ABSTRACT
This chapter analyses the role of the church and religion in Finland. Finland is a country with both eastern and western. Christian influences from both East and West reached Finland a thousand years ago. Missionary efforts on the part of the Western church were stronger, and by the beginning of the fourteenth century most of Finland was under the Roman Catholic Church and Swedish rule. The Church was responsible for higher learning and for teaching the common people as well. Relations between the Church leadership and the organized working class remained distant, while the victors began to see the Church as the bastion of the legal order, the national tradition and Western culture. The Evangelical Lutheran Church of Finland is an episcopal church with a very strong tradition of parish autonomy. Religion and the Church became accepted subjects of conversation. Modern people are interested in various dimensions of spirituality but not in the traditions of the Church.
