What\u2019s the most embarrassing thing you can talk about in your city? Discussions that include God, said a Scandinavian pastor.<\/p>\n
The pastor in Denmark told this to sociologist Phil Zuckerman, who spent 14 months interviewing nearly 150 Scandinavians, according to The New York Times.<\/p>\n
This can pose a dilemma for Christian workers trying to evangelize and plant churches in countries like Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Finland and Iceland. The key, however, is not leaving God out of spiritual discussions, but knowing how to have an appropriate spiritual conversation with Scandinavians, said International Mission Board strategy leader David Moench.<\/p>\n
Moench said sharing one\u2019s faith in a postmodern culture must be done in ways that are genuine, not prepackaged. Rational approaches just don\u2019t work. Stories are the key.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou ask a lot of questions and you listen, then you look for bridges,\u201d Moench said. \u201cWhat are bridges from their story to my story? My story, because I\u2019m a believer, involves my faith in Christ, my community that I live in, the church that we\u2019re part of planting. Then I can begin to share God\u2019s story, and that\u2019s where it might be alright.\u201d<\/p>\n
Talking about God throughout Scandinavia can be tough because people are not interested. It could easily be believed that religion is a personal issue, thus not discussed. Zuckerman\u2019s research states, however, that it is actually a non-issue.<\/p>\n
\u201cInterviewees just didn\u2019t care about it,\u201d he says in his book \u201cSociety Without God,\u201d cited in The New York Times article in 2009. He uses phrases like \u201cbenign indifference\u201d and \u201cutter obliviousness\u201d to describe most Scandinavians\u2019 ideas about religion. For them, religion and Jesus are both \u201cnice.\u201d<\/p>\n
Sweden is the least religious nation in the Western world, according to a WIN\/Gallup International poll, conducted at the end of 2014. Eight out of 10 Swedes are either \u201cnot religious\u201d or \u201cconvinced atheists,\u201d the poll shows.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s a little bit surprising because we have a lot of [church] members,\u201d said Gunnar Sj\u00f6berg, head of communication for the Swedish Church. The poll shows that 63 percent of Sweden\u2019s population is comprised of members of the once official state church.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe presence of religion and the church in many Swedes\u2019 lives is most visible when traditional rituals or ceremonies are performed,\u201d Sweden Sverige, the official website of the Swedish government, reports. \u201cChief among these are christenings, marriages and funerals.\u201d The site points out that \u201csecular\u201d ceremonies are now becoming more and more common, however.<\/p>\n
The Church of Sweden has often accompanied liberal social change rather than obstructing it, the site notes.<\/p>\n
\u201cChristianity and the church may have maintained ritual and cultural importance in Sweden, but this has not prevented the country from becoming one of the world\u2019s most liberal societies,\u201d the site says.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn some areas where religious and social conservatism often prevail, such as the right to abortion, no serious debate exists in Sweden. Living together and having children without being married is also socially acceptable, and recent statistics suggest more than 40 percent of first-time parents in Sweden have children before getting married.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Church of Sweden has performed legal same-sex marriages since 2009.<\/p>\n
Moench said postmodernism is not a culture one is born into or that one acquires. \u201cIt\u2019s actually a filter on how [to] look at everything,\u201d he said. \u201cSo postmodernity exists within the church. Therefore, it\u2019s not something to be challenged, to be confronted; it\u2019s actually a way that we should communicate the Gospel cross-culturally.\u201d<\/p>\n
He warns that what is happening in Scandinavia now is a good indication of what is to come in the United States. \u201c…You\u2019re not fighting against necessarily a cultural view of Christianity. You\u2019re actually fighting the ignorance of the fact that they\u2019ve never met anybody who genuinely believed and acted upon the words of Jesus, lived in community, and carried out those truths.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
What\u2019s the most embarrassing thing you can talk about in your city? Discussions that include God, said a Scandinavian pastor. The pastor in Denmark told this to sociologist Phil Zuckerman, who spent 14 months interviewing nearly 150 Scandinavians, according to The New York Times. This can pose a dilemma for Christian workers trying to evangelize […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[818,1636,2470,1088,2493,2227,1132,2494,1278,2495],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.churchedge.com\/illustrations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6855"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.churchedge.com\/illustrations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.churchedge.com\/illustrations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.churchedge.com\/illustrations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.churchedge.com\/illustrations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6855"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.churchedge.com\/illustrations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6855\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.churchedge.com\/illustrations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6855"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.churchedge.com\/illustrations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6855"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.churchedge.com\/illustrations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6855"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}