The October Exodus in Finland

[history_geek]

I debated with myself where should I put this, so if this should be in another category, well, sorry. :yay:

It's quited down some what, but I bet the bishops won't forget this for a while. Oh, and on Christmas Day or Eve, they usually show a broadcast from, I think its Helsinki, the church mass, and this year... I've never seen quite that many empty places before.., It wasn't overwhalmingly empty but it was still rare. And I think most of the people there were elderly, though could have been mistaken, I was just waking up then...

The RationalSkeptism.org has a large thread about this (thanks again to Tank for the link), so if your intrested find out more, that's a good place to start.

There was one question that caught my I and I thought I'd try to answer it:

Do all Finns automaticly belong to the church?

The answer would be no, we don't automatically belong to it, but most peolpe are baptised when their still babies (done to me and other all family members). There is no law or anything that requires this, rather its a long tradition. I'd say most people in Finland nowdays see the church much more like social club that you just belong because your parents and friends belong to it and their parents belong to it and so on.

[Tank]

It was an interesting and very gratifying action that people left the church. They were leaving anyway but the focus on the institutionalised homophobia just gave the process a boost.