ABSTRACT
The chapter provides insight into the pre-Reformation era, the strengthening of states’ power base as a result of the Reformation, and the religious impulse in the first broad-based movements in the nineteenth century onwards. The chapter explains how the religious teaching and ideas about equality and equal dignity paved the way for subsequent changes in laws and policies. Central are Lutheran doctrines of the priesthood of all believers, Lutheran work ethics, the doctrine on the two regiments, and the belief that no institution was “sacred”, but rather tools for serving the common good. The state-initiated Christian mission of the eighteenth century went hand in hand with commercial and territorial expansion. In the nineteenth-century independent mission organizations fostered a different thinking, and also influenced Christian conservatives to become internationalists. Contemporary challenges are also analysed; Denmark and partly Finland stand out by church and political authorities seeking to maintain privileges to a larger extent than what is seen in Sweden and Norway. Generally, the significance of religion has returned with contemporary immigration. The worldwide tendency to link nationalism and the dominant religion is also seen in the Nordic countries. The chapter highlights interesting differences in attitudes on immigrants and on Islam.
