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Finland Organization and Duties of the Lutheran Church
The Lutheran Church was divided into eight dioceses,
each
headed by a bishop. An exception was the diocese of Turku,
which
was headed by an archbishop. Although he had no legal
power over
the other bishops, the archbishop was regarded as the
first among
equals and was the country's most prominent clergyman. He
presided over important church meetings and was frequently
the
church's spokesman. One of the dioceses, that of BorgA,
did not
have a primarily territorial basis, but ministered to the
Swedish-speaking members of the church throughout the
country.
For administrative purposes, each diocese had a chapter,
consisting of the bishop, three other clergymen, and a
jurist.
The chapter also functioned as a court to resolve disputes
and to
answer appeals against church decisions. Appeals against
chapter
decisions were handled by higher state courts. The highest
subdivision of the diocese was the deanery, an
administrative
entity no longer of much importance. The seventy-odd
deaneries
were divided into parishes. In the late 1980s, there were
just
under 600 of these core units of the church. The 600
parishes
varied widely in both the number of their parishioners and
their
geographic extent. In the sparsely populated north, for
example,
a parish could have more square kilometers within its
jurisdiction than it did parishioners, while there were
nearly
three dozen parishes in Helsinki alone.
The Lutheran Church of Finland employed about 18,000
persons
in 1987, some 10,000 of whom worked full-time. There were
about
1,400 ministers, enough to meet the church's needs. They
received
their training at two institutions, one in Helsinki and
the other
in Turku. The first women priests were ordained in 1988.
Until
that time, women had been limited to the secondary role of
lector, with duties that encompassed teaching, pastoral
work, and
administering Holy Communion.
The highest body of the church was the Synod, which met
twice
a year, once in the spring and once in the fall. The
108-member
body consisted of the 8 bishops, 1 military bishop, 2 high
judges, 1 representative of the government, and 96 elected
delegates--64 of whom were laymen and 32 of whom were
clergymen.
The number of delegates that the individual diocese sent
to the
Synod depended on its population, but each diocese sent at
least
six delegates, two of whom were clergymen. Chaired by the
archbishop, the Synod had a number of responsibilities,
including
deliberating on legislative questions, directing
disbursement of
the resources of the central church fund, supervising
Bible
translations, discussing the nature of relations with
other
religious organizations, and resolving fundamental and
highly
divisive issues.
Two other central bodies were the Ecclesiastical Board
and
the Bishops' Conference. The former was a permanent body,
chaired
by the archbishop, that oversaw the church's
administration and
finances and prepared matters for discussion at the Synod.
The
latter, consisting of the bishops and eight other church
officials, met twice a year to discuss, in an unbinding
way,
issues of concern to the dioceses.
The church placed great emphasis on congregational
life.
Despite the apparent episcopal nature of the church
organization,
parishes were quite independent. They made most of their
decisions on their own and had only to observe the
constraints of
ecclesiastical law. By means of democratically elected
councils
and boards, they chose their own pastors, church
musicians, and
administrative personnel and, to some degree, set their
own
salaries. Every adult member of a parish had the right to
vote,
and he or she had the possibility of winning a place on
the
council or board, which meant that the laity had much say
about
how its parish was run.
Parishes were financially independent, for it was to
them
that the national government paid the church tax, equal to
about
1 percent of the taxable income of parishioners.
Corporations
within a parish were also obliged to pay the church tax
and,
altogether, this tax represented about 75 percent of the
Lutheran
Church's income. Some of the religious and social services
that a
parish managed yielded income, too, as did the 1 percent
of the
nation's forests that were in church possession. An
elected
administrative board and an executive council managed
parish
finances, although in urban areas parishes sometimes
banded
together to handle such practical details. Parishes were
obliged,
however, to pay about 6 percent of their income to a fund,
used
by the church as a whole, to help poorer parishes and to
pay for
other activities like missionary work.
The historical role of the Lutheran Church as a state
church
was reflected in the services managed by the parish that
in other
countries were the concern of secular government. For
instance,
it maintained the official population records for all of
its
members. Those of nonmembers were kept by local
government.
Parishes managed graveyards. In an area where there was no
alternative cemetery, nonmembers or nonbelievers could be
buried
in one belonging to the church. Weddings performed by the
parish
had the same value as civil services, provided both the
bride and
groom were Christians.
Parishes did not limit themselves to regular religious
services and to other activities such as Sunday schools or
study
groups. They often organized a specifically Finnish
religious
meeting, the seurat, which had its origins in the
revivalist tradition and was a mixture of hymns and
addresses by
both clergy and laymen.
Parish personnel also offered services of a secular
nature
that supplemented social services provided by the state.
Church
law required that each parish have a deacon or deaconess
who had
many of the responsibilities of a state social worker.
Often
trained as nurses, deaconesses ministered to the sick,
aged, and
handicapped and coordinated their work with state
agencies. Since
World War II, the church has been active in providing
personnel
and facilities to youth programs, such as summer camps.
Data as of December 1988
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