The marketization of church closures

ABSTRACT

In recent years, the impact of marketization on the religious field has gained increasing attention within sociology of religion. However, one of the recurring issues has been how to define marketization. In this article, I propose a particular theoretical definition focusing on the intertwinement of neoliberalism and New Public Management, and by using Critical Discourse Analysis I find that demands for structural reorganization, i.e., closing churches, in the Diocese of Copenhagen increasingly makes use of the discourse of marketization. I examine the consequences of two municipality reforms from 1970 and 2007 on the Diocese, trying to pinpoint instances of marketization, before analyzing how the issue of church closures becomes the focal point in the structural discussions from 2005 to 2013. By exploring the minutes from the Diocese council, I argue that marketization has become embedded in the institutions within the Church to the point where it has become a cultural dominant.

KEYWORDS:

• Marketization
• new public management
• church closures
• discourse

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes on contributor

Jes Heise Rasmussen is a sociologist of religion studying the impact of marketization on the Danish Evangelical Lutheran Church.

Notes

1 Fairclough defines an order of discourse for a social domain or institution as: ‘the totality of its discursive practices, and the relationships (of complementarity, inclusion/exclusion, opposition) between them’ (Fairclough 1993, 135).

2 There were minor exceptions to the overlap between the parishes and the municipalities, mainly in the larger cities such as Copenhagen which included a large number of parishes within the geographical boundary of the municipality.

3 The year marked the transition from absolutism to constitutional monarchy. The constitution establishes the state church from the absolutist era as the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Denmark.

4 The size of the council has changed over time, partly due to the merger of deaneries in Copenhagen and the fact that the state representative no longer has a seat in the council. In 2017, the council consisted of 15 members: 9 lay members; 3 priests, 2 deans, 1 being the dean of Vor Frue Kirke and the bishop.

5 The proposal lists the suggested changes regarding each deanery, all of which are effected by parish mergers. In addition, the following deaneries are advised to consider closing a number of parish churches. Vesterbro: four parishes should be merged and Absalons, Gethsemane and Bavnehøj church should no longer be used as parish churches. In Bispebjerg-Brønshøj, two parishes should be merged making Ansgar church redundant. Holmens deanery should merge two parishes and find other uses for Sankt Pauls church. Vor Frue deanery should merge two parishes and no longer use Sankt Andreas and Fredens Kirke as parish churches. After merging three parishes Nørrebro deanery is advised to finder other uses for Samuels church and Brorsons or Blågårds Church. The deanery of Østerbro is advised to merge three parishes and close Luther Church.

6 Interview with Inge Lise Pedersen on 4 July 2017.

7 Four group interviews with four or more participants and eight individual interviews were conducted between March 2015 and April 2017. Since the field of study is rather small total anonymity was given to all informants.

8 The decision was handed to the Minister of Culture, since the Minister of Ecclesiastical Affairs, Manu Sareen, from the same party, had declared himself unfit to make the decision. In 2012, Sareen had remarked that he was inclined to follow the recommendations from the Diocese, this led to accusations from the opposition that the minister was biased (Kirkeministeriet 2013).