Sweden did not follow the same route that most other European countries embarked on in the handling of the COVID-19 pandemic. When other countries closed as a response to the spread of the virus, Sweden decided not to impose a full lockdown. Rather, Sweden kept a large part of society open, such as keeping schools for children and bars and restaurants open, albeit with some restrictions. The focus was on information, relying on each individual to reduce the spread of the infection by following two clear recommendations: maintaining individual hand hygiene and physical distance between people. Public gatherings were regulated in terms of the number of participants, but never banned. Although the Swedish government followed a more liberal route in the handling of the pandemic, the recommended restrictions had a considerable effect on religious life. The aim of this chapter is to understand the background of Sweden’s different way of handling the COVID-19 pandemic and what impact it had on faith communities in Sweden, from both legal and sociological perspectives.

Europe has historically developed from state related monopoly churches controlling and regulating religion, to secular religiously neutral states with individual freedom of religion. In parallel Europe has continuously become more religiously and culturally diverse by globalisation, migration, travel etc. As part of increasing religious pluralism new questions on religion and possible needs for special regulation of religion are brought up in political and juridical context. Simultaneous with increasing use of the concept religion in secular legal context, it is questioned as a useful concept by researchers in religion. The concept religion it is too multifaceted and there is no common universal definition of religion. It is also criticised as being a western European social construction, which makes it especially problematic to use in general policies and common law in a religiously diverse society with many different understandings of “religion”. This chapter discuss the needs and limitations of regulation of religion, and question if secular states really need special regulation of religion. Is it not enough with the same common law for people of all kind of belongings, beliefs, values and practices regardless if they are religious, non-religious, political etc.? The European empirical context is in focus, although the theoretical discussion is largely general. 

This chapter shifts the focus to one of the overarching questions of the book on therole of faith-based organisations (FBOs) in dealing with the plight of young peopleat the margins in the selected South African and Nordic localities. The case studiesshow that FBOs have an important supportive function for many young peopleliving on the margins of society, even though they may play only a limited rolein fighting youth marginalisation in their respective local communities. Only fewFBO activities were directed pointedly at changing the situation of marginalisedyoung people. This does not mean that the FBOs did not help young people inneed; yet how they did this differed considerably between the Nordic and SouthAfrican contexts – and between metropolitan and rural or more remote areas. FBOsfunctioned as a spiritual and social resource, or sometimes even as the last safetynet, hence meeting the most acute existential needs of young people. At the sametime, however, they were not engaged in more systematic attempts to empowermarginalised young people. These similarities, differences and tensions evinced inthe results from the six case studies demanded deeper analysis and interpretation. 

In this chapter, the Kumla Prison Monastery is discussed as an example of the ambiguous policy and practice of Swedish secular state institutions in relation to the field of religion. Kumla is the largest prison in Sweden, and one of the most protected and secure ones. It holds convicts serving long sentences. This prison conducts a very special activity, probably unique in the world: the ‘Monastery’, which allows convicts to undergo a long silent spiritual retreat, as initiated by Ignatius of Loyola, a sixteenth-century Catholic priest. Although Swedish official policy is that state authorities should be religiously neutral, this use of religion in prison illustrates a certain ambiguity of the Swedish secular state institution.

In 1970, 81% of Swedish young people attended confirmation work offered by the Church of Sweden. 46 years later, in 2017, the attendance had dropped to 24%. Along the continuous decline, the church has taken a number of initiatives in order to reform and renew the pedagogic form and content of confirmation work. As part of new pedagogic views the label »confirmation teaching« has been changed to »confirmation work«. This article gives a short background to the decline of attendance,a brief overview of Church of Sweden´s response, and demonstrates by a case study of one local example to meet young people´s individual preferences by providing different new forms of confirmation work. The last part of the article discusses possible factors behind the fast decline of participation in Swedish confirmation work.

There is no common universal definition of religion. It is used in various ways in different social, cultural and academic contexts, mostly without a specified definition. This article aims to discuss the multifaceted character of the concept religion and the problem of a normative use of the word religion in public official context such as public debate, political discourse, legal regulation, policies or in cases of conflict. The discourse of the principle of Freedom of religion in the Universal Declaration of Human rights is used as an example, since it is highly valued in many legal systems.