At Aarhus University, the Center for the Study of Lutheran Theology and Confessional Societies (LUMEN) and the Aarhus Institute for Advanced Studies (AIAS) collaborated on a symposium on ‘Religion and Welfare’ in 2018. This edited volume presents the different contributions covering a wide range of academic disciplines, perspectives, time spans and source material. The overall focus is the Nordic countries.
Esther Chung-Kim writes about the formative years of the Lutheran Reformation in Denmark in the 1530s, and the way the new Church organised the relationship between State and Church authorities. The focus is on how health care and poor relief was reformed with direct influence from Wittenberg and Johann Bugenhagen, who was close both to Martin Luther himself and the Danish king, Christian iii. Christian Neddens discusses how imagery and material culture might contribute to the understanding of new Lutheran ideas on philanthropy and responsibility for the sick and poor in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. David C. Fink's article presents Philipp Melanchthon's ideas on work and work ethic, suggesting that these ideas still might be relevant in debates on ‘work’.
Maria Nørby Pedersen examines the Danish legislation on poor relief and health care in the period 1536 to 1708, when an ‘inclusive’ perspective was dominant: both ‘deserving’ and ‘undeserving’ individuals should enjoy state support. Johanna Annola and Riikka Miettinen then expand the time span substantially by investigating how poor relief institutions in Finland in the period 1600 to the 1960s were arenas for religious control and experience. Nina Javette Koefoed focuses on what she calls ‘the early Danish welfare state’ and the cultural and ideological continuity between the pre-modern Lutheran ideas on the Christian obligation to support the needy and the modern conception of ‘public welfare’. She argues that this continuity represents a Lutheran heritage in Denmark.
Andrew G. Newby sheds light on how the Danish famine aid to Sweden and Finland in the critical years around 1867 shows how the Lutheran concept of the ‘Christian household’ could extend beyond national borders. Anders Sevelsted analyses with examples from Copenhagen in the last part of the nineteenth century how experiences and ideas within the field of philanthropy and voluntary social work transcended confessional borders.
In the final article Gorm Harste employs a widened perspective on the development of the modern welfare state using Bourdieu's concepts on symbolic and physical violence while comparing Lutheran and Calvinist solutions to the ‘welfare problem’. Harste argues that a restricted national approach in studying the development of the modern welfare states is not adequate. On the contrary, ideas on welfare and care moved across nations, states and confessions.
The two editors, Nina J. Koefoed and Andrew G. Newby, in an introductory article, present the volume and suggest some conclusions and results of the 2018 symposium. They correctly state that ‘there has been a growing consensus about the importance of the Reformation for establishing a new social policy’ (p. 9). Social care and state welfare is not only about control, state expansion, economy or ‘Protestant ethic’, but about religion in its core values, practices and ideals. The Nordic countries have coined their special model for a welfare state, and many stakeholders have claimed the historical ownership of that model. To focus on the religious and, not least, the confessional background of the Nordic welfare state model, is a rewarding approach, and the different articles are valuable in their own right. However, the volume as a whole leaves the reader with some questions, and it is difficult to summarise the results.
There is no clear chronology through the volume. Several contributions focus on a limited period, while others have several centuries as their time frame. It is also hard to find any geographical concentration in the volume as a whole. Most articles have Denmark as their main interest, Finland is commented upon in a couple of articles, and there are also comparative perspectives on Germany and beyond. But in claiming a Nordic perspective, it is a bit surprising that the contributions do not include Sweden, Norway and Iceland. In most centuries after the Lutheran Reformations in the Nordic countries, Finland was part of Sweden (until 1809), and Norway was in union with Denmark (until 1814). Many of the articles discuss theology and ideas on a general level (Melanchthon, Bugenhagen) or legislation, while the substantial differences within the kingdoms of the north are not paid much attention. To mention one example: in Danish (and Norwegian) historiography since 1814, there has been a tendency to isolate the two countries, not least when it comes to interpreting the Lutheran Reformation. The Danish reformation was to a wide extent an urban Reformation, and legislation and social institutions were developed accordingly. In Norway, on the other hand, the Lutheran reformation was imposed on the population with war and violence, but under any circumstance, the Reformation was a rural phenomenon. Social care and poor relief developed rather differently in the two parts of the realm. I suspect a comparison between Sweden and Finland might have contributed similar nuances.
These comments are not meant to devalue the present volume. It is to be expected that a book based on contributions at a cross-disciplinary conference differs in perspectives and focuses. As a totality, the volume gives the reader new insights into the complex religious and social history of the Nordic countries.
