Finnish News Recap, week 39: Church Takes Sides edition

THE CHURCH TAKES SIDES: The Evangelical-Lutheran Church of Finland shares certain features with the labor movement, discussed in the last post. (Heretofore I’m going to just call it “the Church,” as it is usually called in Finland, even if this annoys those belonging to smaller churches, like me.)

Like the labor movement, it continues to command a high level of membership, even if this has been falling and most of that membership is not particularly committed, to put it mildly. Like the labor movement, it is bonded from the hip to the society and the state – more of a spiritual facet of a general concept of Finnish nationality than a religious movement, at least at times. Finns often naturally expect the Church to follow whatever social trends society decides to follow.

Now, it has demonstrated another concurrence with the unions; a willingness to criticize the new government. At least some of the parishes have made quite explicit appeals for the government to stop its austerity, calling out politicians by name. While it’s been known that the Church’s doctrine on economic issues would tend more to the left than towards the right, it’s still exceptional for church institutions to make a direct reference to the govt like this. Luther’s Two Kingdoms doctrine still looms large in Finnish consciousness, even if many of Luther’s other ideas have implicitly or explicitly been junked.

Even Tapio Luoma, the archbishop of Finland, a moderatespecifically chosen to carefully balance among the church’s liberal and conservative factions (the chief current issue is blessing gay marriages, where the Church still formally continues to hew to the line of marriage being between a man and a woman and very slowly walking towards what seems to be an inevitable change), has joined in, opining that the government’s program places too much importance on the ability to work, bringing a flurry of loose bible quotes as a response.

In return, various conservative activists have threatened to quit the Church, though people quitting the Church for a variety of reasons is nothing new in Finland – there’s even a website, set up by the secularist organization Union of Freethinkers, which enables doing this with a few clicks *and* keeps track of whether there are notable events causing an exceptional amount of resignations. Some conservative church-quitters would then go on to join more conservative churches.

As far as austerity goes, the recent big topic has been the creaky nature of Finland’s heath care sector, something that should get an update of its own at some point.

SWEDISH STREET GANGS IN FINLAND? There is a sentiment in Finland that whatever happens in Sweden will always happen five years later in Finland – Stockholm sneezes and Helsinki catches a cold, so to say. As such, it is unsurprising that whenever there are major developments in Sweden, they also become grist for the mill for Finnish discussions.

The latest such major development in Sweden has been the intensification of gang warfare all around the country, driven by the internal dispute of the Foxtrot gang, led by the “Kurdish Fox” Rawa Majid, who is being challenged by his former point of reference Ismail Abdo. The clashes between gang factions have led to dozens of people being shot, including innocent bystanders or child soldiers of the gangs.

The Swedish government has recently judged that the situation has become so bad they have to negotiate with the army on how to solve it, which has caused widespread wonderment abroad. Now, insofar as I’ve understood, this does not actually mean the army is going around the streets, shooting gang members in the head. Instead, the current plan is for soldiers to accept other, more routine basic policing jobs, so the police can concentrate on the gangs. Still, this is an extraordinary development. The Swedish PM even requested Finland for police support, which the Finnish PM indicated the country is ready to provide.

While no-one thinks the Finnish gang problem is at the level of Sweden, it has been an increasing topic of discussion for a year or so. As such, many politicians are demanding new measures – frequently ending or limiting immigration (majority of the gang members being of an immigrant background), often also increasing punishments. More leftist politicians talk about social exclusion and housing segregation, or occasionally imply it is not such a major issue as the media claims.

Apart from the Swedish PM’s request for police support, a Finnish aspect of the Swedish issue has been a recent drug bust, seizing a large amount of goods trafficked by the Swedish org Dödspatrullen (“Death Patrol”). Drugs, of course, continue to be very criminal in both Finland and Sweden, including cannabis. Finland’s Interior Minister Mari Rantanen, from the nationalist Finns Party, used this to advocate for tougher crime laws.

In other news, union and university protests continue and Speaker Jussi Halla-aho got a medal of recognition from Ukraine.

Image: Turku Cathedral of the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Finland.