ABSTRACT
When eighteenth-century states informed their inhabitants about political events and values, much continued to be described in an early modern language which appears to modern eyes as ‘religious’ rather than merely ‘political’. National churches had retained their status as formulators and educators of the official values and what they assumed to be the shared identities of political communities. Despite the gradual growth of printed literature and the rise of the public debate at and around the Diet in Sweden, the pulpits still constituted one of the most powerful media. Days of national worship and printed sermons were effectively used to teach the general public conventional conceptions of the political order and to legitimate the current line of policy. The contributions of the secular estates to political discourse and their redefinitions of the key concepts of Scandinavian political cultures are discussed in other chapters of this volume. The present chapter deals with those of the clergy.
