The Re-Emergence of the Church in the Finnish Public Life? Christian Social Work as an Indicator of the Public Status of the Church

This article explores the changes in the status of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Finland during the 20th century. Specifically, the article investigates the ways in which the recession of the 1990s affected the Church's societal role and analyses the role of the social work of the church and its associations as an indicator of its status. The theoretical framework of the article includes secularisation and post-secularisation (sacralisation) theories. In contract to most previous post-secularisation studies, the level of analysis in this article is organisational and societal arguing that the changes in the societal role of the church indicate an increase in influence. The direction has been towards church social work having increasing importance in recent years.