Church of Sweden

Leonardo da Vinci, Last supper (Wikipedia)

From Episcopal to Political Church

This article in autumn 2020 was written in Swedish on behalf of the Finnish Theological Institute (Suomen teologinen instituutti). Then it was translated into Finnish. Now in English translation.

Jesus Christ founded the Church. But after that, who has got the authority of the church? Who is the summus episcopus?

The Lord entrusted his mission to the apostles: He who hears you hears me (Luke 10:16).

Paul and other apostles spread the gospel. They taught the basics of the Christian faith, founded congregations, appointed bishops and elders who could then take over the responsibility for day-to-day operations.

The doctrine was established by the college of apostles in Jerusalem. But sometimes it derailed. Then e.g. Paul had to intervene by virtue of his apostolic authority. Apostolic letters were sent, i.e. to Galatia: “Are you so foolish? You who began in the Spirit, shall you end in the flesh?” (Gal. 3:3). By those from whom the doctrine originated the proclamation was corrected.

The gospel therefore comes from without. It has not arisen in the depths of the people. “How could they call upon him in whom they have not believed?” (Rom. 10:14).

In the Western Church, the Bishop of Rome was given a special position as a unifying symbol. He had the power of appointment. From Rome the pallium was sent to bishops around in Europe. But after the Reformation, the king replaced the pope as summus episcopus. This was also the case in Sweden.

Gustav Vasa, the king, used the church's expertise to build up his administration. In addition, he provided himself with church property. Gustav Vasa and his sons, who succeeded him as kings, had different theological preferences, but after the evangelical teaching was established at the Uppsala Synod in 1593, the priests' official responsibility was largely respected by the following kings. However, the king retained the power of appointment.

The Church Act of 1686 stipulated that the "Capitlet" and the "Clerckerijet" should propose suitable persons for bishop, after which the king had to appoint one of the proposed "or someone else". Within the framework of the Church Act, each diocese under the leadership of the bishop formed its own profile, what much later was called the Church of Sweden just were a number of fairly independent dioceses within the holy universal church. The church was of course Episcopal, although that particular word never was used.

After the last autocratic king, Gustav IV Adolf, was deposed in 1809, Jean Baptiste Bernadotte, the French Marshal, was chosen as successor to the throne. In Danish Ellsinore, before crossing over to Sweden, he converted to the pure evangelical doctrine, for which he eloquently expressed his sympathies. As the brilliant and charming king Carl XIV Johan, he led his nation without getting involved in church matters, except when it came to certain appointments. However, he was summus episcopus.

Viktor Rydberg – the father of the democratic folk church
The kingdom was modernized. The obsolete parliament, which consisted of representatives of four different estates, was abolished in 1866. As a replacement for the clergy's lost representation in the parliament, a general church Synod was introduced, where bishops and priests gained influence over the church board. The church Synod would deal with such "ecclesiastical matters" as came under its consideration by royal bills or by motion of any member. The church Synod was to be a non-political decision-making assembly, where priests and laymen met to present "the common thought of the priests and congregations". The lay representatives would not represent different opinion or party groups but the congregations they belonged.

The first church Synod according to this new order took place in 1868. The author and journalist Viktor Rydberg, a leading cultural personality of his time, was elected as a lay representative by Bohuslän's northern constituency. It took place with the help of the lottery during great division among the electors. Within conservative Schartauan circles of the Diocese of Gothenburg, the event caused great consternation and was regarded as rash. A few years earlier, Rydberg had published his book Bibelns lära om Kristus (The Bible's teachings about Christ), in which he denied the doctrine of the Trinity and rejected Christ's deity. In church circles the book was detested but was praised by liberals and freethinkers. Rydberg's book was devoured by many public school teachers. It made them feel intellectually superior to their narrow-minded vicars.

In the 1868 church Synod, Rydberg developed his thoughts on what he called The Folk Church. In the same year, he published an article, "On the Church and Priesthood", in the journal Framtiden. Rydberg there said the church should replace its priestly hierarchy with democracy, this in contrast to the order that had existed since the time of the early church. According to Rydberg's view, everyone, regardless of personal belief, could count themselves as Christians in an ethical sense. The counter-image he fought was the so-called the High Church in "the great faculty" of the university at Lund.

Young Church Movement versus liberal theology
At the end of the 19th century, civil society seethed with activities outside the control of the clergy, such as the Free Church movement, the temperance movement and the labour movement. In villages, where the congregations were not marked by the revivals within the church, the church became increasingly obsolete. Among students in Uppsala, as a counter-movement, then emerged the so-called Young Church Movement. It was inspired by, among others, by former professor Nathan Söderblom, former docent Einar Billing and Karlstad bishop J.A. Eklund.

At a student meeting in Huskvarna in 1907 Eklund appeared with a message that the church has to conquer the people. The students should form themselves into crusaders and go out to the church-promoting workers of the factory towns. This happened just two years after the dissolution of Sweden´s union with Norway. The tones were nationalist and martial, reminiscent of the war rhetoric of the Salvation Army.

Financial support was received from the Swedish arms industry. The meeting took place under the patronage of Wilhelm Tham, director of the Husqvarna arms factory. Also mill patron Ernst Kjellberg, owner of the cannon manufacturer Bofors, and landowner Oscar Ekman with capital from Finspång's cannon foundry were extremely generous when it came to funding the Young Church Movement's projects.

But there were also other currents. Magnus Pfannenstill, the tone-setting liberal theologian of the time, also spoke at the Huskvarna meeting in 1907. He believed, following Rydberg, that the people already were Christians and thus also could rule the church. He wanted to see an ethically based popular Christianity. In the church Synod, Pfannenstill, who represented the theological faculty in Lund, motioned for a more democratic church Synod.

One of the participant in the Huskvarna meeting, who did not feel at home with the Young Church rhetoric was Pfannenstill's student Harald Hallén (1884–1967). For him, Viktor Rydberg's poetry had opened up "powerful and dizzying perspectives" and helped him find a bridge between the then modern worldview and religion. Through Pfannenstill's lectures on ethics, Hallén's eyes were opened to the labor movement and the social question. He broke with his bourgeois background and became a socialist. With great hesitation Bishop Eklund ordained him and placed him in a nook in northern Dalsland.

As one of the youngest members, Hallén was elected to the second chamber of the Riksdag (Parliament) in 1911 there he remained until 1960, the last years as senior president.

The social democratic transformation begins
At the beginning of the 20th century, the Social Democrats ran a fierce agitation against "the throne, the altar, the sword and the money bag". In Nils Edén's coalition government of 1917–1919, some ministers from the Social Democrats for the first time took part. The public school teacher Värner Rydén, who abolished catechism as a textbook in public schools became Ecclesiastical minister. The catechesis was to be replaced by teaching about "the simple teaching of Jesus" and the ethics of the Sermon on the Mount. However, the ethics were not more pervasive than that in 1920 Rydén was forced to leave his positions of trust because he had engaged in black market trading during the world war. As ecclesiastical minister, he was replaced by Olof Olsson, also called Pagan-Olsson.

However, perhaps the most brilliant talent of the Social Democrats was the editor Arthur Engberg. He called himself a pagan and considered the church to be the same as the state but organized for religious activity. Church property was in fact state property. Engberg perceived the Youth Church Movement as an attempt by the upper class to domesticate the workers. He harboured concern for an independent Swedish church and said he preferred "an iron-hard and closed Swedish state church system".

At the Riksdag in 1928, Harald Hallén motioned for a democratic folk church. As an alternative, Einar Billing, then bishop in Västerås, wrote a motion for the church Synod in 1929, called The Bishop's Motion, which advocated a reform program for a religiously motivated folk church, from which everyone would have the right to withdraw. For Billing, it was important to distinguish between the church people and the citizens of the state. This was shortly after the so-called Cossack election in 1928, when the class antagonisms were pushed to their peak. The church Synod supported the motion, but the government responded with silence.

Hallén eventually managed to win over the radical Engberg for his reformist line. When Engberg in 1932 became ecclesiastical minister, he had thus changed his mind. Instead of abolishing the state church, he wanted to make it harmless. With political control over priest training and by promoting liberal theology with the appointment policy, the church could be eroded from within. When you then got a church with a "modern" mindset, the time would have come to separate the church from the state.

The reformist development rolled on. The directly elected church assembly in 1930 in larger congregations was replaced by church representatives, who were elected with lists in a similar way to the municipal elections. In the beginning, mandate allocations were made through so-called collective lists, but gradually the Social Democrats began to come forward with their own lists.

The bourgeois parties came to continue this cooperation in lists under the designation "The good of the Church" or similar. Only in the 1976 church election did the Center Party (formerly the Farmers' Union) break the bourgeois front by, like the earlier Social Democrats, coming forward with its own lists. In the parliamentary election a few weeks earlier, the Center leader Torbjörn Fälldin had won success by making nuclear resistance something of the party's new religion. Since then, the Center and the Social Democrats have been the dominant parties in the Church Synod, at least in terms of mandate holdings.

Female priests – a serial without end
In 1945, the distinction between women and men in access to government offices and services was completely removed, but the priesthood was still exempted from this regulation. However, Prime Minister Tage Erlander believed that this exception in the long run must be removed. In 1957, the government therefore put forward a proposal in the Church Synod regarding women's eligibility for priestly service. The Church Synod, however, rejected the proposal by a vote of 62–36.

The Church Synod's rejection caused the government to react. In the Riksdag in the spring of 1958, it submitted a new bill to the Act on women's right to priestly service. The Church Synod, which until then had been held every five years, had to be re-elected after barely one year.

Because of the question of office, there was a heated election debate with fierce posts in the newspapers' submissions columns. Svensk Kyrkotidning (SKT), which since 1905 was the clergy's body for theological debate, refused to accept articles that were negative about the reform of the ministry. The consequence was that a new journal was started as an organ for the traditional position, namely Svensk Pastoraltidskrift (SPT). As a free voice, SPT became a gathering press organ for priests connected to intra-church revival movements but also for a wider readership. SPT is now in its 66nd year and has long a larger circulation than SKT.

The newly elected, more politically composed Church Synod convened in September 1958. At the vote, 69 voted for the government's proposal and 29 against. Of the bishops, 6 voted for the proposal and 5 against. Anyone who wants to follow the game behind the scenes can read Dean Nils Johansson's astonishing memories on the website https://kyrkligdokumentation.nu/ambetsdebatten1958.pdf.

At the same time as the decision on "women's eligibility for priestly service" was taken, the so-called conscience clause also was voted through. It meant that no one would be denied priestly ordination because of his belief in the wrongness of the newly introduced order. No priest should be forced to do something in the ministry that was against his conscience and convictions. No bishop would be forced to ordain women.

However, the government never appointed bishops who were against the new order, as long as there was a candidate in the proposal room who was in favour of the order. Twice, however, in the Diocese of Visby in 1962 and in the Diocese of Gothenburg in 1970, all three candidates were against the order, which forced the government to appoint a "woman priest opponent" as bishop.

The Church Synod becomes political
The Swedish constitution from 1809 was in 1974 replaced with the current form of constitution, which states that "all public power in Sweden emanates from the people". Since the state church still prevailed, it thus was confirmed that the government had become summus episcopus. But then it was also about having control over the Church Synod.

The Church Synod, established in 1866, with its origins in the clergy, consisted of 64 members, half of whom were laymen. In 1949, the number of members was increased to 100, of which 57 were laymen, but in 1982 this "old" synod was replaced by a completely new structure, a politically composed synod with no less than 251 elected members, all laymen, who meet annually.

Thus a priest can only be elected as a candidate on one of the lists drawn up by the "nomination groups". At the same time, a central board was established, the current church board, something that previously was missing. The time was considered ripe to let this central board appoint bishops after elections took place in respective diocese. Through the political parties' control over the nominations, the elections and appointments rested in safe hands. Through further reforms, the party political structure made its way into the judicial chapters and diocesan boards.

That was the starting point in the year 2000 when the Church of Sweden's relationship with the state changed. By then the church had been rendered harmless enough that it could be released under controlled conditions. It is now a "folk church", but not according to Einar Billing's concept, which some still insist on claiming. The spiritual father of the current folk church is Harald Hallén.

Defused Bishops
In the church order (KO) that was adopted before the change in relations in 2000, the Church of Sweden is said to have an Episcopal structure. It appears in the form of congregations and dioceses. In addition, there is a national level with the Church Meeting as the church's highest decision-making body and a church board which, among other things, is in charge of bishop appointments. The national level has to take responsibility for the common affairs of the church, but the Church Synod may not decide on matters that fall within the areas of responsibility of the congregations and dioceses. The Synod also appoints a committee of responsibility for bishops. The Church Synod thus serves as summus episcopus.

Already here we sense a problem. How is it possible in a church with a so called Episcopal structure, where the Synod in doctrinal matters is the highest decision-making body while the bishops sit on the audience bench? Strangely enough the bishops are not self-signed in the Synod. They can only be elected on a list from one of the nomination groups, but this usually does not happen. In addition, the bullied bishops have a duty to attend when the Synod convenes. Admittedly, they have the right to speak but not the right to vote. Instead, together with eight other members, they are part of a doctrinal committee that must give their opinion before the Church Assembly makes decisions on doctrinal matters. However, nothing prevents the Church Meeting from running over the Board of Education, something that sometimes occurs. How Episcopalian is this?

The term "Episcopal" is something completely new in the Church of Sweden. It has never before been used, in any constitution. Against the background of the episcopate's downgrading, one may wonder whether the word Episcopal is intended as a joke or as a derisive reference to worn-out structures. That bodies of all kinds tend to expand their domains is a well-known phenomenon in all organizations, so also in the Church of Sweden. Sometimes tensions arise between national level, diocese, pastorate and congregations. According to KO, the Church of Sweden appears in dioceses and congregations while the national level, consciously or unconsciously, sees itself as a parallel to Parliament and Government. In the church office in the Church's house in Uppsala, there is a self-image that one sits in the group management and that the ignorant congregations out in the "spinach" stand and fall with what happens in the Church's house.

A lot of effort has been put into getting a uniform graphic structure for advertising, printed matter, online exposure, signs and flags with an easily recognizable logo throughout Sweden. In addition, the church office has around 55 "communicators" to spread the central wisdom. But in reality, of course, the public's contacts with the church take place in the congregations. The church's house in Uppsala can seem like a playhouse where you live in your own bubble.

Often there are tensions between the diocese and the congregation regarding priests. Sometimes it happens that congregations employ priests without these having been declared competent by the judicial chapter. The bishop can then only state the fact. The diocese lacks sanctioning tools.

When the priests became civil servants
This is because the priests became local employees in 2000. The issue was hotly debated at the Church Synod in 1999 when the Church Order (KO) was to be clubbed. KO has had fatal consequences, but in hindsight you understand how important it was for the two major political parties, the Social Democrats and the Center, to push the decision through. An overwhelming majority pushed through that the diocese's representative employer responsibility should end and be transferred to the pastorate. Only 22 members out of 249 voted no and 17 reserved themselves.

When the issue was discussed in plenary, it was already decided, Yngve Kalin in SPT 19/2017 writes:

– Only accountant Joakim Svensson (non-partisan) offered real opposition. Contract Provost Tor Frylmark (Social Democrat) represented the committee and explained that the decision could only be one for labour law reasons, and explained that the order must be implemented to avoid "organizational hygiene" consequences. The decision was considered necessary to avoid ambiguity about who was responsible for work environment and liability issues. The new order was voted through despite massive opposition from most of the priests in the country, despite expert testimony from the theological faculties and a special opinion in the teaching committee from bishops Jonas Jonsson, Biörn Fjärstedt, Tord Harlin and Caroline Krook, who believed that the entire church's apostolic spiritual structure was threatened with the local employment of the priests. Karlstad bishop Bengt Wadensjö also signed the special statement – but switched sides in the plenary session. Bishops KG Hammar and Anders Wejryd, on the other hand, explained that they backed into the future after rethinking the matter.

Another heart issue for the political parties was to replace the indirect elections to Church Synods and diocesan councils with direct elections, thus a parallel to the church council reform in 1930. Instead of the congregations choosing their own electors, in that case the elections could be controlled by the party chancellors, who saw to ensure that no "unsuitable" candidates were allowed to appear on the ballot papers. This would particularly benefit the Social Democrats and the Center with their fine-grained local organization.

The question of direct elections to the national and regional level was debated for three and a half hours during the Church Synod in 1999 – but actually the question had already been decided, writes Yngve Kalin:

– The Social Democrats, the moderates, the People's Party and the Christian Democrats had made up their minds. Despite warnings, an electoral system was voted through in which the synodal structure was broken up and left the field open so that groups and parties without local anchorage could gain representation both in the national church and at the diocesan level. The opposition came from the non-partisan group in temporary shared values with the Center.

In the last shaky minutes of the debate, as the last speaker Archbishop KG Hammar stood up and explained that all bishops preferred indirect elections. Kalin still remembers the shock and tension in the room and how the politicians exploded. What do the bishops have to do with this? Hammar was scolded by group leader of the Social Democrats. Kalin writes:

– On June 9, 1999 at 10:15 p.m., the new Church of Sweden presented itself, with defoliated episcopate and total party political control. I remember that the following morning the session started as expected. A remorseful Hammar stepped up to the podium and explained how sorry he was and how inappropriately he had spoken. He promised to get better but made no guarantees. Torgny Larsson, leader of the Social Democrat group, gave him absolution, but everyone understood that nothing was quite the same anymore.

The Church of Sweden had thus become a Congregationalist church. The designation "Episcopal" was a game for the galleries. Instead, it was Viktor Rydberg's and Harald Hallén's program that was carried out.

For the continued work in the new relationship, the social democratic party board adopted a church political program on 21 June 2000. It was prepared by Ragnar Bergsten, pastor of the Swedish Missionary Union, who was the party office's manager of church matters. He was later succeeded by Ulla Löfven, wife of then Prime Minister Stefan Löfven.

In this so-called episcopal church, the decisive decisions are now made, after consultation with the Center party, at 68 Sveavägen in Stockholm, where the Social Democrats have their office. The party board is thus the summus episcopus. Atheists and people who are not members of the Church of Sweden also participate in the decisions. From there, the Episcopal elections are controlled so that the candidates are alternately S-loyal and C-loyal, even if at some point it can slip, as in the last episcopal election in Stockholm, where the social democrat Olle Burell unsuccessfully stated that the "wrong" candidate happened to be elected.

Dysfunctional Church Order
The shortcomings of the Church Order (KO) soon became apparent. In the following years, the number of conflicts with dismissed priests has been legion. Many times the employed congregation priests have proven to be incompetent. It is difficult to get hold of a functioning vicar when the applicant's merits are primarily judged on whether they "approve", as the term goes, of female priests and are positive, preferably enthusiastic, about marrying couples of the same sex.

Another problem is that the parties often offer church council seats to loyal servants, who can almost be regarded as functionally illiterate and sometimes senile.

Gradually, the realization of KO's shortcomings has spread. Some bishops and priests, who were previously loyal to the political power, have become more perceptive after their retirement. "The idea of a double line of responsibility with ordained and elected officials was eroded," said the formerly populist bishop Lennart Koskinen in a farewell interview in Kyrkans Tidning in 2010. "Everyone knew that it was terribly stupid to make the pastorate the employer of the priests," he said. "Nevertheless, the new order was implemented."

One who has repented is the priest and former Social Democrat Member of Parliament Torgny Larsson, the one who put Hammar in his place. In a debate entry in the Kyrkans Tidning on May 16, 2019, he writes that before the year 2000, people often talked about the dual line of responsibility, that the church is governed through a combination of priestly administration and popular democracy. "It has been quiet about this in recent years, but the current system has its flaws. There is broad agreement that the church should be democratic, but the church's faith and confession must also be protected," he continues and makes a public self-examination:

– Since I was very much involved in the decisions that were made in the Church Synod before the change, I want to report some experiences and thoughts. For 17 years I was chairman of the social democratic Church Synod group and at the same time during the years 1995–1999 chairman of the second church law committee where almost all important questions about how the church would function after the year 2000 were dealt with. It was there, in practice, that the decisive decisions were made. The Church Synod as a whole largely followed the committee's proposal.

– When the suggestion that the priests would be locally employed, I was doubtful, but it was claimed from the special investigation group that it was beneficial for the bishops' and the bishops' ability to exercise supervision. At the same time, it was strongly emphasized from various quarters within and outside the committee that the church would be the same church as before, an open democratic but also Episcopal folk church.

– Unfortunately, I have to state that the implemented change in the employment conditions of the priests did not turn out well, especially not for the vicars. Bishops and bishops lack tools when problems and contradictions arise in the congregations. Some church councils do not care about proposals from the diocesan leadership. The vicar is regarded as a chief official on an equal footing with a municipal manager. Sometimes you are surprised that the vicar has the right to vote in the church council! A church council president said we don't care what the bishop says because she is going to quit soon!

– I believe that the time is now ripe to change the Church Synod's decision in 1999. The independent position of the church pastors must be made clear. They should therefore be employed again by the judicial chapters. Thereby, the balance between popular democracy and clerical administration is restored.

KG Hammar becomes archbishop
Although the episcopate is defunct, it still has a certain status, at least among the older part of the population. The bishop can still have influence by speaking out in the media. To a large extent, this applied to KG Hammar, who was archbishop 1997–2006. It was during his time that the Church of Sweden's relationship change took place.

With his often controversial views and his flair for media stunts, he became the face of the church. He is a liberal theologian. His doctoral dissertation in Church History was entitled Liberal Theology and Church Politics (1972) and dealt with liberal theologians in the early 20th century. He grew up in a traditional Scania parsonage where the ancestors for several generations had been well-known priests. As a student, he joined the currents around 1968. He was radicalised to the extent that, to the sorrow of his parents, he broke with his bourgeois upbringing and joined the society-supporting Social Democratic Party, which appropriately enough also took care of the church's power of appointment. After investigative assignments and priestly positions in Lund, he was bishop in Lund 1992–1997 before becoming archbishop in Uppsala.

The archbishop is perceived by many, regardless of his personal qualifications, as the main representative and interpreter of Swedish Christianity, but Hammar rather presented himself as a fellow applicant among other applicants. He used the hierarchical weight of the archbishopric to advance his private musings and placed himself in some sort of opposition to his own office. When he ate the cake, it was still there. The dilemma was that if he had been a completely ordinary Mr. Swensson, no one would have listened to him.

It is not forbidden to ponder and think. But Hammar did not accept the consequences of his questioning actions. He allowed himself to be put in the role of archbishop in an organization that he thought had no future.

As a humble and open searcher from the depths of the people, KG Hammar liked to speak beautifully and wisely about respect for minorities and respect for what others consider sacred. Unfortunately, respect did not extend to the minority of Bible and confession believers in the Church of Sweden.

When he 2004 received an award for his approach to the outside world, he said: "It is encouraging to receive this award. Free thought is important, and I have wanted to contribute to free conversation throughout my professional life. But the big challenge in our cultural climate is to give others the right to think freely, not just to take that right yourself. I want to work so that we can think together and give each other permission to think free thoughts, because no one can get freedom on their own. You have to give your fellow man what you yourself want.”

That was beautifully said. But he himself was tough when it came to shaking the Bible-faithful lice out of the flag of the Church of Sweden.

But on the other hand, he did not have any power to bring against the church politicians. This became apparent when, in the Church Synod in 1999, he questioned the direct election to the Church Synod and received a resounding scolding from the Social Democrats' group leader Torgny Larsson. But such things rarely came to the public's attention. For most, he was still the archbishop of all of Sweden.

The greatest is love
During his time as archbishop, the question of the blessing of homosexual partnerships was raised. Then his biblical view was exposed. In an interview in the newspaper Dagen in 2002, he said: "The discussion will so easily be about a Bible passage in Leviticus and one in Romans and how we should take a stand on them. But instead of clinging to the few Bible words against same-sex relationships, we should instead point to the hundreds that speak of faithfulness and love when we meet these people.”

It is interesting that Hammar uses a kind of mathematics to measure the number of biblical words against each other, while at the same time presenting the words about love and faithfulness as a contrast to the condemnations of homosexual cohabitation. This type of balance sheet implies a kind of fundamentalism where he sees the Bible as a completely isolated collection of records. However, I think that on closer reflection Hammar would distance himself from this arithmetical principle of interpretation and realize that the Bible must be placed in the context of his time. But it was more powerful in the media to count Bible passages.

When Hammar sets up an abstract principle of love, which is ostensibly taken from the Bible, he makes himself an interpreter for a broad public opinion. "All love is equally good", as a congregation priest recently told me, thereby dissolving the theological knot with an Alexander's stroke.

But Hammar is more sophisticated than this vicar. He represents a type of theologian who acts as the defence attorney in a court of law. By the homosexuals he regards a group of people who are accused by the word of God. Then it is the defence lawyer's job to get around the law and get the criminal acquitted by cleverly exploiting various loopholes.

In Hammar's case, it was often about perceiving the Bible as poetry, something that precludes a literal interpretation. "The church is a context of interpretation and a community of interpretation," he wrote in a debate article in Svenska Dagbladet. Sometimes he claimed to be a mystic. He readily acknowledged his dependence on Schleiermacher and his sense of the infinite, an intuitive view of the universe. For Schleiermacher, Christian doctrines were legitimate insofar as they responded to inner experience.

In connection with a hearing on marriage and partnership in 2004, Hammar rejected criticism that he and the church are not sufficiently independent vis-à-vis society. According to Kyrkans Tidning, Hammar said: "Why should we be independent when God is in society? We must always be prepared for God to act in society, perhaps faster than God does in the church.”

The question is what Hammar meant by "society". He seemed to be referring to the political development in Sweden. However, it is not likely that he saw God's work, e.g. in that of him abhorred Israel. Since Hammar was a social democrat, one can imagine that, according to him, God works in a society governed by social democrats. But then where was God during the years of bourgeois rule?

Hammar's theological statements have been so contradictory that they have created confusion as to whether his thoughts are the public teaching of the Church of Sweden or his own. His support for the gay sex exhibition Ecce homo in Uppsala Cathedral in 1998 resulted in the Catholic Church canceling the meeting that Hammar would otherwise have had with Pope John Paul II.

Anders Wejryd as archbishop
Hammar's successor 2006–2014 was Anders Wejryd. He grew up in the Svenska Missionsförbundet (Swedish Missionary Union), a free church, where his father was a pastor. However, the father in 1953 was ordained priest in the Church of Sweden and finally was a doctor of theology in Church History. Anders Wejryd is thus one of many priests with roots in the Free Church. This seems to be becoming more and more common. Many of those who are ordained today come from there. The reason for the conversions is, as far as I know, not explored, but the attractiveness of the Church of Sweden must surely lie in something more than the higher salary.

Anders Wejryd did not become as widely known as Hammar. He also had no meritorious academic background, although during his time as bishop in Växjö 1995–2006, however, he became an honorary member of Småland's academy. In 2010, he was appointed an honorary doctor of agronomy at the Swedish University of Agriculture after he took the initiative for the Interfaith Climate Summit in Uppsala in 2008, a climate meeting across religious and national borders. However, he never managed to become an honorary doctor of theology, but after he retired, in 2021, he became a doctor on a thesis Lutherhjälpen som försvann, an account of his own participation in the dismantling of the Church of Sweden's emergency aid organization.

In one of his first interviews as appointed archbishop, Anders Wejryd said that he can imagine himself report to the police male priests who refuse to serve with female priests (Dagens Nyheter March 31, Svenska Dagbladet April 1, 2006, Gomorron Sverige, SVT March 31).

In March 2007, Wejryd paid a visit to Rome. According to a press release, he was satisfied with his meeting with Pope Benedict XVI. At the private audience, they had spoken about the role of religion in modern societies and about climate issues.

– The climate is a survival issue that we all face and we all have to think about the role of religions in this, said the archbishop. The Pope politely listened.

Marriage redefined
In 2005, when Hammar was still an archbishop, the Synod had decided on an ecclesiastical act for the blessing of registered partnerships, something that had then existed in Sweden since 1995. Wejryd got the question in his lap. At the time, he was still careful to emphasize that the partnership was not a marriage. Two years later, in December 2007, he stated that the term marriage would continue to be reserved for man and woman. At the same time, he also thought that partnerships could be registered by the Church of Sweden, and he could imagine calling it a wedding when a homosexual couple made their vows in front of a priest.

Due to the fact that the Riksdag decided that same-sex marriage would be introduced on 1 May 2009, before that, on 6 February, nine of the fourteen bishops wrote a debate article in Dagens Nyheter. The church's legal right to marry makes it unsustainable in the long run to prevent priests from marrying gay couples, they argued. In the exercise of its authority, the state cannot discriminate against same-sex couples, and in the case of church weddings, the state delegates its right to marry to the church. At the same time, it is a matter of freedom of religion that within the church there should be theologically based views on marriage that differ from those of the state. Their solution was to let the tax authority take over the registration of marriages.

In a comment about the nine bishops' proposal Wejryd wrote: "There are different opinions within the Church of Sweden about the mission of marriage, as well as on the question of whether marriage is only for a woman and a man. It is important to give space for honest conversations and well-thought-out arguments before the Church Synod decisions this autumn. I hope for a continued debate based on more perspectives.”

At the Church Synod in the fall of 2009, however, it was decided that marriage would include couples of different sexes as well as couples of the same sex. The National Encyclopedia's definition of the word "marriage" as "a relationship entered into in special forms between a man and a woman" no longer applied, nor did Jesus' teaching about marriage. A common marriage order for both types of couples would be drawn up. Wejryd turned his heel overnight and then claimed that the issue was well worked out.

In a TV interview, the journalist Lars Adaktusson read Jesus' words in Matt. 19 and asked: "How does this get together with two people of the same sex being able to enter into marriage?"

Wejryd replied: "What we are saying is that this is an important form that is good for society and we can imagine extending it to people of the same sex as well."

In another interview, the social democrat politician Olle Burell obliquely stood behind Wejryd, judging from his body language prepared to intervene if the archbishop should deliver a "wrong" answer.

The decision stipulated that no priest would be forced to marry same-sex couples against their conscience. "I intend to fight for the right of way," said Anders Wejryd. But a year later, this promise was forgotten. Svensk Pastoraltidskrift wrote in an editorial (SPT 23/2010):

– How can you trust an archbishop who less than a year ago promised: "I intend to fight for the right of way", but who can now only "regret" the development and express understanding that congregations want to "protect a certain profile"? Can one, as the main representative of a religious community, be satisfied with the state of things and leave the right to decide to the local? Where's the fight, Mr. Archbishop? As archbishop and chairman of the church board, Wejryd actually has several arenas to operate in and several tools at his disposal. He can partly form an opinion against prevailing practice; partly take the initiative to write letters to the Church Synod. Furthermore, there is a bishop's meeting that can be called extra. But unfortunately there is a feeling that the Archbishop simply is saying what just suits the occasion. In October 2010, he realized what the decision really meant and that the development away from Episcopal responsibility and leadership is irreversible. And then he says what fits.

Bridges demolished by bridge-building church
The Church of Sweden's position on the marriage issue had consequences for ecumenism. A soul mate was found in the Episcopal Church in the United States. Relations became lively for a time with this church, which was then, for a time, excluded from The Anglican Communion because of its liberal stance on this matter.

The Church of Sweden, which previously saw itself as a bridge-building church, has burned many of its bridges. Nowadays her best friends are among shrinking liberal mainstream churches. Time has passed her by. She is not welcome in the Lutheran churches that are nowadays the world's largest, namely those in Ethiopia and Tanzania. She keeps charismatic moves at arm's length. The relationship with the Catholic Church is in stand-by mode.

In 2007, a delegation from Mekane Yesus Church in Ethiopia visited Sweden for discussing the marriage issue. The Ethiopian Church then sent a letter calling on the Swedish Church to repent. "We have become very worried because of the direction that the Church of Sweden has chosen," wrote church chairman Wakseyoum Idosa. He lamented the "strange development" that led the Church of Sweden away from the common foundation of the two churches – to hold fast to the Bible as the inspired word of God. The Church of Sweden was urged to return to and remain under the authority of the Bible and reconsider the decisions made.

In 2013, Wejryd was supposed to visit the Mekane Yesus Church, but it then explained that it did not want to cooperate with the Church of Sweden anymore because the Church of Sweden has said yes to same-sex marriage. Wejryd was not welcome. "This causes it," was Wejryd's comment.

Already in 2010, Wejryd met Syrian President Bashar al-Assad during a visit to Damascus. "And I would like to say that Bashar Al-Assad in many ways is an impressive person," was his assessment.

After his retirement, Wejryd also visited Gaza in 2014 in connection with the then newly appointed Swedish government recognizing Palestine as a state. There he met the Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh, who told Wejryd that he wanted support from Sweden.

– The archbishop, like every bishop, would be part of the church's immune system, which reacts strongly and decisively to what is incompatible with the church's innermost faith, life and character. Anders Wejryd was content to be the church's deodorant and to give unprincipledness a face. He accepted the role of "communicator" and spin doctor, the one who will make the face of the church pleasant with words and spray a dab of verbal perfume when reality smells bad. If some priests and their belief that God can help all people become the hyena of the coup – what does that do?

– Unfortunately, Wejryd's time as archbishop must be described as a time when diversity became more crowded and conversation within the church became increasingly paralyzed by fear of saying and thinking things that were not politically correct.

Antje Jackelén as archbishop
In 2014, the Church of Sweden for the first time had a woman as archbishop. Antje Jackelén, born in 1955 in Herdecke in West Germany, was elected with a large majority. A strange detail is that, as a bishop in an "Episcopal" church, she grew up in Evangelische Kirche von Westfalen, a so-called united church, i.e. a Calvinist reformed church, which instead of a bishop has a Präses der Landesynode as its leader.

She was ordained in Stockholm in 1980 by Bishop Lars Carlzon, known as chairman of the Association for Relations with the German Democratic Republic (GDR). From Stockholm, she moved to a congregation in Scania, a few kilometers away outside Lund, where she conducted doctoral studies in 1996–99 and i.a. tested in German for the later exposed GDR spy Aleksander Radler, who then was a congregation priest in Burträsk, 820 miles from Lund, but previously served at the theological department.

In 1999, she defended her dissertation at Lund University with the thesis Zeit und Ewigkeit, Die Frage der Zeit in Kirche, Naturwissenschaft und Theologie. The defence took place in German, a language that very few Swedish academics today master. The thesis bears witness to great diligence, but it does not really arrive at any other result than pure nonsense: that the relationship between the various components of its title can be likened to a dance. Among others, two professors of philosophy of religion expressed their surprise that those theses could be approved.

Her German supervisor, the liberal Catholic Werner Jeanrond, who at the time was a professor in Lund, then helped her to a position as a teacher at the Lutheran seminary in Chicago. In 2006, she was elected bishop in the diocese of Lund.

Antje Jackelén came to arouse a media interest that approached KG Hammar´s. She was a woman and an immigrant. Verbose and instantaneous, she could express herself about almost anything. Someone pointed out that in a Swedish context she could seem more educated than most because she attended a German high school.

Before the archbishop election, she attracted attention in the media. About the virgin birth, she said that "the virgin birth is a mythological term to explain the uniqueness. Anyone who interprets the virgin birth as a biological issue has completely missed the point". In a debate article, she explained that the issue should not be reduced to biology alone; pointing out that only two of the four evangelists mention the virgin birth. With her argumentum ex silentio, she was likened to a football referee who judges the match result to be 2–2 when in fact it is 2–0.

Those who thought that the unique thing was precisely the fact that a virgin gave birth, perhaps wondered what the uniqueness was if the virgin birth was not something biological. What was it then? The good of memory could draw the parallel to 2003 when Archbishop Hammar was pressed on the same question and replied that "Mary was theologically speaking a virgin", whereupon the Dominican priest Anders Piltz wondered what a theological virgin looks like.

In the hearing before the archbishop election, the five candidates were asked whether Jesus gives a truer picture of God than Muhammad. Four of them could not answer. Antje Jackelén explained her hesitation as follows: "You cannot reduce the entire theology of religion, that is, the question of how different religions relate to each other, to a yes and no question. It is like doing violence to a large amount of knowledge and experience that is there.”

Eva Hamberg leaves the church
Many were upset by her response. One person who took offence was the member of the Church Synod´s doctrine board Eva Hamberg, theol. and phil. doctor, professor of sociology of religion. "Just that they are asked whether Jesus gives a truer picture of God than Muhammad and cannot answer that question clearly, but hovers on the mark! With this, the Church of Sweden turns away from the worldwide church. When I was ordained, such a question would not even be asked," Eva Hamberg told Kyrkans Tidning.

At the same time, she announced that she would leave the Church of Sweden. She said she could not take responsibility for an increasingly rapid secularisation and politicisation of the church. She also said that there is widespread intolerance within the church against members who stand for a more traditional Christianity, for example opponents of female priests and people who do not accept gay weddings.

I contacted Eva Hamberg to find out how she reasoned. She sent me the following lines, which with her permission I am publishing here. They say a lot about the situation in the Church of Sweden:

– The development that eventually led to my leaving the Church of Sweden probably began when I was elected to the doctrine committee. During the time I belonged there, I got to see more and more how the church leadership looked at their own mission and how they looked at the members of the church who had different views than the church leadership, e.g. in the matter of office. An important task for the teaching committee was to go through all the motions for the Church Synod´s meetings and give an opinion on them. After all, this was a task that, if it was to be carried out well, required a lot of time and thought. It was necessary to carefully read the motions in order to be able to assess which stances on the part of the academic board that the motions could cause.

– However, I soon discovered that it did not work out that way. Instead, the deciding factor seemed to be who had filed the motion. If it was a person who was perceived to have "right" views on church political issues, it was considered that the motion should be approved, if it was a person with "wrong" views, e.g. in the matter of office, it seemed to be taken for granted that the motion would be rejected.

– This is just one of many examples of a mentality that seems to be widespread within leading circles in the Church of Sweden. One seems to have difficulty accepting members with theological views that deviate from one's own, and people who question the positions of the church leadership are seen as disloyal and regarded with suspicion.

– However, a church that does not tolerate questioning risks developing a sectarian mentality, where people who question the leadership are considered traitors and risk being ostracized from the community.

– The development that has taken place within the Church of Sweden in recent years seems, among other things, to mean that the Church of Sweden has increasingly come to exhibit characteristics that are usually found in sects, e.g. suspicion towards people who criticize the sect's leadership in any way and who are therefore seen as disloyal.

– The insights I gained into the mentality and mindset of people in leading church functions, including during my time on the teaching board, contributed to my increasingly losing confidence in the church leadership, and when, in connection with the archbishop election in 2013, it appeared that several bishops appeared to be unsure whether Jesus gives a truer picture of God than Muhammad did, it became a matter of conscience for me to leave the church.

Eva Hamberg left the Church of Sweden, but unfortunately such symbolic actions do not impress people at 68 Sveavägen. They probably just thought it was nice to get rid of her.

Islamophobia and boycott of Israel
As archbishop, Antje Jackelén adopted the election language "God is greater". It also became the title of her pastoral letter. She claims it is chosen from the First Epistle of John, thus deeply rooted in Christian tradition, in and of itself correct, but taken out of context it sounds foreign and quite peculiar to most members of the Church of Sweden. What it is called in Arabic is generally known: "Allahu akbar".

During her years as archbishop, she has, rightly or wrongly, gained a reputation for caring more about Muslims than about persecuted Christians, something that has given her less flattering social media coverage. Rumors about her weakness in Islam are fueled by statements such as the following: "It goes without saying that Muslims and Christians pray to the same God. I believe that in the future we will realize that we have more in common with believers in other religions than with those in our own tradition.” This she clarified by saying: "Jesus says that he is the truth, but he does not say that I am the only truth."

In an interview, she was asked if she believes that Muhammad is a false prophet. She replied: "No, I do not consider Muhammad to be a false prophet." Her answer reasonably implies that Muhammad is a genuine prophet and that his teachings are thus the last and final. But when it comes to post-modern theologians, one can never be quite sure. They usually find some loophole.

In addition, Jackelén was eager to condemn Israel. She supported the Cairo document, which her compatriot Angela Merkel, on the other hand, rejected as anti-Semitic. In February 2015, she met Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas in Stockholm. Jackelén also likes the BDS movement, which the German Bundestag branded as anti-Semitic. It is strange that Jackelén, with her background – her father was a soldier in the Wehrmacht – does not understand how to keep an arm's length distance from such movements.

Ecumenical bravado
She also took her archbishop colleague in Riga, Janis Vanags, by the ear in a letter dated September 1, 2016. She regretted the decision of the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Latvia to ordain only men. She has thus meddled unsolicited in the internal affairs of an independent sister church.

Later in 2016, Pope Francis visited Lund in connection with the start of the Reformation anniversary. "I am very happy that the Pope is coming to Lund and that the Roman Catholic Church together with the Lutheran World Federation invites to this exceptional meeting," said Antje Jackelén. She signed an "ecumenical imperative" that Catholics and Lutherans should always start from the perspective of unity and not that of division in order to strengthen the common.

But she already had forgotten that the following day. Before the Pope's flight had time to take off from Sturup airport, Jackelén fell on his back and attacked the Catholic Church's concept of office.

She also attacked the Catholic Church at an international conference in Nairobi on so-called SRHR issues, on sexual and reproductive health and rights, which includes abortion. "Some churches are still part of the problem," Jackelén said, referring to the Catholic Church.

As a new archbishop, she became known as "the tweeting bishop". But that was before President Trump emerged as a true super tweeter. Jackelén's tweets were mostly about all the international conferences she travelled to. In recent years, however, she has contented herself with tweeting some Bible word before Sunday. The media's interest in her has significantly waned.

In a review in SPT 6/2010 bishop. Biörn Fjärstedt writes that after Bertil Werkström [archbishop 1983–1993], the archbishop has little autonomy left:

– Although the ecumenical line in the episcopate was still able to assert itself somewhat into the 1990s with the Birgitta jubilee and the bishops' college's trips to Taizé, Lambeth and York and the orthodox academy in Crete. The unequivocally positive response of the bishops, without the hearing of the Church Synod, to Pope John Paul's bold encyclical Ut unum sint is worth noting. Nevertheless, it finally turned out as Arthur Engberg and Harald Hallén with Tage Erlander in the background wanted: a harmless and politically compliant church institution.

From 2022 Martin Modéus is the archbishop of the Church of Sweden. He received his doctorate in Old Testament exegesis in 2005 on the thesis Sacrifice and Symbol, Biblical Shelamim In A Ritual Perspective. Modéus keeps a lower profile than his predecessors and tries to be a friend to everyone.

Buyouts and divestitures
There is a dangerous creak in the church machinery. One symptom is that a large number of priests have been "bought off". These are amounts in the millions. Mostly vicars but also deacons and even a bishop have been affected. "Cooperation problems" are often cited as the cause. Many times it is a question of pure incompetence. The priest's main merit at the time of employment may have been a positive attitude towards female priests and towards LGBTQ issues, but otherwise that ability was not enough. In other cases, the reason for the buyout is a negative attitude in these matters.

Sometimes cases have been moved on to "collaring", i.e. the priest has lost the right to exercise his office, what nowadays in Orwellian newspeak is called the "ordination service". In 2015, the judicial chapter in Gothenburg decided to deprive two emeritus priests of the right to exercise the church's ordination service. They had been responsible for services under the auspices of the Mission Province, an independent church formation, which considers it to be "a free diocese in the spiritual tradition of the Church of Sweden", and which also has branches in Finland. In addition, a priest emeritus received a three-year probationary period, a vicar emeritus received a written reminder, while a vicar emeritus was criticized. A sixth priest escaped further action. The judicial chapter determined that there is no church community between the Church of Sweden and the Mission Province.

The priests, however, were acquitted by the Church of Sweden's appeals board, which concluded that the services that the priests "have led in the churches of the Mission Province have, as far as can be ascertained, followed the order of the Church of Sweden". Therefore, the priests had not violated the provision in the KO, section 17 of the church order or against their ordination vows.

Furthermore, Gothenburg's judicial chapter decided in January 2019 that the priest Rune Imberg would be beheaded after he made it known that he cannot see the diocese's female bishop Susanne Rappmann as his spiritual leader. The judgment chapter held that he thus "violated the priest's vow" about following the order of the church" and that he showed "a great lack of loyalty". Imberg himself stated that his view of office does not conflict with his priestly ordination vows, because the Church of Sweden has retained those priests who do not believe that women have access to the office. He also emphasized that he continues to see Susanne Rappmann as the head of the diocese with whom he has to relate purely formally.

The appeals board overturned the decision, noting that Imberg made it clear that he is prepared to submit to the bishop's supervision in administrative matters, even if he cannot see her as his spiritual leader. In the Church of Sweden, there must be ample opportunity to conduct a free and open debate, the committee emphasizes, which also reminds of a series of other decisions where commitment and worship leadership in the Mission Province were not considered grounds for declawing.

In December 2019, Luleå Diocese's judicial chapter decided to deprive a female priest, active in Evangeliska Fosterlands-Stiftelsen (EFS), of the right to exercise the ordination service because she had broken loyalty to the church. At a confirmation camp, the priest had explained her view on marriage at the request of the confirmands. "I love the sinners, but not the sin," she is said to have said. Many of the confirmands reacted strongly and ten parents reported the priest to the judicial chapter in Luleå diocese.

"Homosexuality is not right. It has to do with the brokenness of the entire creation and the Fall," replied the confirmand priest in her statement to the judgment chapter. The priest was declared ineligible to perform the church's ordination service because she broke her ordination vows. "Depriving a priest of the right to perform the ordination service is the strongest penalty that the judicial chapter can decide on. By only presenting her own opinions and not giving an account of the Swedish Church's stance on these issues, the priest has broken her loyalty to the Church of Sweden. Thereby the priest has broken the promises made at the ordination," said Bishop Åsa Nyström.

The decision was overturned by the Appeals Board. "Within the Church of Sweden, there is no universally applicable stance on same-sex relationships and LGBTQ issues," the board wrote in its decision. There is no unified view of either LGBT issues or creation and evolution within the Church of Sweden. Since the Church of Sweden has decided to accommodate different theological approaches to marriage, the priest's statements on LGBT issues cannot "contradict the faith, confession and teaching of the Church of Sweden or imply that NN has broken in solidarity with the faith, confession and teaching of the Church of Sweden. Nor can NN's statements be considered to mean that NN has broken the ordination vow to follow the order of the Church of Sweden". The appeal board also points out that during the more than half a century that the issue of homosexuality has been discussed within the Church of Sweden, the position of the EFS priest has been the dominant one, even if it is no longer so.

The chairman of the appeal board, Johan Munck, is one of Sweden's leading lawyers. He has previously been a member of the judiciary and president of the Supreme Court. "In this case, the Bible is the most important source of law, and placed over the decisions of the Church Synod to which it has been referred," he told SVT Norrbotten.

Grand pastorates and priest shortage
As said, there are a number of bishops who, after their retirement, suffered from clairvoyance. One of them is Carl Axel Aurelius, bishop of Gothenburg 2003–2011. He wrote in SPT 24/2015:

If the church used to appear as congregationes and dioceses, it now appears as a national level and grand pastorate (top down instead of bottom up) with the penalty of:
- power is centralized,
- the congregations of the grand pastorate risk being declared incompetent and made invisible,
- the line of supervision threatens to be broken up, when contracts and contracts lose importance,
- the bishop's responsibilities tend to shift from vigilance over doctrine, over preaching and administration of the sacraments, to the purely ceremonial,
– differences in congregation life appear only as a problem, not in any sense as a wealth, a diversity that responds to different local conditions, traditions and needs.

He is referring to the wave of mergers that is progressing across the Church of Sweden. The motive for forming the new grand pastorate is said to be financial. Furthermore, it is difficult in smaller congregations to obtain a sufficient number of members to fill the places in church councils and congregation councils. By merging congregations, it is also possible to get around the Church Order's requirement that at least one main service must be celebrated in each congregation on all Sundays and church holidays.

As for the worship life, it is to a large extent retired priests who make it work. There is a shortage of priests. New recruitment is weak. Many want a special position where they are free on Sundays. Even priests in congregation ministry are becoming experts at pushing the boundaries of time off.

Many priests live miles from their congregations and visit them as little as possible. Almost all vicarages and servants' residences are decommissioned. Studying the residential addresses in the Church of Sweden register is frightening reading. One notices, among other things, that many of the priests in Scania live in Lund or Malmö. Rural pastorates in Central Sweden can have their priests living in Uppsala or Stockholm.

There are now two kinds of priests in the Church of Sweden, those who go to church when they "work" and are paid for it, and those who go to church even when they are off. There is a difference between working as a priest and being a priest.

Under the radar
If Harald Hallén and Arthur Engberg today would have looked out over the Church of Sweden, they would have felt satisfied. The Youth Church Movement and the Billings bishop's motion in 1929 had been crushed with the law of 1930 on church representatives. After that, despite high, low and old church tripwires, it had been a triumph for the social democratic church. The classically trained ecclesiastical minister Engberg could sit back and dedicate himself to the hymnbook work, while the provost Hallén in Arvika at night played board games with his assistant.

Admittedly, a number of exegetes and Luther researchers in 1942 had published En bok om kyrkan (A Book on the Church) in which they launched a different conception of the church than the social democratic one. Thus the liberal theological dominance had been broken for a few decades. In addition, obstinate had Gothenburg bishops such as Bo Giertz and Bertil Gärtner obstructed right into the 1990s. But in the end order had been restored with politically compliant bishops in all dioceses.

Bishops Bo Giertz (1905-1998)
and Bertil Gärtner (1924-2009)
at a revival meeting 1979.

Admittedly, Hallén and Engberg, like former Prime Minister Göran Persson, would have disapproved of the church being "separated from the state". But when they became aware of how the political control down to the smallest unit was able to increase instead of decrease, they would have been satisfied that the Church of Sweden rested in good hands with figureheads such as Hammar, Wejryd and Jackelén. Summus episcopus was now securely anchored at 68 Sveavägen.

But Hallén and Engberg would have missed the inherent power of God's word and its ability to awaken people to faith. They would not have observed that there are still vibrant congregations with services, prayer groups and Bible studies. There is spiritual life that hides under the political radar. People who do not have much voting power in the rigged elections, instead vote with their feet and gather there.

The Church of Sweden is currently experiencing a time of sifting. In many ways it is spiritually rich. But for the time being the tares grow together with the wheat (Matt. 13:24–30).