The proportion of the Finnish population who belong to the country’s main religion, the Evangelical-Lutheran Church, has been declining. Last year there was a surge in members leaving the church, and the trend continues.
Presenting the church’s membership statistics for the years 2000 - 2003, Kimmo Kääriäinen, the head of the Church Research Institute, said that during the four-year period 70,583 people resigned from the church, which is a 38% increase from the previous four years.
The greatest proportional increases in apostasy were in the diocese of Tampere (55%) and Helsinki (47%). The smallest increases were in the diocese of Oulu (15%) and Kuopio (18%).
Last year saw a 67% increase in leaving the church compared with 2002, with nearly 27,000 people giving up their membership.
Contributing to the trend was the new religious freedom legislation, which eases the process of leaving the church, as well as a new law on burial, which guarantees the same prices for grave plots for both members and non-members of the Lutheran Church.
On the other hand, Finns are generally very closely anchored to their national church. A survey conducted in 2003 revealed that two thirds of members of Finland’s Lutheran congregations had not even considered giving up their membership.
Alongside the growth in the proportion of the population who are not members of the Lutheran Church, there has also been an increase in potential new members, and in people who have actually joined the church since the 1970s. However, in 2000 - 2003 the trend turned in the opposite direction. In that period, the church got 42,228 new members, which is about five percent fewer than in the previous four years.
Young adults are the largest age group among both those leaving and those joining the Lutheran Church.
The largest number of new members of the Finnish Lutheran Church join the ranks through child baptism. However, the proportion of children who are baptised has gradually declined.
There has also been a decline in the proportion of weddings involving a church ceremony.
Ecclesiastical ceremonies such as baptism, church weddings, and funerals were seen as the key reason to belong to the church for many members.
Last year 84.1% of the Finnish population - a total of 4.39 million people - were members of the Finnish Evangelical-Lutheran Church.
About 90% of young people attended Lutheran confirmation classes.
A fairly small minority of church members attend Sunday services regularly, but many more adhere to traditions of Christmas and Easter services. However, attendance even at these times of year has been declining of late.