Swedish Mission Province

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Bishops Roland Gustafsson (1st from left), Lars Artman (3rd from left) and Göran Beijer (4th from left) at the consecration of Bishop Bengt Ådahl (2nd from left) on April 27, 2019

The Swedish Mission Province (Swedish: Missionsprovinsen i Sverige ) is an independent denomination created by the merger of confessional Lutheran pastors and congregations , which was founded as a distinction to the theological liberalism of the Swedish Church . In the Mission Province , both high- ecclesiastical and Schartaunian currents of the Swedish national church come together. Currently (2019) there are 15 congregations ( koinonior ) all over Sweden .

The founding of the Mission Province has its roots in the 1950s, when a synodal resolution made it possible for women to be parishioners in the Church of Sweden. Since, in the opinion of some Lutheran theologians, this is contrary to the instruction of the Holy Scriptures , the Swedish pastors were granted freedom of conscience. However, this freedom of conscience, which is enshrined in the church ordinance, was repealed in 1997 and since then the avowed opponents of the ordination of women have been denied access to the pastoral office. As a result, Bishop Emeritus Bertil Gärtner campaigned for a union of conservative pastors and parishes in order to give them independence from the bishops of the Church of Sweden. On September 6, 2003, the Swedish Mission Province was officially founded, which sees itself as a free diocese within the Church of Sweden. However, this view is rejected by the Swedish national church.

On February 5, 2005, Walter Obare Omwanza , a Conservative Bishop of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Kenya , consecrated retired Pastor Arne Olsson as Bishop of the Swedish Missionary Province. This consecration was preceded by an exchange of letters between the then Archbishop of Uppsala K. G. Hammar and Walter Obare Omwanza, in which Obare Omwanza describes the situation of the Lutheran churches in Germany and Sweden as endangered and the consecration of Olsson as bishop as a reaction to the plight of professing Lutheran Christians designated in Sweden. Since then, the Swedish Church has regarded the Mission Province as an independent free church and has released the active pastors of the Mission Province from their parish office.

In 2006, Olsson consecrated two assistant bishops , Lars Artman and Göran Beijer , and in 2010 Matti Väisänen as bishop of the Mission Province in Finland, which became independent in 2013 as Suomen evankelisluterilainen lähetyshiippakunta . Roland Gustafsson has been Bishop of the Mission Province since 2010 . On April 27, 2019, Bengt Ådahl was ordained the third bishop of the Mission Province.

In 2018 the Swedish Mission Province was admitted to the International Lutheran Council together with its sister churches in Finland ( Suomen evankelisluterilainen lähetyshiippakunta ) and Norway ( Det evangelisk-lutherske stift i Norge ) .

The theological training of the pastors takes place at the församlingsfakulteten in Gothenburg .

Web links

Commons : Missionary Provinces  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Biskopsvigning av Bengt Ådahl. Retrieved May 29, 2019 (Swedish).