Denmark - Official Denmark - Church and Religion

Denmark
1. Official Denmark
1.14 Church and Religion

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1.14.1 Religion in Denmark
1.14.2 Church History
1.14.3 Biographies

Church History

By about 700 AD, Willibrord, the "apostle of the Netherlands" was already carrying out missionary work among the Danes, but it was only with the missionary activities of Ansgar, from 826, that Christianity gained a foothold in Denmark. As Archbishop of Hamburg-Bremen in present-day northern Germany, Ansgar was able to ensure that churches were built in the trading centres of Hedeby (Schleswig) and Ribe. The first document from the Papal See in Rome to a Danish king dates from 864. Christianity became the religion of the king when Harald Bluetooth allowed himself to be baptised by the priest Poppo c. 950. Scandinavian heathendom, however, died hard, and the words on the large Jelling stone to the effect that King Harald "made the Danes Christian" must be taken with a pinch of salt.

In the Dano-English kingdom at the beginning of the 11th century, Danish church life came under English influence. The Archbishop of Hamburg-Bremen, however, was able to maintain his authority over the Danish church until the founding of the Danish (Nordic) archbishopric in Lund (in present-day Sweden) in 1104. In one area after another, relations between the Church and society were organised according to the wishes of the Holy See. The years from c. 1100 to the mid-13th century are the great age of church building in Denmark; churches were now made of stone (brick from the middle of the 12th century), and throughout the Middle Ages many churches were decorated with frescoes. In addition, a large number of monasteries and convents were founded in the 12th and 13th centuries. The most important Danish theologian of the Middle Ages was Anders Sunesen (d. 1228). The harmony existing in the 13th century between Church and Crown - reflected in Jutlandic Law, 1241 - was replaced in the course of the following century by a series of conflicts between the king and the archbishop. After the middle of the 14th century, King Valdemar Atterdag started moving towards a national or even state church, and this was an important condition for the Reformation in the 16th century.

The Reformation

In the 1520s the Lutheran Reformation movement spread throughout Germany, via Holstein and Schleswig to Viborg, Malmö and Funen. The first evangelical hymn book in the vernacular was printed in Malmö (in present-day Sweden) in 1528, and in Copenhagen the evangelical preachers proclaimed their beliefs in Confessio Hafniensis, The Copenhagen Confession. Hans Tavsen was the most outstanding evangelical preacher in the Reformation struggle, which lasted until 1536, when the Lutheran Christian III and the nobility had overcome the peasantry and burghers in the civil war known as the Count's War. The Catholic bishops were imprisoned and dismissed, and at the meeting of the national assembly in Copenhagen in October 1536, the power of the Catholic bishops was finally eradicated, and Church property was taken over by the Crown, which thereby trebled its possessions. With the Reformation, the church became a Lutheran church owing allegiance to the Crown, and Lutheranism the only permitted religion; the university, schools, welfare and hospitals were reorganised, though they went through a prolonged period of straitened circumstances. The place of the former Catholic bishops was taken by seven Lutheran "superintendents", who were consecrated in 1537 and soon again called bishops. As its most important religious reform, the Church Ordinance (1537-1539) introduced the divine service in the vernacular, with emphasis on the sermon and the congregation's singing. Christian III's Danish Bible from 1550, the main literary achievement of the century, must be seen in the same perspective. In 1569 came the first authorised Danish hymn book, "Hans Thomesen's Hymn Book". Until his death in 1560, Peder Palladius, the Bishop of Zealand, led the way in building up the Lutheran church and the people's Lutheran education. Niels Hemmingsen, a pupil of Melanchthon, was one of the most learned theologians in Protestant Europe in the second half of the 16th century, and during this same period Hans Christensen Sthen wrote his hymns.

Orthodoxy and Pietism

State control of the church was tightened in the hundred years from the death of Christian III to the introduction of absolutism in 1660, and like the most authoritative theologians, for instance Bishop Jesper Brochmand, changing governments were on the look-out for any deviation from the true faith (i.e. Lutheran orthodoxy). The King's Law of 1665 established that the king was to make all decisions concerning the church, and Danish Law of 1683 defined "the King's religion", i.e. the State Church, as being in conformity with the Bible, the three Creeds of the ancient Church, the Augsburg Confession and Luther's Little Catechism. In 1699 an official hymn book was published, the second of its kind, which was quickly given the name of "Kingo's Hymn Book" after the Bishop of Odense, Thomas Kingo, the greatest hymn-writer of Danish Baroque at the transition from orthodoxy to 18th-century pietism. Halle Pietism, so called after the German city of Halle, which in the 1730s was raised to the status of "court religion" under Christian VI, made its impact in missionary initiatives (e.g. the mission to Tranquebar and Hans Egede's mission to Greenland) and an extensive reform of the laws governing church discipline, confirmation and schooling. The Moravian Brethren also made their entry into Denmark, working quietly in the background until the Brethren established their community in Christiansfeld in 1773. The great hymn writer of pietism was Hans Adolph Brorson.

The National Church and its Breadth

The Enlightenment in the second half of the 18th century led to a sharp criticism of the church and dogma, but also to an ecclesiastically rationalist theology, against which both the Romantic and evangelical movements reacted. The evangelical movement, which was partly rooted in the agricultural reforms in the 1780s and the School Act of 1814, was to have a decisive impact on church life in the 19th century. The movement split during the century; the fact that its main ideas led to "movements within the church" is a result of the abolition of absolutism in 1848, the Constitution of 1849 and not least the influence of N.F.S. Grundtvig. The Constitution introduced the principle of religious freedom, but not of religious equality, as the state was given responsibility for supporting the Evangelical Lutheran Church as the Danish National Church. The dogmatic foundation of the church was unchanged. The Constitution promised a representative, synodal church constitution, though the "promise" has never been fulfilled. The second half of the 19th century saw a number of Acts seeking to accommodate the Grundtvigian wish for independence: the compulsion to attend the local parish church was abolished in 1855, compulsory baptism was abandoned (1857), permission was granted for elective congregations (1868) and in 1872 permission was given to those refusing to attend services conducted by their parish priest to bring in a pastor from outside. Grundtvig's "view on the Church" - first expressed in 1825 and leading to a grandiose renewal of the Danish hymn tradition - emphasises the living word of God, orally proclaimed in baptism and holy communion in the presence of the congregation as what creates and sustains the Church.

A contrast to the views of Grundtvig and his followers was represented by the call for repentance and conversion and the view of the Bible as the word of God in the evangelical Home Mission, founded in 1853 and from 1861 under the firm leadership of Vilhelm Beck. The rationalist criticism of revelation dating from the Enlightenment was behind the debate on biblical views, and that debate is still not concluded at the end of the 20th century.

Like Grundtvig, Søren Kierkegaard also countered the challenge from the age of Enlightenment with his idiosyncratic philosophical and theological writings; they were produced in confrontation with German idealist philosophy (G.W.F. Hegel). Kierkegaard and Grundtvig acted as counterweights to German influence in university theology, and they have been crucially important for the teaching of the National Church long after their own day.

Alongside ecclesiastical Grundtvigianism, in which it was the clergy who held sway, there was also a popular Grundtvigian wing related to the folk high school movement, influencing the development of society through their educational work and their establishment of associations. As for Home Mission, the "rural" movement clashed to some extent with its "urban" counterpart in the Copenhagen Home Mission that was founded in 1865, which believed that preaching to effect conversion should be accompanied by welfare work in the city conditions resulting from industrialisation.

Partly on the English pattern, the 19th century in Denmark was the great age of religious associations and foundations; the Danish Bible Society was founded in 1814, Danish Missionary Association in 1821, and from the end of the century the Copenhagen Church Foundation (1896, from 1974 known as the Church Foundation), which was behind the building of a number of the architecturally interesting Copenhagen churches. The 19th century was also the age of great church figures; men like the bishops J.P. Mynster and H.L. Martensen were at the same time prominent in social and cultural life. Søren Kierkegaard fought their kind of churchmanship, his protest culminating in his one-man "church battle" in the last year of his life, 1855.

The Twentieth Century

1903 saw the Parish Council Act, heralding a process of democratisation that has continued ever since; thus, for instance, the participation of the national church in ecumenical work, enacted by law in 1989, was given a democratic structure. This development has been of significance for the social status of the clergy. Since 1947 women have been able to apply for posts as priests and it looks as though they will finally represent a majority of the clergy. In 1995, the first female bishop was elected. During the 20th century, all formal connection between school and church has ceased; however, Christianity still has a place as a subject in school timetables. Theologically speaking, the most important new departure of the 20th century was the periodical "Tidehverv" (from 1926), representing an independent Danish dialectical theology which in addition to Luther and Kierkegaard based itself on Otto Møller and Jakob Knudsen. However, none of the century's main currents (liberal theology, Karl Barth's theology, Tidehverv, existential theology, creation theology, political theology, feminist theology, etc.) have established themselves in the popular mind. In particular, three theologians have been of significance for the position of the church and Christianity in the political and cultural landscape of the 20th century, i.e. Hal Koch, P.G. Lindhardt and K.E. Løgstrup. In political and cultural life, it appears to be accepted that the National Church is to be left untouched, and after a fall in the 1960s and 1970s, the growing number of baptisms and other church ceremonies in the last two decades of the century suggest that the (national) church has by no means lost its place in people's consciousness.

Steffen Kjeldgaard-Pedersen

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