I want to try and get back to the roots of this blog and thats showing you elements of Swedish society and the culture. Of course I will still ramble on about politics, running and Morrissey but..
I read an interesting article in Fokus about Christmas being the most searched for religious festival online and that it is is in direct competition with pornographic searches.
Interesting to note that Swedish internet surfers are bucking the trend because according to the search engines the Swedish traffic for porn is actually decreasing and has been since mid 2006.
I have no idea why this is but it does show higher amounts of people searching for Christmas related words on sites such as Google.
The article came with some very interesting stats about the Church of Sweden – Svenska Kyrkan which I reproduce below.
Last year
- 72.9% of Swedes were members of the Svenska Kyrkan
- Christened 59% of all new borns
- 34% of all 15 year olds were confirmed by the Swedish Church
- 44% of all weddings were conducted by the Swedish Church
- 83% of all funerals were at Svenska Kyrkan
- Over 100, 000 singers sang in 5500 Church choirs.
I am surprised by how high these numbers are as the Swedes do not strike me as being very religious. Maybe they just hide it which is fine by me.
Its worth noting though that 72,000 members left Svenska Kyrkan between November 2008 and October 2009. This could of course be more to do with the economic crisis than a loss of faith. How much does it cost to be a member?
The Swedish Church currently has 6.75m members!
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{ 6 comments… read them below or add one }
To be a member in the swedish church you pay about 1 % of your annual income. I left the church a couple of years ago. Mostly because I think that if I want to give money to some charity I prefer to give them my money direct instead of paying for the church administration. Then there was a link between aik solna and the swedish church or something like that a couple of years ago. Think the church sponsored them or something like that!!! Not really sure about this one. Maybe somone else can “enlighten” me?
I´ll be happy to help out here. AIK Solna went high-business, during one of their many strokes of hybris, and sold stocks in the company called something like AIK Fotboll AB. These stocks were liseted on one of the smaller Swedish stock markets, NGM or someting like that. The church administrates a lot of money and makes them grow by investing them in stocks et cetera. In order to spread the risk, the stoke brookers working for the church, buy stocks in as many listed companies as possible, at least in companies were the church has not told them not to invest. The companies not to invest in, is for instancec companies manufacturing weapons, tobacco et cetera. The stock brockers invested in AIK Fotboll AB which made a lot of people and some of the parishes/churches on Södermalm, react. Some people left the church because of this; I believe quite a lot of them lived on Södermalm actually. Anywho, I don´t know if the church still has stocks in AIK Fotboll AB.
I am a member of Hammarby and the church and think everyone should to as they feel. If you leave the church because you don´t believe in God and actually do give money to the poor, that´s great in it´s way.
yes it´s true that the swedish church was a “sponsor” to aik. But not any longer I think.
Very interesting stuff! Thanks for the heads up boys!
Cyril, I thought you would have been a chapel bouy
Richard, I cant help but smile when read that lots of Church members from Söder left when Svenska Kyrkan invested in AIK.
Shane, so wrong there about the chapels
If I had to choose any religion it’s Buddism here. The most sane one of them all in my opinion. Must say that it wasn’t only in södermalm where people left the church because of the sponsoring of aik solna. I know supporters from here and there who left because of that.
I used to be quite religious but feel so many of the churches dont practice what they preach. Going to a McDonalds doesnt turn you into a burger and neither does going to a Church make you a Christian.
If there is a big man upstairs, I think he will judge us on our actions not on whether we went to church but thats just my twopenneth.