ways doing quite well–just was not growing. He writes about this at the Patheos blog The Evangelical Pulpit in a post entitled Church Growth.

He says he was helped by a comment from one of his members to the effect that the small group meeting together was not just “trying to start a church” but that they were “the church.” And he read a book by Stefan Paas, a Dutch church planter working in Denmark–societies even more secularized than Canada, which is even more secularized than the United States–entitled Pilgrims and Priests: Christian Mission in a Post-Christian Society.

“Pass noted that, in secularism, where choices abound and following the Christian faith is simply one choice among many,” Rev. Hoover writes, “the church will always be small.” He says that, in this context, Christians in their congregations must think of themselves as (1) pilgrims, banding together as they travel through a strange land headed towards their heavenly destination; and (2) priests, bringing God’s blessings to the world. That would include, I assume, the Gospel of Christ, Christian service, and other priestly tasks, such as prayer and intercession. “The church will always be a small band of believers, who see themselves as priests,” Rev. Hoover writes, “offering blessings to the community around them.”

Paas’s book draws on the experiences of Christians and their churches in highly-secularized Europe as he explores “Christian Mission in a Post-Christian Society.” It may well be that the far more religious United States will soon resemble today’s Europe, which is not so much atheistic but, to use Hoover’s term, “apatheistic,” being completely apathetic about religion. And yet, what Paas is describing seems to accord with what I have observed in Denmark, where he serves, and also in Finland and Australia. Namely, Christian believers of great spiritual vitality. There just is not many of them. And they gather in congregations that also demonstrate great spiritual vitality. They just tend to be very small. Nevertheless, I always find visiting these Christians and these congregations, with their dearth of “nominal” Christians, to be bracing and inspiring.

To say “the church will always be small” is not to minimize large congregations. The United States has many big churches, and these other countries have some also. These include not only “megachurches” designed around contemporary “church growth” principles, but also traditional and conservative congregations. More power to them, and may their tribe increase! Of course, we want as many people as possible to come to faith and join the church.

But most congregations are small ones, from storefront churches in the inner city to tiny congregations out in the country. And even factoring in all of the megachurches and traditional congregations and church bodies with large memberships, the aggregate number of church-going Christians in the United States is still a minority, though, at 41% a sizeable minority. About 30-35% of Americans, counting both white and black churches, can be classified as “evangelical.” About 3.5% are Lutherans, with 1.1% being Missouri Synod Lutherans (and counted among the evangelicals).

The relatively small number of Christians is not necessarily a new phenomenon. Luther, writing at a time when church membership was virtually 100%, often described the church of true believers as being small. For example, in his explanation of the church in the Large Catechism, he describes it as “a little holy group”:

I believe that there is upon earth a little holy group and congregation of pure saints, under one head, even Christ, called together by the Holy Ghost in one faith, one mind, and understanding, with manifold gifts, yet agreeing in love, without sects or schisms. (Third Article of the Creed, Large Catechism)

And the Bible also indicates that believers will not constitute a particularly large demographic. As Jesus says,

“Enter by the narrow gate. For the gate is wide and the way is easy that leads to destruction, and those who enter by it are many. For the gate is narrow and the way is hard that leads to life, and those who find it are few. (Matthew 7: 13-14)

So we shouldn’t be surprised to find our numbers to be small. We perhaps have felt entitled to being the majority in society, with an expectation that our churches should be large and full, based on historical precedent, which, however, might be misleading.

We should not be dismayed at belonging to a “little holy group.” We are, indeed, pilgrims and priests. Insofar as we are faithful, we can still be salt and light to a world that does not understand us. As the hymn says, echoing Jesus in Luke 12:32:

Have no fear, little flock;
Have no fear little flock,
For the Father has chosen
to give you the Kingdom;
Have no fear, little flock! (Lutheran Service Book, 735)

Photo from Pxfuel

Premium Content

The Persecuted Pastor Becomes a Bishop

September 10, 2021 By Gene Veith

0 Comments

In more news about Christians being prosecuted in Finland for disapproving of homosexuality, the Rev. Dr. Juhana Pohjola, who will be tried for his part in the publication of a tract on Biblical sexuality, has been made a bishop.

On August 1, he became the bishop of the Evangelical Lutheran Mission Diocese of Finland (ELMDF), a church body that in 2019 entered into full altar and pulpit fellowship with the Lutheran Church Missouri Synod.

The latest Lutheran Witness has an excellent article on the subject by Kevin Ambrust, who goes into detail about the consecration, the Evangelical Lutheran Mission Diocese, and the controversy surrounding Bishop Pohjola.

The list of participants in the service shows that Bible-believing Lutherans can still be found throughout ostensibly secularist Scandinavia. Conservative bishops from Sweden, Norway, and Latvia were there in support of Bishop Pohjola, as were representatives from the LCMS, including president Matthew Harrison.

From Kevin Ambrust, ‘To live is Christ’: Pohjola consecrated as bishop of Finnish Lutheran Church in The Lutheran Witness:

Participating in the consecration were the Rev. Risto Soramies, bishop of the ELMDF since its inception as an independent organization in 2013; the Rev. Dr. Matti Väisänen, bishop from 2010 to 2013, when the ELMDF was a mission diocese; the Rev. Hanss Jensons, bishop of the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Latvia; the Rev. Bengt Ådahl, bishop of the Mission Province in Sweden; the Rev. Thor Henrik With, bishop of the Evangelical Lutheran Diocese in Norway; and the Rev. Dr. Matthew C. Harrison, president of The Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod (LCMS). Clergy from the International Lutheran Council (ILC), the ELMDF and the LCMS — including the Rev. Dr. Jonathan Shaw, director of LCMS Church Relations; the Rev. James Krikava, associate executive director of the LCMS Office of International Mission and director of the LCMS Eurasia region; and the Rev. Dr. Timothy Quill, general secretary of the ILC — also processed in support of the new bishop.

“We Christians confess Jesus and His redemptive words and deeds as our life and salvation. Corrupt culture calls us to reject this ‘little Word’ in favor of flashy signs and woke wisdom. The consecration of Rev. Pohjola as bishop of the ELMDF, the LCMS’ newest sister church, was a witness to that triumphant ‘little Word,’” said Shaw. “How heartening to join with the faithful who boldly confess Christ and His doctrine, despite the liberal Finnish state church having defrocked ELMDF clergy, seized church buildings and brought criminal charges against Bishop Pohjola for publishing a pamphlet on divinely ordered human sexuality. Other confessional Lutheran churches — small by the world’s standards — sent their bishops to participate. Bishop Ådahl put it succinctly: ‘We are not a small church among big churches. We are the church.’ As the Body of Christ, we together receive from the fullness of His grace.”

[Keep reading. . .]

Lutheran Bishops?

You may be wondering, what’s this about Lutheran bishops? I’m Lutheran and I don’t have a bishop.

Well, some denominations define themselves not by their teaching, as such, but by their church government. For Congregationalists, the individual congregation makes all the decisions. Presbyterians are governed by elders (Greek: presbyters), which means pastors and lay leaders. Episcopalians are ruled by bishops. Roman Catholics are ruled by the Pope.

What makes a Lutheran is not any particular kind of church government but adherence to the doctrines set forth in the Scriptures as taught in the confessions of the Early Church and the Reformation collected in the Book of Concord. Thus, Lutherans can be found with a number of different ecclesiastical polities. We Missouri Synod Lutherans are mostly congregational.

Though the Reformation brought conflict with different jurisdictions, that didn’t happen in Scandinavia, where the existing churches as a whole embraced the Reformation whole. Thus, they kept their bishops. This meant too that they retained Apostolic Succession, with their bishops being able to trace their lineage all the way back to the first Apostles.

Lutherans as a whole don’t consider that to be important. To be “apostolic,” as the Creed describes the church, is to follow the teachings of the apostles that they wrote down in the inspired words of Scripture. And it isn’t so much bishops who are in a chain of laying on of hands as pastors, the pastoral office having been established by Christ and bishops simply being pastors who have been elected to a position of particular responsibility.

But Roman Catholics, the Orthodox, and the Anglicans do put major emphasis on the Apostolic Succession, to the point of insisting that “valid orders”–that is, legitimate pastors–are only those who have been ordained by bishops in the apostolic train.

Conversely, Roman Catholics, Orthodox, Anglicans, and liberal state church Scandinavian Lutherans do have to recognize pastors ordained by bishops in the Apostolic Succession.

So they have to reckon with Bishop Pohjola, even if he is put in prison, and they have to recognize at some level the validity of the Evangelical Lutheran Mission Diocese of Finland, as well as those of Sweden and Norway, because they are Dioceses with valid bishops. (Some of those conservative churches that broke away from the liberal state churches had their bishops and first pastors ordained by the recognized bishops from Africa or the Ingrian Lutherans of Russia.)

Why “Mission”?

You may also be wondering why these new Scandinavian Lutheran churches have “mission” in their names. This is something really distinct in these nations, as I explain in my post Scandinavia’s Two Tracks of Christianity.

Briefly, the Pietist movement in the Nordic countries led to a proliferation of highly-evangelical groups known as Mission Societies. Pietism was often in conflict with Orthodox Lutheranism, especially in Germany, but in the Scandinavian countries, the state church made peace with these mostly lay-led groups, which began, with the church’s blessing, taking on aspects of the church’s ministry.

The Outer Mission groups sent missionaries throughout the world, and their highly-effective work is largely responsible for evangelizing–and planting thriving Lutheran churches–in many regions of Africa and Asia. The Inner Mission groups focused on ministry within the nations, organizing Bible studies, running Sunday Schools and youth ministries, caring for the poor, and operating a wide range of social ministries.

These Mission societies remain highly active today. And whereas the state church has gone extremely liberal, the Mission Societies are still theologically conservative and evangelical. Not only that, the Mission Societies, for all of their Pietist heritage, have become more and more Lutheran theologically.

Studies of religion in Scandinavia look at the empty state churches and conclude that Christianity is dead. But vital Christianity remains in the Mission Societies. Conservatives don’t attend the state churches anymore than the secularists do.

Things have gotten so bad with the established church that the Mission Society Christians are now getting together for worship. The parish churches meet on Sunday mornings, so the Mission services meet on Sunday afternoons. In Finland, they are not allowed to meet in church buildings, so they meet in school auditoriums and other locales. They conduct the Divine Service, including the Sacrament, presided over by ordained pastors who are sympathetic to the cause.

Some Mission folks have taken the next step: breaking away completely from the state church and forming their own church. To do this, they need their own bishops, who can ordain their own pastors. Thus we have the Evangelical Lutheran Mission Diocese of Finland, the Mission Province in Sweden, and the Evangelical Lutheran Diocese in Norway.

The situation in Denmark is different and better. According to Danish law, citizens have the right to form their own religious congregations. So Mission Christians are doing so, thus enabling a polity more like the Lutheran Church Missouri Synod. These Mission congregations can call their own pastors, who are being trained at the universities, where they have set up parallel theological institutes that conservative pastoral students attend.

As for Latvia, the Lutheran church in that Baltic Republic is the remnant of the state church that survived the persecution and co-option of the Soviet Union. Since then, the entire Latvian church has experienced a confessional revival–to the point of reversing its former practice of women’s ordination–and is now in altar and pulpit fellowship–that is to say, full doctrinal agreement– with the Lutheran Church Missouri Synod. Now the Latvian church is joining the International Lutheran Council, a global association of confessional Lutherans.

For more on all this, see my accounts of my visits to Finland and to Denmark and Norway.

Photo: Bishop Pohjola, with attending bishops and clergy [LCMS president Matthew Harrison on right], via International Lutheran Council.

Premium Content

“The Powers of Church and Civil Government Must Not Be Mixed”

September 9, 2021 By Gene Veith

0 Comments

I have blogged about the case in Finland of Lutheran pastor Juhana Pohjola, who, along with physician and member of parliament Päivi Räsänen, will be tried for hate speech for publishing a pamphlet teaching what the Bible says about homosexuality.

Worldwide confessional Lutheranism has spoken out on the matter with a powerful statement entitled A Protest and Call for Free Religious Speech in Finland: An International Lutheran Condemnation of the Unjust Criminal Prosecution of the Rev. Dr. Pohjola and Dr. Räsänen, and a Call for All People of Goodwill to Support the Freedom of Religious Expression in Finland.

I urge you to read it, along with the list of signatories from around the world.

We’ve already discussed the case, but I want to draw your attention to the way the statement distinguishes between the authority of the state and the authority of the church.

It gives a distinctively Lutheran approach to the issue, drawing on the Augsburg Confession, but it shows that the doctrine of the Two Kingdoms, far from encouraging an uncritical submission to temporal governments, offers a framework for positive religious and, indeed, intellectual liberty. It also repudiates both totalitarianism on the part of the state and theocratic rule on the part of the church. And it offers guidelines for some of church and state issues that we face today.

Here are the relevant paragraphs (my bolds and interposition):

The Augsburg Confession (AC) states that the Gospel

does not overthrow civil authority, the state, and marriage, but requires that all these be kept as true orders of God, and that everyone, each according to his own calling, manifest Christian love and genuine good works in his station of life. [Note the doctrine of vocation.] Accordingly, Christians are obliged to be subject to civil authority and obey its commands and laws in all that can be done without sin. (AC XVI, Romans 13:1-7)

But authority holds only in its own jurisdiction. The government holds sway over externals, the Word of god over internals. “The civil magistrate protects not minds but bodies and goods from manifest harm. The Gospel protects minds from ungodly ideas, the devil, and eternal death. Consequently, the powers of church and civil government must not be mixed” (AC XXVIII). Since faith must remain free, AC XVI concludes that when the commands of government cannot be obeyed without sin, “we must obey God rather than men (Acts 5:39).”

These principles would apply to other issues. For example, today many Christians, including many Lutherans, are rejecting the state’s authority to require masks and other anti-COVID measures. Well, protecting bodies from manifest harm would seem to fall under the authority of the state. That would hold true even if we think the reasons for those requirements are ill-founded. The government, however, should not punish our inner thoughts about such measures. Even if we disagree with mask-wearing requirements, we should probably submit to our government authorities in this, since wearing a mask and social distancing are not sins, as such.

Vaccination mandates are different. Some Christians, in good conscience, refuse to get vaccinated because they believe the use of abortion-derived stem cells associated with certain vaccines, however remote the connection might be, makes the vaccines sinful. That inner conviction could be a matter of religious liberty. Some people refuse to get vaccinated on prudential grounds, because they don’t think the vaccines are safe. That wouldn’t involve religious liberty, as such, but they could make the case that they have a right to act upon their internal ideas, over which the government holds no sway. Christians could disagree with each other on issues like that, and they would always need to determine what is best not only for themselves but how they can best “manifest Christian love” to their neighbors.

And state mandates to shut the doors of churches are certainly different, even when the state is trying to protect “not minds but bodies and goods from manifest harm.” For one sphere to cancel the other would violate the principle that “the powers of church and civil government must not be mixed.”

To be sure, this distinction is not always easy to apply, and it doesn’t account for all of the issues. Our minds control what our bodies do, so our mental liberty must manifest itself in our external actions. Still, the Augsburg Confession gives us a remarkably early assertion of intellectual freedom and the boundaries of the state. It would, for example, rule out prosecution for “hate crimes.” The state can and should punish external actions that harm the “bodies and goods” of someone else. It should not, however, prosecute “hate crimes,” since it has no control or jurisdiction over citizens’ inner emotion of who they hate. Only the gospel can get at that, not by threats of the law even then, but by working the inner transformation of faith that enables us to love our neighbors.

Am I applying the principles of the Augsburg Confession correctly here? (Note that the test of believing a doctrine is accepting it even when it goes against one’s own inclinations.) How else might these principles be applied, as churches and individual Christians try to sort out their relationship to the state?

Photo: “Church and State” by Lee Coursey, via Flickr, Creative Commons 2.0

Premium Content

LCMS-Related Christians Charged for Teaching the Bible

June 1, 2021 By Gene Veith

0 Comments

Last year I blogged about how a Finnish pastor and a laywoman who is a member of the Finnish parliament were being investigated by authorities for teaching what the Bible says about homosexuality. Now prosecutors have taken the step of issuing criminal charges against them and taking them to trial.

And lest we think that such persecution of believing Christians, while regrettable, at least is a problem on foreign shores far away from us, the individuals facing prison for their beliefs have direct ties to the Lutheran Church Missouri-Synod here in the United States.

I blogged about these two cases last year in my post Criminalizing Christian Teachings about Sex. Please read that.

Dr. Päivi Räsänen, a medical doctor and a member of parliament–who once was Minister of the Interior, no less–wrote a booklet in 2004 entitled Male and Female He Created Them (for an English translation, click the link), arguing that “Homosexual relationships challenge the Christian concept of humanity.”

Her book was published by the Evangelical Lutheran Mission Diocese of Finland (ELMDF), a church body in full altar and pulpit fellowship with the Lutheran Church Missouri Synod. Its bishop-elect is Rev. Dr. Juhana Pohjola, who earned his STM from Concordia Theological Seminary in Ft. Wayne, Indiana, an LCMS institution, where he also served as a Visiting Scholar.

Finnish prosecutors began investigating Dr. Räsänen in 2019, believing that her book–printed with the support of the Lutheran Heritage Foundation, a Recognized Service Organization of the Lutheran Church Missouri Synod–could constitute a violation of the law against “incitement against a group of people.” They also began an investigation of Rev. Pohjola, since he approved the book’s publication.

Prosecutors also found other incidents that could be considered criminal: she posted a tweet critical of the state church for being a sponsor of the Gay Pride parade, quoting Romans 1:24-27; and she gave the wrong answer when she was invited to speak on Finnish public radio on the topic of “what would Jesus think of the homosexual?”

Now both Dr. Räsänen and Rev. Pohjjola have been formally charged. They face up to two years in prison.

The Prosecutor General said that the book and statements from the pair are derogatory to homosexuals and therefore “overstep the boundaries of freedom of speech and religion.”

Finland, as a liberal democracy, ostensibly holds to the freedom of speech and the freedom of religion, but, according to this determination, those are trumped by the LGBT cause. Nevermind that the book came out 13 years before Finland legalized same-sex marriage, when the issue was still a matter of debate.

Rev. Pohjola said this after he was charged:

“As a Christian, I do not want to and cannot discriminate against or despise anyone created by God. Every human being, created by God and redeemed by Christ, is equally precious. . . .This does not remove the fact that, according to the Bible and the Christian conception of man, homosexual relations are against the will of God, and marriage is intended only between a man and a woman. This is what the Christian church has always taught and will always teach.”

A European evangelical site quotes Dr. Räsänen:

Räsänen has repeatedly said “the teachings concerning marriage and sexuality in the Bible arise from love, not hate”, because “the core message of faith, i.e. grace and atonement, is founded on the Christian view of humanity seen in creation, on the one hand, and the great fall, on the other”.

She also has made clear that she supports the dignity and human rights of all homosexuals, because “the Christian view of human beings is based on the inherent and equal dignity of all persons”. . . .

The Christian politician underlined the importance that citizens in democratic countries use the fundamental right to express their opinions: “The more Christians keep silent on controversial themes, the narrower the space for freedom of speech gets”.

I met both Päivi Räsänen and Juhana Pohjola when I was in Finland for a series of speaking engagements and had lunches with each of them. This was before their legal troubles broke out. I was greatly impressed with both of them. Here is a Christian living out her faith in her vocation as a public official and doing so effectively–rising in her party to be named Minister of the Interior– in a highly secularist country. Here is a pastor who is faithfully proclaiming the Word of God and presiding over congregations whose members adhere to that Word, despite the secularism even of the state church. I was inspired by the many devoted Christians I met there. (See my post on the state of confessional Lutheranism in Finland.)

I believe that the opposition they face makes them stronger in the faith. We Americans have it so much easier. And yet, we too may someday face similar persecution. It is already touching us Missouri Synod Lutherans because of our fellowship with the Finnish church body that is under attack.

A FINAL THOUGHT: Is this what conservative Christians will all face if the Equality Act, which allows LGBT claims to trump religious liberty claims, becomes the law of the land?

Photos:

Rev. Dr. Juhana Pohjola, dean and bishop-elect via The Evangelical Lutheran Mission Diocese of Finland

Päivi Räsänen by Eurooppalainen Suomi ry, CC BY 2.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0>, via Wikimedia Commons

Premium Content

The Real Reason Why Scandinavians Are So Happy

May 13, 2021 By Gene Veith

0 Comments

For the fourth year in a row, Finland is ranked as the happiest country in the world. So why do Finns and other Scandinavians rate so happy when they are also notoriously gloomy?

According to the World Happiness Report, an ambitious yearly study, in the plague year of 2020, here are the world’s 20 happiest countries:

Finland
Iceland
Denmark
Switzerland
Netherlands

Sweden

Germany

Norway

New Zealand

Austria

Israel

Australia

Ireland

United States

Canada

Czech Republic

Belgium

United Kingdom

Taiwan

France

The list is interesting for lots of reasons. (Such as why is Israel happier than the United States, despite having to live with the constant threat of terrorism, rocket attacks, and the opprobrium of much of the world?)

But the biggest puzzle is why five of the top eight spots are occupied by Scandinavian countries? That violates all stereotypes. What about the “melancholy Dane”? What about all of those jokes about the morose Norwegians of Minnesota? As for Finland, I heard a joke about its famously introverted and reserved people and COVID, something about their reaction to the two-meter social distancing rule. After COVID goes away, the Finns will be glad they won’t have to stand so close.

A Finnish immigrant to the United States, Jukka Savolainen–who says that he moved to America in part because he likes to see people smile–has written an article that explains it all entitled The Grim Secret of Nordic Happiness.

Nobody is more skeptical than the Finns about the notion that we are the world’s happiest people. To be fair, this is hardly the only global ranking we’ve topped recently. We are totally fine with our reputation of having the best educational system (not true), lowest levels of corruption (probably), most sustainable economy (meh), and so forth. But happiest country? Give us a break.

He quotes approvingly a visitor’s description of Helsinki’s glum pedestrians: “This is not a state of national mourning in Finland, these are Finns in their natural state; brooding and private; grimly in touch with no one but themselves; the shyest people on earth. Depressed and proud of it.”

So why do they rank as the happiest people in the world? Savolainen points out that the research behind the World Happiness Report asks respondents to rate their lives on a scale of one to ten, with ten representing “the best possible life for you,” and one representing the worst. That is to say, the scale measures what people think is possible for themselves. The Scandinavian countries are indeed prosperous and safe, with a welfare state that takes care of them. But the key, says Savolainen, is their low expectations. They don’t expect much, so they are highly satisfied, and, thus, very “happy.”

Savolainen makes this observation, which makes this all of interest to this blog: “Consistent with their Lutheran heritage, the Nordic countries are united in their embrace of curbed aspirations for the best possible life.”

So Lutheranism is what makes Scandinavians both gloomy and satisfied? I wonder about that. True, Lutherans know themselves to be sinners. They will be skeptical about any kind of earthly utopia. They reject any “theology of glory” in favor of the “theology of the cross.”

Then again, Lutherans believe they have been saved despite their sins by the grace of God, who justifies them freely by the sacrifice of Christ. That takes the pressure off. Lutherans also believe in vocation, that God is present and active in ordinary human work and relationships. That gives meaning to ordinary life.

Scandinavians today have a Lutheran “heritage,” but the Lutheran faith has faded considerably, with some notable exceptions. Perhaps what remains is Lutheranism without faith, the devastations of the Law without the joy of the Gospel, the depressing parts with only a dim–but real–memory of the happy parts. (But read this about confessional, evangelical Lutheranism in Finland.)

And yet, there may be wisdom even in this secular version of Lutheranism. Another word for satisfaction even in the face of low expectations is contentment. The Word of God–another Lutheran emphasis–has much to say about this:

I have learned in whatever situation I am to be content. I know how to be brought low, and I know how to abound. In any and every circumstance, I have learned the secret of facing plenty and hunger, abundance and need. (Philippians 4:11-12)

Godliness with contentment is great gain,for we brought nothing into the world, and we cannot take anything out of the world. But if we have food and clothing, with these we will be content. (1 Timothy 6:6-8)

The Scandinavians have food and clothing and much more. Why shouldn’t they be content?

We Americans, by contrast, tend to want more than we have and be ambitious for ever-greater success, only to be miserable when we do not attain it. We are restless, changeable, and dissatisfied. Though we are still optimistic that a better life is just ahead. This aspect of our national character is part of our strength and dynamism. But it is also why we come in on the World Happiness Report at #14.

Photo: Hamlet [the Melancholy Dane] by Nawe97, CC BY-SA 4.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0>, via Wikimedia Commons. With the following caption: Sam Gregory, left, will portray the Ghost of John Barrymore and Alex Esola will portray Andy in the Colorado Shakespeare Festival’s I Hate Hamlet play this summer at the University of Colorado Boulder. (Photo by Casey A. Cass/University of Colorado) .

Premium Content