THE SWEDISH CHURCH

Evening Post, Volume CVI, Issue 29, 3 August 1923, Page 3

THE SWEDISH CHURCH

CLOSE CONNECTION WITH THE

STATE

CONTACT WITH ENGLAND.

_. The Church in Sweden is self-govern-ing, states the Archbishop Nathan SoderMom, of Upsala, in "The Times," In each parish there is a parish assembly, where men and women are entitled to vote. The parish assembly elects the parish council and the school board. The Priests are the chairmen of the school board. The right of the parish to elect its own priest originates in the ancient self-government of the peasants as early as heathen times. The administrative authority of the diocese is the Chapter, the president of which is the Bishop: the office of bishop is thus in Sweden constitutional. The bishops are elected by the clergy of the diocese and by the Chapter, but in the towns of Upsala and Lund the university professors also have a right to vote. The King appoints one out of the three who obtain the greatest number of votes in the election.

The representative gathering of the t^hurch is the Kyrkomote, or Church Assembly, o f which the bishops are ex officio members, and to which laymen and priests aye elected to the number of sixty, half laymen and half clergy Decisions must, in order to be valid be promulgated by the King in Council, and in certain cases they must be sanctioned also by the Biksdag. The Church Assembly .has the right of veto against the King and Riksdag in occlesiaslical questions. The close _ connection between State and Church is expressed in the words of Gustavus Adolphus, "The Majesty of the Swedish Kingdom and the Church of which rests therein." Each yearf besides the ordinary great festivals common to all Christianity, the King promulgates four Sundays to be especially set asidp for penitence, prayer, and thanksgiving; and the proclamation of these Prayer days" is accompanied by a religious message. The first known proclamation of this kind dates from

Our closest connections are those with! the Church m Norway, Denmark, wnd Finland, and next in order come the Church in Esthonia, and the Church in Latvia Ever since the first minions, and with increased strength since the Reformation, close spiritual connections have been maintained with Germany With the Church of England, SwedTn has had connections since the time of the English missionaries. The country was really Christianised by Germao and Enghdi missions in the eleventh T^ ry- J^ 1* Erik the Sai°t compkted the older Cathedral in Upsala (now Old Upsala), which is still in use, and with his English-born bishop, Henri* he undertook a crusade to Finland The Period" 1 the SWedlsh dat6S fcom this

m a col. ony o£ New Sweden in North America the Swedish Church fraternised with the English, which latei took over its work.

On the initiative of the Lambeth Conference closer connections were restored after 1900, which led to the deia™ nS a { tht LS mbeth Conference of ™ °f the Swedish BUEops 1 Council zn 1921 to establish inter-communion Ohe late Bishop of Salisbury, John Wordsworth, devoted his last years to the study of our Church. We owe to his great scholarship and to his acute judgment the most captivating survey in existence of the history and actual conditions of the National Church 01 Sweden.