Swedes Adrift
The Plight of Conservatives in the Church of Sweden
by William J. Tighe
The Church of Sweden finally became disestablished on January 1, 2000. The process by which this came about appears to have consolidated the hold of the “liberal establishment” upon it, and offers little hope of better treatment to the marginalized “traditionalists” within it, barring the collapse of the church structure itself, which some foresee in the next decade or two.
Ordination has been effectively barred to all opponents of women’s ordination by the terms of the disestablishment. And with the advent of women bishops and a concurrent drive to secure the acceptance of “same-sex partnerships” and their “blessing” by the church, tensions have only increased. Underground congregations, or koinonias, have emerged within, and yet in defiance of, the Church of Sweden, while the “orthodox opposition” vacillates between revolt and departure.
The Debate & Its Aftermath
In 1945 the Swedish Parliament passed an “Equal Rights Law” guaranteeing men and women equal employment rights. Since the State Church clergy were reckoned part of the Swedish civil service, in 1946 Parliament requested a study of the question of the ordination of women. The Church Assembly, however, would also have to approve any recommendation the study commission would make, since it had the legal right to accept or to veto civil legislation applying to the church. A Royal Commission was appointed; in 1950 it produced a majority report recommending women’s ordination and a minority report opposing it. After a vigorous but not vitriolic debate, the Swedish government made a formal proposal to the 1957 Church Assembly for repeal of the exception to the Equal Rights Law allowed for the Church of Sweden. Acceptance of this proposal (with subsequent endorsement by the Swedish Parliament) would effectively open ordination to women.
But the proposal was defeated by a vote of 62 to 36: All 13 bishops voted against it, as did all but one of the clergy delegates and 21 of the 57 lay delegates. This came as a shock: All the political parties in Sweden had come out in favor of the proposal, and the lay delegates to the Church Assembly were mostly elected under the same political party labels as members of the Swedish Parliament. An uproar ensued in the press and the political world in general. In retrospect, it appears that the bishops and clergy regarded the proposal as a secular intrusion into the internal life of the church, while the Swedish public, thinking the proposal obviously in accord with “modern times” and “Swedish ideals,” had found it impossible to imagine its rejection.
In December 1957 the Minister for Ecclesiastical Affairs, Ragnar Edenmann, called for new elections at a special session of the Church Assembly to meet in September 1958 to reconsider the proposal. Meanwhile, the Swedish Parliament passed the proposed act, so it rested with the Church Assembly to accept or veto it. The elections were fought over vigorously, with something of a crusading attitude on the part of proponents of the measure. The governing Social Democratic Party intimated that if the proposal were not endorsed, the Church of Sweden would be disestablished and most of its assets confiscated by the state—or at least, the State Church would lose its veto over church-related legislation and come totally under government control, as was (and is) the case in Denmark.
This time, when the vote came, the proposal passed by a wide margin: 69 in favor to 29 opposed. Six of the 13 bishops who had voted against it a year earlier now voted in favor. But the drafting committee had included a “conscience clause” designed to guarantee that no bishop could be forced to ordain women, nor could a candidate be denied ordination because of his opposition to the ordination of women. Minister Edenmann made a formal declaration on behalf of the government that the conscience clause would have legal force.
During the year-long pause that followed, the opposition began to coalesce into an organized group. Meanwhile, a new archbishop of Uppsala (the Church of Sweden’s primate) was appointed: Gunnar Hultgren, one of the bishops who had switched his vote in the second election to favor the ordination of women. On Palm Sunday 1960, the archbishop and two other bishops each ordained a woman. Still, until 1978, when there were roughly 275 women priests out of a total of 3,000, most bishops were willing to conduct, if reluctantly, separate ordination services for male ordinands opposed to the ordination of women and, thus, unwilling to be ordained alongside women.
The End of the Conscience Clause
William J. Tighe was Professor of History at Muhlenberg College in Allentown, Pennsylvania, until his retirement in 2024. He is a member of St. Josaphat Ukrainian Catholic Church in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania.He is a senior editor for Touchstone.
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