Overheard at the Swedish Church – or more reasons for God to hate Sweden

So it's about an hour until the Rapture, but I'm pretty sure there aren't going to be too many floaters here in Sweden. (if you haven't heard – look here).

As I wrote earlier, I don't spend a lot of time in church, or to be more honest I don't spend any time in church, unless it is a special occasion. But recently, I attended a family member's confirmation – and it was quite the experience.

Part of this church confirmation's program was to write and put on a skit demonstrating an important tenet of Christianity. The group chose The Ten Commandments and acted out each commandment to illustrate what we shouldn't be doing.

But at one point the reverend stopped and said 'This next part is a little controversial, but we agreed that children should have the freedom to express themselves.'

The Commandment? Don't take the Lord's name in vain.

The sketch? Two teenage boys who said something along the lines of 'Goddamn it, what the hell is this shit? This is some screwed up shit, God I've never seen anything this Goddamn shitty.'

And then, God steps onto the stage and says 'I really don't like it when you use my name like that.'

'Oh Sorry.” Say the boys. God hugs them.

Now, as a non-believer, I was embarrassed to hear this kind of language used in a church. I may use language like that a lot in my daily life, but I guess it just made me feel a bit sad. Like the Swedish church is trying so hard to be hip, they are willing to sacrifice their own beliefs.

But maybe it's just because, having grown up with the Religious Right in the US – I always have a hard time knowing where I stand with the Swedish church. See I know the RR just wants to save my soul, and they will do anything in their power to rescue me. OK – that's sweet of them, but I'm not interested.

The Swedish church? They just want me to hang out, have some coffee, maybe a cinnamon roll – but really, if it's not my community, I don't really get it.

Anyways, I hope everyone has a great apocalypse.

Things overheard from the Swedish Church

Truth is, I spend very little time in church. And by very little, I mean I think I can count the number of times I have been in a church for a service in my lifetime on my two hands. This makes me a little uncomfortable making sweeping generalizations about the Swedish church. So I have decided to focus this more on individual strange things I have occasionally heard while either in a church in Sweden, or from a priest in Sweden.

This fall, I took a music and movement class at the local church with my LO. It was a nice little class where we sang lots of Swedish songs and did some silly dances. There was very little religion, the occasional mention of God, and that is about it. The class is led by the church's cantor – her responsibility is the church's music program. She has a lovely soprano voice which the kids seem to love.

One of our cantor's favorite themes is – surprise surprise – gender equality. It began innocently, but surprisingly, enough with the instructions that we should sing one of the psalms about God the Mother, instead of God the father. OK, I thought. Great. I have always wondered if gender equality & the church could work something out like this – so I was happy to sing about God the Mother.

Then Christmas rolled around, and last week she rolled out the Christmas songs. And, well, I was even more surprised when we sang a lovely song about the birth of Jesus in which verse number one had the line 'And Mary stood with God's son in her arms' and then we sang it again with 'And Mary stood with God's daughter in her arms.' I had to hold back a giggle, but I admit I did smile. And all of the women in the group (Because despite it's gender equality theme – fathers seem to avoid this class like the plague- even though they get generous paternity leave and are commonly at swimming classes, theatre classes, photo classes, etc.) we smiled at each other with a 'wow, look how progressive we are' glint in our eyes.

And then at the very end, our cantor/leader sat down at the piano and announced 'Now we will sing a song from Kalle Anka/Donald Duck' (this is the cartoon EVERYONE in Sweden watches at Christmas) 'Although I KNOW Donald Duck is a terrible example of gender roles, and it is a terrible thing to watch,' she continued. I laughed out loud, and every mother in the room wrinkled their nose. One Mom turned to us and whispered 'But what did Donald do? I don't get it?”