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Finland Revivalist Movements Within the Lutheran Church
Another characteristic of the Lutheran Church of
Finland that
distinguished it from the other Lutheran churches of the
Nordic
countries was the strong tradition of revivalism that
flourished
within it. Elsewhere, revivalists left the state churches
and
founded their own. Although Finnish revivalist movements
at first
seemed a threat to the state church, ecclesiastical
authorities
came to learn that these new currents of religious feeling
could
enrich the church rather than diminish it. Since the
nineteenth
century, about half a dozen distinct movements had found a
secure
and enduring place within the established church. This
meant that
the Lutheran Church in Finland did not experience
recurring
splits caused by members dissatisfied for reasons of
doctrine or
temperament. The enthusiasm and the fervor of the
revivalists
were a frequent tonic to the state church, and their
presence
within it allowed the church closer ties to the whole of
the
Finnish people than would otherwise have been possible.
The revivalist movements remained distinctly Lutheran;
they
adhered to the doctrine of justification by faith alone as
the
center of preaching and teaching, and made clear
demarcations
between the Kingdom of God and the material world. Worldly
pleasures were generally decried, with a varying degree of
emphasis being placed instead on abstinence, faith,
abnegation,
and prayer. The faithful could go to God directly without
the
church and clergy as intermediaries. Priestly intervention
was
not necessary in the spiritual realm. In the material
world,
however, there was secular government with a justified
civil
authority worthy of obedience. The movements also followed
the
traditional Lutheran insistence on giving ritual a smaller
place
than it enjoyed in Roman Catholicism or Eastern Orthodoxy.
Hence,
there were only two sacraments--baptism and Holy
Communion--
retained as symbols to strengthen faith, for Lutherans
felt that
they had no inherent redemptive value.
In the late 1980s, the five or six main movements had
well
over 100,000 members and each movement was vigorous enough
to
have a central organization, newspaper, or magazine. Each
held a
summer convention that could attract tens of thousands of
the
devout. Though the movements might on occasion disagree
with
positions adopted by the Lutheran Church as a whole, they
could
protest them, or could actually prevent their adoption at
the
church's democratically arranged meetings and forums.
The earliest of the movements was The Awakened. Its
most
important leader, Paavo Ruotsalainen (1777-1852), was an
uneducated peasant who attracted a substantial following
by
appealing to the poor and the oppressed through his
emphases on
Divine greatness and on human wretchedness and
helplessness. Man,
he proclaimed, was inept and could never succeed; only God
redeemed and healed. Man's duties, then, were to abandon
his own
works and to trust only in God. Followers of The Awakened
held
religious services at their homes to supplement those of
the
church. Unlike the Laestadians, who belonged to a movement
founded somewhat later, followers of The Awakened were
tolerant;
they did not call attention to themselves as believers to
whom
grace belongs, in contrast to the rest of the world, which
was
unrepentant. In the late 1980s, the movement was strongest
in the
eastern Savo region and in Ostrobothnia, and it attracted
between
30,000 and 40,000 to its summer meetings.
The Laestadian Movement, named after its founder, Lars
Levi
Laestadius (1800-61), a Swedish preacher in Lapland, was
perhaps
the strongest of all the revivalist movements; even in the
1980s,
it could attract 100,000 of the faithful to its mass
meetings.
One reason for its large gatherings was the importance the
movement attached to the visible congregation and to the
absolution given to its members after confession. The
movement's
services were often marked by ecstatic outbursts.
Laestadians
were somewhat intolerant, as they stressed the certainty
of
salvation for Christians and the probability of damnation
for
nonbelievers. This adamancy caused occasional rifts within
the
movement. Laestadians continued to have their stronghold
in
northern Finland, where the movement had originated.
The Evangelical Movement was an offshoot of The
Awakened. Its
founder, Fredrik Gabriel Hedberg (1811-93), believed that
an
obsession with wretchedness detracted from the assurance
of
salvation that a Christian has through his faith in
Christ's
righteousness. The movement stressed infant baptism, as
its
adherents believed the whole of salvation was given
through this
sacrament. It also was noted for its missionary work
abroad.
The smallest of the old revivalist groups was that of
the
Supplicationists, founded by Henrik Renqvist (1789-1866),
an
early advocate of the temperance movement.
Supplicationists
believed in frequent and fervent prayer and in meetings at
which
all remained on their knees. Supplicationists were active
mostly
in southwestern Finland. Quite conservative in their
outlook,
they were not especially successful in attracting young
converts.
Revivalism has also seen the formation of newer groups.
One
of these was the Fifth Revival, dating from shortly before
World
War II. It stressed missionary work and evangelism. In the
1970s
Charismatics also began to be active within the Lutheran
Church
of Finland.
Data as of December 1988
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