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Church of Finland – the gay issue

7-9 Minuten

Majority of Finns in favour of blessing

same-sex partnerships in church

From the Helsinki Times, 14.08.08:

http://www.helsinkitimes.fi/htimes/domestic-
news/general/2615-fifty-per-cent-of-finns-condone-gay-
church-ceremonies.html

Finns are becoming increasingly more open-minded

about same-sex marriages within a church, according to
a poll by the daily Aamulehti. About half of all
participants believed registered same-sex couples
should also have the right to be blessed in a church.

Five years ago only every third Finn felt this way.

Civil unions were legalised in Finland in March 2002.

However, same-sex couples still can neither get married
in a church, nor adopt children together.

And this, on the Finnish Church and homosexuality,

from the Arcus Finland website:
http://www.arcusfinland.net/churches.htm

Gays and lesbians in Finnish society and churches

Open gay and lesbian life and culture has been possible
in Finland since 1971 when homosexual acts became
legal. Homosexuality was, however, classified as an
illness until 1981 when the sickness label was deleted.
The same sex couples have been recognized since 2002
when the partnership law came into force. In the near
future there will be a discussion in the parliament of the
adoptions inside the gay and lesbian families. It is
obvious that the trend in society is towards equality.

The attitude of the Evangelical Lutheran Church of

Finland, to which about 85% of the people belong, has
been rather negative towards any social improvements
of the position of sexual minorities, at least such
improvements which would mean their recognition. The
Church, however, has not been powerful enough to
prevent them. On the other hand, inside the Church there
have always been people who have had positive attitude
towards gays and lesbians. For instance the two former
archbishops were such.

In the last few years the Church has began to reconsider

its attitude towards gays and lesbians. Especially the
new partnership law has become a big challenge to it.
Although the Finnish Church is not a state church, it has
close links to the state. If the state finds the Church to
break the human rights of some people, it may or even
has to take away the general social functions which it
has given to the Church in society. Also inside the
Church the pressure to reconsider the teaching and
practices has increased. A great delight for gays and
lesbians was that one of the bishops, the bishop of
Kuopio diocese, began to defend the same sex
partnerships despite furious reactions of some
conservative Christians. Later also some other bishops
have joined the defenders of the partnerships. Also
hundreds of other people in the Church have began to
promote the rights of sexual minorities. Some years ago
they grounded an ecumenical movement called Yhteys
(Finnish word for Communion; www.yhteys.org) which
gets together those who hope the churches to revise
their attitudes towards gays, lesbians and various trans-
people. In a couple of years Yhteys has become a strong
and active solidarity network, and it has a lot of co-
operation with the Finnish Christian gay and lesbian
groups which also have become rather active in the last
few years.

The most important Christian gay and lesbian groups in

Finland are Malkus and Arcus. Both of them have their
meetings regularly in Helsinki. Malkus
(www.heseta.fi/malkus) organizes rainbow masses,
meetings, camps and other spiritual and social activities
for gays and lesbians. It belongs to the national gay and
lesbian organisation called SETA (www.seta.fi). Arcus is
an ecumenical group especially for those who have
professional links to churches and who are interested in
church politics. The strategy of Arcus is to function
moderately but firmly, and on a wide front from making
theoretical theology to organizing negotiations and
giving personal support. Arcus has achieved quite good
contacts to church leaders in Finland, but in future its
purpose is to create more links to the local parishes.

Thanks to all these happenings and efforts, the

discussion in the Church concerning homosexuality has
increased dramatically, and the attitude of the Church
has, little by little, began to change. In autumn 2003 a
committee of the Synod of the Church accepted, after an
intense discussion, a paper in which it was, for the first
time, admitted that there are two opinions in the Church
concerning homosexuality. This acknowledgement lays
foundation of improvements of our position. The Synod
in November 2003 did not accept the initiative of making
forms of a blessing ceremony, but neither did it accept
the initiative in forbidding those who have registered
their partnership to work in the Church. Instead, it asked
the bishops to prepare a theological-juridical analysis of
the consequences of the partnership law in the Church,
which is welcome. Many gays and lesbians hope and
believe that the Church will, by analyzing its own
theology, take a different stand on homosexuality. This
would not mean renouncing the faith and the saving
doctrine of the Church but only giving up outdated
interpretations of love for one’s neighbor and of
common good. De facto we already have blessings of
the homes of gay and lesbian couples and also
blessings of the partnerships. Many gays and lesbians
approciate even this slow development, but there are
also a lot of those who have been so disappointed with
the Church that they have left it.

In the other national and historical church of Finland, the

Finnish Orthodox Church, to which 1 % of the population
belongs, the situation of gays and lesbians is a little
different. On the official level, open discussion on
homosexuality has hardly began, but on the private and
practical level, homosexuality is much more understood
than in the Lutheran Church. There is a danger that the
price of such an acceptance is that homosexuality
remains in privacy, and may officially be considered an
undesirable weakness.

In Free Churches and other minor Christian communities

(in Finland even the Roman Catholic Church is such) the
attitudes towards homosexuality seem to be strictly
condemnatory, and many gays and lesbians have left
those groups or have been expelled from them. It seems
that in some Pentecostal-type of communities gays and
lesbians are tolerated if they fight against their
temptations in an ex-gay group.

So far we have had only very few publicly open Christian

gays or lesbians in Finland. Especially the gays and
lesbians who work or are in other ways active in the local
parishes have kept their identity more or less secret
because of the fear of rejection. They become more
open when the attitudes change, but, on the other hand,
the attitudes change when they become more open. It is
very important that also the conservative people in the
churches get to know Christian homosexuals. Then
people who belong to the sexual minorities are not any
more only a theoretical problem for them, but living
human beings whom they cannot consider enemies of
faith