Kolumni

Religion in Modern Finland

25.5.2010 0:01 Mary Nurminen

One of the biggest differences between the Finland of some 100 years back and today's Finland is in people's views on religion. The old and official view is that Finland has a strong state religion that is followed by the majority of people.

However, at least for Finns around my age and younger, it has been a common practice for years to be skeptical of the state religion, and in fact all organized religions. I find it interesting and paradoxical that the official view and the newer view exist side-by-side, with relatively few people commenting on the conflict.

Over time this skepticism has changed from being the radical individual opinions of a few people into a common belief system which is shared by a large group of people. In fact I think it could be the next dominant religion of Finland and lots of northern Europe.

This belief system doesn't have much to do with whether people believe in God or not, it's more about if they believe in the religions that people have built or not. And mostly it seems to be made up of a list of arguments against religion. It is a surprisingly homogeneous list; I don't think I've heard a fresh opinion on the subject in years.

One of the arguments I hear most often is the one that says: religions are behind all kinds of evil in our world - think of how many wars have been fought about religion!

And here I always believed that most wars are about power and economics! Though people very often use other justifications that sounds better to get people to support them, and religion is one of the better justifications since people feel so strongly about it.

Then again, I guess there have been just as many wars which are justified by good things like the ideas of 'equality' and 'democracy', though those obviously are not the real reasons for the wars. And yet, even if those ideas are used in a wrong way, it doesn't make me stop believing that they are good things.

Lately it's seemed to me that this common belief system has become more standardized and seems to be taking on some of the same features that it says it does NOT like in organized religions.

For example, an argument I hear often against religions is this one: Religious people think they are better than the rest of us. And: religious people are so intolerant of others - the only people they accept are people who have the exact same views.

Yet if you're in a group of anti-religion types and someone starts to talk about religion in a positive way, you sometimes notice a lot of people rolling their eyes, or trying hard not to. The conversation never seems to last very long. You start to wonder how tolerant the anti-religion types really are of others opinions.

Then there is the argument against evangelism: 'If people want to practice a religion, then that is fine by me. But they shouldn't go pushing it on me or others. It should be a private thing'. So I found it surprising last summer when a group of atheists paid for advertising on the side of buses saying: 'It's likely that there is no God. Stop worrying and enjoy your life.'

Now, I am not against those ads, I think everyone has the right to an opinion. But I can't help noticing the sheer irony of it. The anti-religious have turned to one of the tactics they say they hate most - evangelism! Now if that isn't the sign of an organized religion, then I don't know what is.

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