Pentecostalism in Sweden: Part One

I guess that my upbringing in the Swedish Pentecostal church is of little interest, but I have found an urge to tell someone about it. You know, Sweden is one of the most secular countries in the world and that has impacted the Christian life in many ways. We also lack denominations that are part of the Christian family in other parts of the World, we have nearly no reformed or Calvinistic churches or churches that hold on to the Westminster Confession. We had a Lutheran State Church for hundreds of years and that has influenced us, we never had any influence from Calvin, but we had Methodists, Salvation Army, Catholics, Baptists, Pentecostals, Word of Faith and other more locally influenced churches, and the thing is that many of these smaller denominations have been merged into two bigger, the Uniting Church in Sweden (Equmeniakyrkan) consisting of the former Baptist Union of Sweden, United Methodist Church and Mission Covenant Church of Sweden, and the Evangelical Free Church in Sweden (Evangeliska frikyrkan) consisting of the former Örebro Missionen, the Free Baptist Union and the Holiness Union (Helgelseförbundet), and then we still have the Pentecostals, Word of Faith, Salvation Army, the Catholics and, of course, the Church of Sweden, nowadays a free church. When I was born, I was born into the Church of Sweden, since that is not the case today that church is diminishing more and more every year.

There will be about 2–3 postings about the Pentecostalism in Sweden, and the timeline for these will stretch from about the 1970 to 2022. The first posting will consist of my upbringing in Sweden and in the Pentecostal Church. It will be a short read, so no worry.

My hope is that it maybe will wake up someone’s own memories, maybe some reader will come to the same conclusion as I did, that the society and upbringing that I thought were in a way unfair and too strict were in fact very loving, and I understand today that my parents fostering of me have prevented many sins, has given me stability that I see is lacking today. They say that children need that stability, that a no is no, and a yes is yes, to grow up to be a whole and complete person. My parents gave me that. A no would never in any situation be transformed unto a yes, and for a child that is something good, never forget that. I understand today that this is what my parents gave me, and I am so thankful today to my parents and to the God who never left me, even in my rage and rebellion and sin; God called me back, his Holy Spirit regenerated me, he justified me through his eternal and only begotten Son to a new life and showed me his Providence at the same time. I am so thankful, and I want to acknowledge that to everyone.

This will be a looking back exposé, and I am aware of the fact that we not always remember perfectly, and aware of that others have a different upbringing, a different view, a different experience of the Pentecostal movement in Sweden, but as long as we recognize that we have different experiences and views, there is no problem. This is my remembrance, my view of my upbringing, my view on the Pentecostals then and now. The now view is more from the outside, which is from speaking with other people in these congregations, from listening to sermons from these churches, from reading the Christian newspapers Dagen and Världen idag. I have not been to church physically in a long time. That is in a way a great sorrow in my life, and I never thought that I would feel like that; I pray every night that God will bring me to a reformed God-fearing congregation where true exposition of the Word takes place.

When looking back at your life, you re-evaluate it different in your fifties than in your thirties. What was seen as something terrible then you have had time to reconcile with, and to see that what you had was not all bad, in fact, it was mostly good. God’s Providence has been there even if you do not know what Providence is. In my Pentecostal upbringing there existed no Providence of God. God had opinions on our life, he watched us closely, but man was the omnipotent one in the man-God relation (you see that I put man first, because their theology is man centered). Regarding our salvation man was the Almighty; God just provided the salvation, man believed and granted himself the provided salvation; because in the Swedish Christianity the Atonement is potential, not actual; if that is biblical is another story, we will revisit. God was only the provider, the granter; after the cross of Christ God has been mostly passive in the salvation. You had to go back to the 1930–1940 and listen to your grandmother to understand that once there was the notion of the Providence of God in Sweden. That God had a will that he made true and sometimes evident, even if it seemed like a tragedy. God was there both in the tragedy and in the hope and joy. God was always there, always working, always was he the Almighty and Omnipresent God. What God is today for the Swedish Christianity is unclear to me, but one thing is clear, they do not view God as Omnipotent, or his Word as authoritative for the whole of mankind, or as inerrant, or as infallible, or that the Providence of God is working providently in his creation.

So, as I am growing older, I have a new-found thankfulness for my upbringing in every way. It was not perfect, not in a long shot. But who has a perfect upbringing? I am born in Sweden, a free country which has given me a good education, and was then a rather stable society, I am born into a Pentecostal family and early had to learn what was right and wrong, it was stricter than most other families, but today have I been reconciled with this strictness, and I understand the great love and care my parents bestowed on me and my siblings. I am going to criticize the Pentecostals in this text, remember that I criticize what they have become not so much what they were, at least not in such a strong way. Both my parents were also brought up into the Pentecostal church, my grandfather was a pastor there, so they were in their way influenced more by the early Pentecostal church, and I believe that many believers from that time still have a hard time reconciling their experiences with the Pentecostalism they were influenced by. There will always be unwise people around us and we had better let them go, both they and the hurt they caused.

I am born in the first half of the 1970, born in a little city in Sweden, there was no crime to talk about, no one stole your bike, no one robbed you, you did not lock the door the first thing when coming home. The stores closed at 6 p.m., and only Pressbyrån was open on a Sunday. There were two channels on the TV, no computers, no mobile phones, not even DECT phones. I am not even sure there was pizza or at least we did not buy any. Life was in many ways much easier. My siblings and I joke about this sometimes with our parents that when Good Friday or Easter Sunday or Christmas Day the most we were allowed to do was to stare into the wall. We could not go out and play with our friends, we had to be still and remember that Jesus was born on Christmas Day, he died on Good Friday and was risen on Easter Sunday. It was very strict; strict in a way that most people today do not understand.

We belonged to the Pentecostal church in our town, people called our town “little Jerusalem” because of the appearance of a multitude of churches, which in truth was not so many. I believe there were three denominations, and, of course, the Jehovah’s Witnesses. The Swedish State Church had more than one church, though.

The church was my second home in a way. Tuesday night’s there was for the youths to come together for what they called PK, I do not know or remember what that stood for but my father said the other day that it was an abbreviation for Pingstkyrkan (The Pentecostal church), on Saturday night there was an evening worship, on Sunday morning there was Sunday school, after that Sunday morning worship, then home for lunch and then Sunday evening worship. While I was young, I thought that we spent too much time in church. Today when I am near 50 instead, I can feel sorrow over how it looks today. Maybe there was too much then, but today there is too little. Where I live today you now have worship once a week. I do not even remember when there was a Sunday evening worship, it is not often.

When being in church in my youth you still had the thematic preaching, no exposition of the Bible, but you had the eternity in sight, heaven was real with streets of gold, just as John describes it in Revelation 21. Hell was real, that Jesus would come back and get us was real. The Word of God was revered, it was the truth, it was authoritative. There were no women lead pastors or elders, there existed some kind of soft egalitarianism, which, of course, is bad enough, but today is the historical view of complementarianism thrown away fully; if you have that view, you are going to be rather alone. There was what we can call the Pentecostal doctrine of sin, hell, the atonement, the spiritual gifts (even today am I not sure what the doctrines of the Pentecostal church in Sweden is, it is very hard to put your finger on it), and even if some members misused the spiritual gifts there was mostly order. You knew beforehand who would pray out aloud or who would prophecy. You had the usual sin lists and there were more things that you were forbidden to do than you were allowed to do, but my freedom was like heaven in comparison to the older Pentecostals. My upbringing was strict and loving and caring. People today seem to think that strict and loving and caring is the opposite. It is not. My mom sometimes says to me and my siblings that she was too strict, but I do not feel that today. What I felt then is another thing altogether. But that strict upbringing has given me stability and security. We had to learn right from wrong, and that our sins had consequences (the world today would not call it sins but let us call it that in this theologically inspired text).

Everything was not perfect or good, though. There were three denominations in our town, the Church of Sweden, at that time it was a state church, and you were born into it, the Pentecostals and the Mission Covenant Church of Sweden. I laugh at this sometimes today, because we were taught that only the Pentecostals were true Christians, the Mission Covenant Church was the lowest of the lowest in our eyes, even the woke Swedish State Church was better off, yes, even the world was better off. I cannot understand how they could teach us this, but that is how I remember it. And there was some truth to it, the Swedish Mission Covenant Church was more permissive in everything than the Pentecostals. But the Pentecostals have nothing to be proud of today, there is the same wokeness, the same indifference to sin, the same longing to be accepted by society, at any cost. There is today in Sweden minuscule differences between its denominations, at least if you disregard the Catholics.

Another thing that I remember is that they were trying to hide things that they did not like anyone to know. I do not know if others have the same memories. But one thing I remember is that as a young adult I came into contact with Sven Lidman a sensual poetic writer that was saved and become a leader in the Pentecostal church together with Lewi Pethrus. He worked with him for many years and was very influential, but I had never even heard his name. So, when I found out that he had been a member of the Pentecostal church in Stockholm since he was saved about 1917 and worked with Pethrus until 1948 and never had anyone even talked about him in 25 years with me. I found that strange, so I tried to read everything he had written, and I remember that when he and Pethrus had a falling out and Lidman was forced out that I read in one of his books about svinintresset (the swine interest) in the Pentecostal movement. I was amazed at his words, and since he was an author he had a way with words, and they describe him as a brilliant preacher. The swine interest was his way to say that the leadership in the Pentecostal movement was drawn more to money than to God. He took this from the story from the New Testament when Jesus meets the demon-possessed man at Gadarenes, that after Jesus has cast out the demons and allowed them to go into the herd of swine and the swine perished in the waters, the whole city implores Jesus to leave the area; the swine interest had taken over. Instead of glorifying the Son of God who did this miraculous work, they implored him to leave. I think many congregations would do that today, implore Jesus to leave, because they do not like his radical view, they believe that they are not like the scribes’ and the Sadducee’s and that they will escape the coming judgment, but the same strong judgment will fall on those who do not differentiate between right and wrong, holiness and unholiness, truth and false, who do not regard the Word of God as holy and authoritative and inerrant and infallible in all and everything.

Later I learned that both my grandfather and father had met Sven Lidman, but no one ever told me a word about him, he had been an editor for the Evangelii Härold over 26 years, but still they said nothing about Lidman. Before he died, he also published his memoirs in four books and they were extremely candid, these outspoken memoirs made it impossible for Lidman to return to the Pentecostal movement, but Lidman and Pethrus were reconciled. Reading some old newspaper articles, they describe that Lidman was “persona non grata” until 1997, and until that time they just kept him away from the movement. I remember that I was upset that they never even mentioned Sven Lidman to me, because he was a fascinating man in so many ways. I read another interesting article the other day, an interview with his son, for those who read Swedish I will link it here. The sad thing is that they have scrubbed the history clean from Sven Lidman, he was too much for them; this is a kind of a trademark of the Swedish Pentecostal movement, and they would have done the same thing with Knutby if they had the chance. But I will remember Sven Lidman, I am sure he was egotistical and difficult, but very fascinating, and his Swedish preface to his translation of Augustine’s Confessions is a remarkable read. I believe that he only translated the first nine chapters.

There was also my father that worked in the church, as many other parents did, for free. He handled the economy for the church, so we can say that we seldom saw our father. That is a sad thing that the church did not see how much time that they took from his family; the thing is that everybody suffered because of this, my father was always at work or in the church. We had him for ourselves one week or two a year when on vacation. If I remember correctly, it was four people who took over his duties when he quit. I hope and believe that it is much better today, and that is a good thing.

Another problem in the Pentecostal movement was their aversion against theological education. They considered a theological education as something that quenched the Spirit. The priest in the Church of Sweden was dead inside because they had studied at the University; when I wanted to study theology at the university, they warned me that I would lose my salvation, that I would lose my Spirit. There was nothing good that could come out of a theological education from a State University. They were wrong in every way. An education can be detrimental to the one being educated, definitively, but the real problem is not the education at the level of university but the indoctrination that happens before when the kids come to preschool and then continues in the same way year after year, which is the real danger. So, a kid today in Sweden is indoctrinated by the Swedish woke secular school system from the age of 18 months until they became 19 years, and after school their indoctrination continues by the media and social media. I was blessed together with my siblings, my mother was home with us, so we never had to spend any time at the preschool, but many today are raised more time by the preschool than by their parents, which is a problem today. The Social Democrats in Sweden which have governed our country many, many years love to indoctrinate the children of Sweden, now together with the Green Party. They have created a society where both parents must work, and if a mother has the possibility and would rather stay home with her children she is seen as a rather suspect person, that something must be wrong with her or her marriage.

If the student then continues to the University, it just continues, there they are forced to study feminist and queer theories, and their whole life they have been taught that there is a male conspiracy that is more evil than anything else. At the University 20 years ago, I was learned that it was an evil thing that God was male, and they tried to start with the inclusive language that we see today. New Bible translations are more or less influenced by this inclusiveness. The feminist theologians were not interested in Jesus Christ or the Incarnation or the Atonement, they were more interested in Sofia, Mother Earth, a language where everything male is uprooted and destroyed. You could say that they never understood what the Incarnation or Atonement or the Justification is, or a concept as imputation. If you have not studied theology at the University, you could never understand what they are forcing down your throat. It is horrible. Not strange at all that I preferred to study Greek and Hebrew, they had a hard time to force feminism and queer theories into the grammars. Since this was nearly 20 years ago and the gender confusion we see today was not there, but it had started with the feminist and queer theories they forced on us.

But if we strip away the feminist and anti-Christian theories, they taught me great things and gave me key instruments to understand the Word of God in a new way. I had a teacher that I have very fond memories of at the classical institution, he taught both New Testament Greek and Classical Greek. He gave me such love for the Greek language that I started to take all his evening courses and then continued with Classical Greek. Greek fits me much better than Hebrew. I have studied Hebrew also, but there is no comparison, I have studied three times more Greek than Hebrew. It is a great instrument to have.

One thing that has been problematic for me has been the Pentecostal teaching that God does not make a difference between people, that he loves everyone in the same way, everybody gets the same chance, the same love. I hated this because I could see it was not true. Everyone was treated differently, and what was I to think when these preachers from the Word of Faith came and preached, they got a wife, children, houses, boats, money, and more blessings than Abraham, and I got nothing. This was a real conflict with me. And if I opened the Bible and read it, it was even more clear that God does make a difference, some is elected, others are not. Page down and page up are God’s sovereign election. I could never understand how these pastors read the Bible. It is as if they at their education learned these unbiblical doctrines because it suited them; if it was true or false it made no difference. This is still something that to this day I cannot reconcile with, and it is the same with all the denominations in Sweden. The Calvinists are the only one that recognizes the sovereign election of God, the other does not. That is one of the clear and true teachings that drove me to the reformed faith, the other is the reverence for the Bible. I have always had, since I was a child, a high view of Scripture. I remember one night, I cannot be more than five or six, and I understood that the Word of God was like dynamite, it was true power in God’s Word. If I remember correctly so had my father some kind of magazine in his hands with dynamite on and something about the Bible and the connection with me was instantaneous. I have always had a love for the Bible. When I in good conscience could not tithe to these churches could I always tithe to the Bible Society’s.

Time to summarize; my upbringing was strict, stable, loving and caring, the church was in a way our second home, there was mostly sound Pentecostal teaching (so sound a Pentecostal teaching can be), there was pride in that they view themselves as better than everybody else, they regarded studies as something that quenched the Spirit, and the Spirit was all that we needed, he would teach us all that we needed to know; the Bible was revered, but there was no depth in their studies or doctrines, it was fairly childish; they tried to hide things rather than bringing it to the light, that is in a way very human; they were strict against it members when growing up, and before me much stricter and there are many testimonies today of unwise handling of such things, but the conclusion they have taken after this unwiseness is to never talk about hell, never talk about sin, never have any church discipline; that is in my view much more unwise of them.

Today everything looks much different than from all of this above, that will be for part two.