By Marie Vejrup Nielsen, assistant professor, M. Th., PhD; Jørn Borup, Director of the Center for Contemporary Religion, associate professor, PhD in Study of Religion; and Lene Kühle, associate professor, PhD in Study of Religion
The Danes are very interested in religion as is evident from the amount of articles, debates, TV-programs and websites about religion. Whether or not the Danes are then very religious is for a whole other discussion but religion is clearly much more visible in the public domain today than it was in the past. What lies behind this making visible of religion? One place where religion is very visible is the Internet. When Danes today seek knowledge about religion, they most likely start by searching on Google. PhD student Henrik Reintoft Christensen and assistant professor Marie Vejrup Nielsen have examined the Danes’ interest in religion by using search words from Google. When the Danes search for baptism they often also search for food, invitations, and gifts, and when they search for Folkekirke (the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Denmark) they often also search for resignation of membership. On that basis, Henrik Reintoft Christensen and Marie Vejrup Nielsen suggest that GoogleTrends can be used to make predictions about religion in the future. The massive increase in searches on Folkekirken with words such as resignation coincided with an actual increase in resignations of membership of Folkekirken.
But in which ways are the religions themselves visible on the Internet? Does one find what one is looking for when seeking information about a particular religion online? When it comes to the approved religious communities, the Internet delivers on this only to a certain extent, claims PhD student Peter Fischer-Nielsen. Not all the approved religious communities have a websites and those that do far from take advantage of the possibilities that the Internet provides. Few have gone past the possibilities for information and invitation in web 1.0 to the possibilities for involvement in web 2.0. Peter Fischer-Nielsen believes that many religious organizations are afraid of losing control of the messages on their websites if they allow too much user involvement. But being on the Internet in itself means loss of control. Thus, googling “Jehovah’s Witnesses”, characteristically, first leads to the Wikipedia page. After Jehovah’s Witnesses’ official websites, there are pages from, among others, Støttegruppen for tidligere Jehovas Vidner (“Support Group for Former Jehovah’s Witnesses”), Landsforeningen af Bøsser og Lesbiske (“The Danish National Organisation for Gay Men, Lesbians, Bisexuals and Transgender persons”), and Kristeligt Dagblad (“Christian Daily Newspaper”, one of the big national newspapers in Denmark). Being on the Internet with an informative website does not mean that one controls the information.
Professor Stig Hjarvard describes the mediatization of religion. Mediatization means that the media has evolved into an autonomous institution governed by its own logic. The mediatization of religion means that people no longer acquire religious knowledge from the church, Sunday school, or religious magazines but rather that the dissemination of this knowledge largely happens through the media and on the medias premises. Mediatization means that religion can change because the religious authorities are challenged by the media’s communication of knowledge about religion. As an example, Stig Hjarvard mentions a study conducted by Zapera in 2006, in which 31,5 % of respondents were inclined to assign weight to the interpretation of Christianity presented in Dan Brown’s The Da Vinci Code even though virtually no researchers or pastors would find a literary construction like this to be of any value.
Migrant congregations growing – The Folkekirke in decline
Religion on the Internet is one way in which religion is visible, but religion in Denmark is also visible in another way. Since 1999 the number of approved religious communities has grown from 62 to 104 [1] with approx. 6-700 congregations. It is the migrants, Christian and Muslim, who account for the most noticeable increase in the number of religious communities in Denmark. While Christian congregations of different convictions have traditionally made up the majority of the religious communities, it is the groups with members of different ethnic origins who have had the most substantial growth. Head of secretariat Jørgen Skov presents the results from a study conducted by the Council on International Relations[AS1] (Mellemkirkeligt Råd) in cooperation with Churches’ Integration Ministry (Kirkernes integrationstjeneste KIT). The study documents a growth of up to 40 % among Christian migrant congregations (www.migrantmenigheder.dk) and the same trend is apparent in the text at hand. The growth in immigrants is probably also what lies behind the 10 % increase in Catholics. The number of Muslim religious communities has doubled over the last ten years and if we include Muslim groups not holding status of religious community, the number has quadrupled. Among the Buddhists and Hindus, the same patter applies. Many ethnically Danish groups with an interest in yoga, meditation, and Eastern spirituality appeared in the 1980s and 1990s and their very loosely defined membership numbers seem to remain stable among the many small groups. On the other hand, immigration from India, Sri Lanka, and Thailand means that ethnically Asian religiosity surpasses ethnically Danish religiosity measured in membership numbers. If we include the groups without status of religious communities the ratio between these groups is up to 80-20 in percentages in the ethically Asian groups’ favor.
As the Danish Pluralism Project documented earlier, Denmark has in some ways become multi-religious. This is due to new branches of Christian groups from the “home environment”. The change in both numbers and expression is primarily remarkable because more of them have come here from the outside. This growth from the outside can be set in relation to the development in membership numbers in the largest religious community in Denmark, the Evangelical-Lutheran Church. In his article in this publication, Peter Lodberg takes a closer look at the Folkekirke’s numbers. Within the last 10 years, the Folkekirke has lost around 1 % of its members, not so much because people are resigning, but because “only” 73 % of children are baptized while around 90 % of the deceased were members of the Folkekirke. One can therefore say that the fall in membership numbers is due to people not choosing the Folkekirke rather than people opting out. The membership numbers of the Folkekirke has dropped wit 47.736 persons in the period 1999-2009 but the fall is not due to immigrants and their descendants. Actually, the number of Folkekirke members who are immigrants or descendants of immigrants has grown from 33.179 in 1999 to 39.105 in 2009. The increase is largest for immigrants and descendants from Western countries (from 30.689 in 1999 to 35.209 in 2009) but the number of Folkekirke members from non-Western countries has grown from 2.490 in 1999 to 3.896 in 2009. Although immigrants and descendants do contribute to the total number of members in the Folkekirke, the majority of immigrants and descendants, even if they are Christian, will not be members of the Folkekirke. It is precisely this that is the point in the article by Jørgen Skov Jørgensen, head of the secretariat for the Council on International Relations. Based on a substantial mapping he describes the phenomenon “migrant congregations”, that is, congregations of “at least 10 persons who regularly meet and celebrate Christian church service/mass in a language different from Danish, with a priest or leader who is not ethnically Danish” [1].
In the last 4½ years, the number of migrant congregations has grown explosively from around 145 in 2004 to around 212 in 2008. The increase in migrant congregations, many of which either join an approved religious community or apply for approval, is an important development which points to a continuing change in organized religion in Denmark. Among Muslims, too, we see an increase in the number of approved religious communities. In her article in the yearbook, associate professor Lene Kühle describes how the number of approved Muslim congregations has quadrupled in the last 10 years, so that today approx. half of the Danish mosques are approved Muslim congregations. In opposition to the Christian congregations who to a great extent use approval as an opportunity to obtain status as tax-deductible in accordance to the Tax Assessment Act’s § 8A and § 12, only few Muslim congregations make use of the economic advantages connected to their approval. So although the Muslim communities, through approval, can be said to have taken a step towards a position as an established religious minority in line with the free churches and the Jewish Community they are still missing a few steps.
Many religious groups in Denmark regard the establishing phase as being difficult and often bureaucratic. Finding facilities is cumbersome and it takes some time to be able to function stably as an organization. The increase in the number of approved religious communities, Christian migrant congregations as well as Muslim, Buddhist, and Hindu congregations, therefore says something about the integration process. Many choose to apply for status of religious community in order to obtain the stamp of approval for being a “real Danish” religious group on equal terms with others: approved by the Danish state, recognizable, and, on paper, accepted in the public arena. Acquiring a religious worker visa for the religious specialist – the priest, the imam, the monk – can be a goal in and of itself in the achievement of status of religious community. A large amount of the communities practice and identity will in a sense be connected to one such person and, much like the establishment of an ethnically defined church, mosque or temple, the institutionalization of a permanently employed religious specialist, too, could be seen as a symbol of the establishment of the religion in a Danish context. The fact that several of these groups have sought and obtained status of religious community is a sign that they have become “Danish”. It is not required of religious groups in Denmark that they apply for approval. Becoming an approved religious community also means becoming part of the public sphere. The increase in the number of approved religious communities thus means that more and more religious communities have become public. One could also say that the religious communities have become visible.
But what does it really mean to be an approved religious community, and what is a recognized religious community? In his article, PhD student René Dybdal Pedersen presents what one should know about the legal circumstances that apply to the approved/recognized religious communities. The Ministry of Ecclesiastical Affairs have put forward that they do not think that one should distinguish between recognized and approved religious societies and we have chosen follow this statement, so that both the approved and recognized religious societies are termed “approved”.
Religion in numbers
Obscure though they may be, numbers are always interesting to researchers. For the same reason they cannot stand alone. They must be inserted into a context and one such is offered here in the yearbook Religion in Denmark 2009 in two ways. Firstly, via the brief comments, which are attached to each of the main groupings, we have sorted the religious societies into. And secondly, via five short articles from experts in the various fields already mentioned.
But what do we really know about religion in Denmark today? What is the reality behind the many claims about decline or growth in religious groups? Which religious communities exist within the boundaries of the realm of Denmark and how are they developing? Who is experiencing an increase and who will there become fewer of? Where to they reside and how do they practice their religion? These questions come are relevant for the major questions regarding the development of society, as posed by politicians in the media. But they are also of great importance in relation to researchers’ possibility to contribute to the understanding of what religion in contemporary Denmark looks like. In some countries, a large amount of information concerning the organization of religion is available, in other countries less is known about the topic. Denmark quite clearly belongs in the last category and this makes it difficult to test existing theories about contemporary religion but also to advance science with new theoretical breakthroughs. For example, does the development in Denmark follow that which is documented in the USA, namely that Christian churches, to a increasingly greater extent, are established as local independent churches without connection to a larger national organization (denomination)? And will migrant religions, in time, adjust their activities and organization to resemble those of the “old” religious communities? If all American religious societies need a soup kitchen and an annual barbecue, what then characterizes being a religion in Denmark?
Statistics on religion contribute to clarify all the questions waiting to be understood. In short, we need numbers to document and reinforce or refute theories as well as myths and claims about the state of religion in Denmark today.
Folkekirken is by far the largest religious organization in Denmark. However, since basic statistics on the Folkekirke are published quarterly we have chosen to collect independent numbers on it on only one account, namely in relation to membership numbers among immigrants and descendants. This does not means that there could not be gathered more data in this vast area. Thus, neither figures on church attendance, communion attendance, nor separate statistics on the 40 electoral congregations within Folkekirken are published.
Methodological Approach
In the yearbook Religion in Denmark 2009, we have chosen to focus on numbers that are otherwise difficult to obtain, namely updated information on approved and recognized religious communities in Denmark 2009. In the period from 1984 to 2001 this information was published in Kirkestatistikken (the Church Statistics) but ceased to be part of Statistic Denmark’s data in 2001, which caused the disappearance of an important source to understanding the development of religion in Denmark. Without these numbers it is impossible to see whether there are increasing or decreasing numbers of Christians, Muslims, Buddhists, or members of more specific groups, such as FornSidr. It is necessary to gather numbers covering a long range of years in order to speak generally of different trends in a broader perspective. This web-publication aims to contribute to this case with the establishment of necessary, regularly updated figures.
The yearbook limits itself to approved/recognized religious communities for two reasons. First, because we thereby have the opportunity to compare figures from earlier statistics on these groups with new figures from the yearbook. Secondly, because these groups should be relatively easy to get in contact with and willing to deliver the information we request, given their connection to the Danish state via approval. This of course means that the figures in this yearbook do not describe all the religious groupings in Denmark. But as is apparent from the list of approved/recognized religious communities, we are speaking of a significant amount of different religious groupings. Of the 325 churches organized in Frikirkenet (“Free Church Net”), over 80 % are approved religious communities (approx. 270) (see www.frikirkenet.dk). For Muslims, the approved religious communities make up around half of the mosques while only a sixth of the Buddhist groups have status of approved religious community. Some are unable to obtain this status while others have no ambitions in that direction but regardless of motives and backgrounds, the overview of the approved religious communities gives us a basis for speaking of today’s religious organizations in Denmark on a general level.
We were interested in collecting fairly accurate information on the religious communities in order to make comparisons between the groups, in part with Statistic Denmark’s data from previous times. We have asked about membership numbers, first and for foremost, to get an idea of the amount of persons related to the groups. The number of buildings (churches, temples, mosques, and centers) says something about both the groups’ degree of institutionalization and financial capacities but also reflects the geographical spread. Many are located in and around the capital and larger cities but the provinces also contribute to the religious landscape. The number of religious specialists (priests, imams, monks) does not necessarily reflect the size of the groups but it does say something about the weight assigned to having such persons and, not least, the opportunity to have them. Migrant congregations, especially, may be interested having religious leaders who are connected to their homeland, but there may also be problems with getting such leaders to Denmark. We have inquired into the religious practices by obtaining estimates of the number of participants in weekly ceremonies/church services and the most important celebrations of the year, and in the religion’s most important rites of passage, including funerals/cremations. Using the telephone and/or email, we have (often repeatedly) contacted the presumed contact persons in all the individual groups to get their own estimated figures. In cases where the religious community provided the relevant figures on a website, we have used those. In cases where we did not succeed in obtaining current numbers from the religious society and the information was not available on a website, we have, to the extent it was possible, drawn in information from elsewhere. This is especially relevant for the Muslim communities, where the data in many instances stems from Lene Kühles project Moskeer i Danmark (“Mosques in Denmark”) where the information was gathered in 2004/5. For some of the migrant churches, the information comes from Birthe Munck-Fairwood Andre Stemmer (“Other Voices”) from 2004 as well as from the Churches Integration Ministry (www.kit-danmark.dk).
Gathering and analyzing data from these groups has given us an interesting insight into the difficulties of gathering the figures. A range of religious communities have ceased to exist; these are, for example, Kulturforeningen for folk fra Irak (“Culture Association for people from Iraq”), København NV (“Copenhagen NW” (North West)), Sikhfoundation in Copenhagen and The Brethren in Hellerup. Since their last registration, many had changed their names or addresses: Church of the Nazarene has become Greve Free Church, though they still maintain their ties to the international Church of the Nazarene, while Aars Free Church, after being connected to the international Vineyard movement in years, now has returned to being an independent free church. Some churches have merged; among others, this is the case for Guds Menighed (“God’s Congregation”) in Højbjerg who by joining with Saronkirken (“the Saron Church”), a congregation within Missionsforbundet (“Danish Mission Association”), has now become the Saralyst church, although they keep their connection to the international Church of God. Likewise, Kristent Fællesskab (“Christian Fellowship”) in North Zealand has chosen to suspend their cooperation with Christian Fellowship in Copenhagen and instead enter into the Pentecostal church under the name of The Free Church Hillerød. There are also examples of congregations, which risk distraction because of internal disagreements. Most dramatically, this is the case for the Sikh-temple, Gurdwara Siri Guru Singh Sabha, where internal disagreements have lead to mass brawls and a pending court case.
We have contacted all the approved religious communities mentioned by the Department of Family Affairs on their website. We have succeeded in finding contact information on the vast majority, but a few communities such as Sathya Say Baba and Yeshuat Tsion, the Messianic Synagogue in Denmark, have declined participation. Others have not answered our inquiries either due to time constraints or perhaps, for a few others, because they were suspicious towards the project. The figures provided here are the figures provided to us by the congregations. In a few cases we received figures that did not seem plausible and in these cases we discussed the religious communities understanding of membership and tried to obtain more realistic figures. But of course it is obvious that different religious communities have different understandings of what it means to be a member. Some Christian churches, e.g. Bibel- og Missionscenteret i Thisted (“the Bible and Mission Center in Thisted”), only regard baptized adults as members while, for example, the Russian Orthodox Church, the Alexander Newsky Church in Denmark count everyone with an Orthodox background as a (potential) member. Other religious communities several types of members, for example, Brahma Kumaris World University has 22 core members and 924 members of their supporting association. Which of these numbers are most appropriately comparable with the membership numbers in Bibel- og Missionscenteret i Thisted or those from the Orthodox church? First and foremost, it was very informative for us to ascertain how little control many groups have over these figures and how little interest many of the groups seem to have in this area. Once a group obtains the official status of recognized or approved religious society, their information is no longer controlled and can thus be out of date, wrong, or totally arbitrary. In other words there is a widespread “mess in the religions”, statistically speaking, although Christian groups with links to larger church communities tend to have relative precise figures. On the other hand, this is already well known by the researcher of religion. The membership term is often loose and unmanageable; some count individuals while others count families, some count paying participants while others include all participants, many do not count at all – for some this is not at all relevant.
The project we present here is in line with the interest motivating the publication of “Tørre tal om troen” (“Religion in dry numbers”), edited by Margit Warburg and Brian Jacobsen, Forlaget Univers 2007 (Universe Publishing House 2007). In the introduction, Margit Warburg precisely emphasizes the necessity of having numbers to counterbalance loose claims about how religion develops, e.g. in relation to the image of the development in Muslim groups in Denmark. Prior to this, Tim Jensen carried out a mapping in his “Religionsguide” (book edition 1994, 1999). The Pluralism Project, too, sought to give a concrete picture of the religious landscape in Denmark by conducting a detailed study of religious groups, first in a limited area (Aarhus) and later on a national level.
At the same time the present e-yearbook is a new initiative. First because it, as a yearbook, wants to contribute exactly with updates of these numbers from year to year and secondly, because its format as a web publication allows it to offer more that traditional publications can. This entails continuous updates of and flexible access to the material along with a map of the approved/recognized religious communities in Denmark from which one can form an impression of the religions’ place in the Danish landscape. In other words, the yearbook Religion in Denmark 2009 is a resource for all seeking to know more about what religion looks like in Denmark today, be it in the context of the media, teaching, or research.
Religion in Denmark 2009 was compiled by researchers connected to Center for Contemporary Religion at the Faculty of Theology, Aarhus University. Lene Kühle was responsible for the data collection, which was conducted by employees at the center in collaboration with student helpers Mark Andersen, Rikke Tranberg Madsen, and Sara Jul Jacobson. The Center for Contemporary Religion is an interdisciplinary collaboration focusing on the study of religion in Denmark today, see more about the center on the website.
[1] This figure comes from totaling the number of approved religious communities on the website of the Department of Family Affairs. The numbers pertains to the religious communities each of which may have a long row of underlying congregations. Religious communities that no longer exist have been subtracted from the figure, and the religious communities that are now a congregation under another religious community have not been counted either.
[2] See also www.kristeligt-dagblad.dk/artikel/277094:Kirke---tro--Sikh-opgoer-om-menighedshus
[AS1]Mellemkirkelige Råd
