Abstract
The aim of this special issue is to advance research on biblical reception in Scandinavian contexts and to offer new insights into the intricate relationship between religiosity and secularity more broadly. This is done by engaging with theoretical questions concerning religion, secularity, and biblical reception in the modern world. In this introduction, we contextualize the special issue in relation to previous biblical scholarship on the relationship between “the Bible” and “the secular” as well as research on the Scandinavian conditions. In addition to contextualizing the special issue, we introduce its content and contributors. Ultimately, the introduction argues that the Scandinavian conditions, with their distinctive yet globally resonant features, render the inquiry of the entanglement between “the Bible” and “the secular” relevant beyond the northern European periphery. By situating Scandinavian examples within global scholarly debates, the special issue contributes to both new empirical material and theoretical reflections that resonate across different contexts.
This special issue deals with questions relating to how “the Bible” and “the secular” are negotiated in the Scandinavian context.1 How are biblical texts translated, framed, interpreted, adapted, and mediated in what is often characterized as a highly secularized context? How has the Bible influenced laws that govern secular societies, and how has it been engaged in public debate to inform assumptions of secularity?
The interdisciplinary articles presented here, written by not only biblical scholars (in a narrowly conceived way) but also representatives from practical theology, law, and sociology of religion, range from examining ideas or assumptions of “the Bible” to specific biblical passages that dominate in particular discourses.2 By investigating various materials, including newspaper articles, law, public debate on translations and adaptations, and public debate in the parliaments, this issue seeks to contribute to the field of biblical reception in Western secular contexts.
The aim of the special issue is, thus, to advance research on biblical reception specifically as it relates to Bible-use (Strømmen 2024) in Scandinavian contexts, thereby offering new insights into the intricate relationship between religiosity and secularity. The Scandinavian conditions, with their distinctive yet globally resonant features, render this inquiry relevant beyond the northern European periphery. This special issue does not merely seek to add new regional case studies; it aims to critically engage with broader theoretical questions concerning religion, secularity, and biblical reception in the modern world. By situating Scandinavian examples within global scholarly debates, we hope to contribute both new empirical material and theoretical reflections that resonate across different contexts.
In this introduction, we set out to frame an ongoing scholarly conversation on various aspects of the relationship between the Bible and secularity, not only regarding how the Bible is deployed in secular contexts, but also how the Bible has informed notions of secularism. Further, we will give a short background to the Scandinavian context. Both these shorter outlines serve as a backdrop to the coming articles, which will be presented at the end of this introduction.
1 The Bible and the Secular: A Vibrant Conversation
It is a recurring claim among scholars that there exists a connection between the Bible and notions of the secular or secularization processes, with some even suggesting that secularism has biblical roots (cf. Davies 2010). The scholarly interest in this intriguing entanglement has grown over the past few decades, inviting a range of approaches from researchers from various disciplines.
A commonly employed approach to research on the Bible and the secular is an intellectual-historical one, which analyses the usage of the Bible by philosophers, politicians, theologians, and other influential thinkers. This approach explores how discourses around the Bible and its perceived core messages are construed in interplay with emerging ideas of secularity and secularization processes. While there are notable exceptions, such as Hahn and Wiker (2013, 2021), most studies focus on the Enlightenment period. A prominent example of this approach is historian Sheehan’s (2005) exploration of how Enlightenment ideals and theories of secularization gave rise to the concept of “a cultural Bible.” Equally well-known is biblical scholar Yvonne Sherwood’s (e.g., 2006, 2012) work on “the liberal Bible”, a discourse in which “the Bible” is understood as the foundation of modern conceptions of tolerance and rights. Sherwood, too, traces the genealogy of this discourse to Enlightenment thought and argues that theories of secularization and democratization articulated by Robert Bellah, Francis Fukuyama, Marcel Gauchet, and Peter Berger are indebted to “the liberal Bible” (Sherwood 2012, 303–332). Other notable contributors to the conversation include language and literature scholar DeCook (2021), who demonstrates that narratives about the origin of the Bible during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries have played a significant role in the development of the idea of “the secular.” In a similar vein, the political philosopher Herrero (2017) introduces the concept of a “philosophical Bible,” which is the result of the biblical interpretations of philosophers such as Hobbes, Spinoza, and Locke, foundational theorists of “the secular modern state.” According to Herrero, their philosophical engagement with Scripture catalyzed two interrelated developments: the secularization of Christianity and the sacralization of politics.
A second approach explores how the object “the Bible” is used in secular settings (Sherwood 2000; Berlinerblau 2005; Engelke 2009). Special attention has been paid to the Bible as a material object and its role in the dynamics of secularity. As biblical scholar Watts (2006) has pointed out in his seminal chapter on “The Three Dimensions of Scripture,” Protestants tend to emphasize the iconic dimension of Scripture in secular settings. A compelling example of how the materialization of the Bible as a response to secularity plays out is Hicks-Keeton and Concannon’s (2022) analysis of the Museum of the Bible as a way to enact “The Bible” as a social construct, a cultural icon, in white evangelical circles. However, as anthropologist Bielo (2022, 3–6) observes, such acts of materialization generate affective practices and circulate powerful ideologies, thereby functioning as authorization practices. Bielo mentions heritagization3 as the prime example of such a practice and, drawing on the work of Isnart and Cerezales (2019), points out how heritagization often is linked to processes of secularization.
A third prominent approach in the scholarly discussion on the relationship between “the Bible” and “the secular” focuses on how Enlightenment and modern assumptions and discourses about the Bible inform contemporary uses of Scripture. This includes the negotiation of secularity, secularization, and the very concept of the secular in public and political discourse, particularly within U.S. and U.K. contexts (Sherwood 2006; Berlinerblau 2007; Crossley 2014; Strømmen 2024).
Yet, as Sherwood (2006, 53–54) points out, differences in the political climates of the United Kingdom and the United States lead to distinct uses of the liberal Bible in these locations. Whereas the president of the U.S. can invoke “God” and “the Bible,” the prime minister of UK operates in a theo-political climate that does not “do God” in a similar way. In other words, the relationship between Scripture and secular manifests differently depending on the context.
This is further evident in The Nordic Bible: Bible Reception in Contemporary Nordic Societies (2023), the most recent major contribution to studying biblical reception in the Scandinavian context. Several chapters demonstrate how the specificities of the Nordic context—Europe’s northernmost region—shape the usage, engagement, impact, and function of biblical texts and discourses about “the Bible.” For example, in Denmark’s right-wing political landscape, the liberal Bible takes on a distinctly Lutheran, nationalist, and anti-Islamic character (Larsen 2023). In Sweden, a society characterized by a far-reaching process of secularization, a “secular Bible” persists, deployed primarily for rhetorical purposes (Stenström 2023). In Norway, there is a notable continuity between a “war Bible” invoked by the far-right terrorist Anders Breivik and a “civilization Bible” used by right-wing populist parties, particularly in how these narratives are assembled and mobilized (Strømmen 2023). The reasons for these differences remain a matter of debate. Løland (2023) argues that the paradox of high levels of formal church membership, alongside low levels of religious belief and practice, conditions the Nordic political engagement with Scripture. Some scholars also invoke Berg-Sørensen’s concept of Lutheran secularism4 (Berg-Sørensen 2010) to account for these contextual variations.
Nonetheless, the three Scandinavian countries (Sweden, Denmark, and Norway) also share similarities with broader Western contexts. As, for example, biblical scholars Bjelland Kartzow and Neutel show (2023), the public discourse surrounding recent Bible translations into Danish, Norwegian, and Swedish reflects a wider trend in the West in which Christianity is framed as a matter of cultural heritage, and the translations rely on an understanding of the Bible as a text that is integral to national language, identity, and cultural belonging.
Before presenting the contributions of this issue, we provide a short background to the Scandinavian context.
2 The Scandinavian Context
The Scandinavian countries, Denmark, Norway, and Sweden, could be described as typical Nordic welfare states, highly influenced by the dominance of Social Democratic parties in the post-war era, depending on the states to provide public services and to redistribute income (Lundby and Repstad 2018). Scandinavia is traditionally known as a society based on cultural homogeneity and ideals of social and gender equality. In recent decades, immigration has changed Scandinavian ethnic and religious landscapes and transformed the countries into relatively diverse nations (Furseth 2018a). Further, as immigration rose to unexpected levels in 2015 and 2016 with the large arrival of Syrian and other refugees, the Scandinavian welfare states have been under pressure, especially Sweden, and the involvement of the states in the area of religion has become a contested issue (Furseth 2018a, 5).5
The Scandinavian countries are ranked as some of the most secularized countries in the world (World Values Survey 2023). In a European context, Scandinavia thus stands out as highly influenced by secularism, while at the same time, scholars tend to point out the long history and impact of Lutheran Christianity as a dominant national religion (until recently) institutionalized as state churches (Lundby et al. 2017). Traditionally, the Lutheran majority churches have been closely intertwined with the state(s). The long tradition of state churches, with the introduction of the Lutheran Reformation putting an end to the rivalry between state and church, represents a striking Scandinavian convergence. It gave the church organizations a double role: both to provide religious worship and to be used for official and worldly duties, functioning as a sort of tool in the hands of the state (Elstad 2023, 26). Today, despite Denmark being the only country with a state church (abolished in Norway 2017 and Sweden 2000), the majority churches in all three countries are semi-autonomous with different degrees of autonomy from the state (Furseth et al. 2018).
In Scandinavia, there is a widespread self-understanding of liberal open-mindedness, and secularity is often taken for granted. Although Scandinavians in general are described by scholars as having a weak personal connection to religion, Christianity still holds a privileged position as an expression of cultural identity (Lövheim et al. 2018). The Scandinavian context is characterized by what sociologist of religion Furseth (2018b) terms religious complexity. Furseth highlights seemingly contradictory parallel trends such as the increasing privatization of religion, the decreasing membership in the majority Lutheran churches, the increasing cultural and religious diversity following migration, but at the same time, Christianity’s lingering influence and the increasing visibility of religion in the public sphere.
In the recent decade, religion has become a more visible topic in the secular press as well as in Scandinavian parliamentary debates, suggesting a politicization of religion (Lindberg 2020).6 A so-called new visibility of religion tends to frame religion as either something “good” or “bad,” making religion visible in the public sphere when characterized as problematic or problem-solving for society, or in relation to conflicts and controversies (Hjelm 2014, cf. Shakman Hurd 2015). Ongoing immigration has led to rising tensions in the Scandinavian welfare states, with right-wing populist movements shifting focus from “nationalism” to “civilizationalism,” driven by a perceived civilizational threat from Islam (Lundby and Repstad 2018). While the Scandinavian countries are still embedded in the Christian tradition, there is thus a shift in all three countries, away from consensus around religion as an issue primarily related to the majority churches, toward increased contestation about the connection between religion, cultural values, and national identity (Lövheim et al. 2018, 145).
As part of the Lutheran tradition, the Christian Bible has had a major impact on Scandinavian culture and society (cf. Elstad 2023). Biblical narratives, themes, and language have been incorporated into the collective memory of the Scandinavian population and continue to form parts of the common cultural tradition. Recent studies argue that the Bible has been liberated from religious institutions and authorities and is increasingly referred to as an important book in the context of Scandinavian history and culture, continually acting as bearer of tradition and a significant container of cultural values (Bjelland Kartzow et al. 2023, 4).7
Ultimately, this special issue focuses on various usages of the Bible in divergent settings, in a secular context characterized by religious complexity. As such, it will elucidate biblical reception in a specific, regional context while also serving as a foundation for comparative studies of how the secular and the Bible are negotiated in different parts of the world, particularly in European and Western contexts that have been historically characterized by Christianity.
3 Overview of the Issue
The issue consists of five articles, focusing on a variety of material in different Scandinavian contexts, and a response from a scholar outside the Scandinavian context. Timothy Beal offers perspectives from the US context in his article “Sociotechnical Assemblages and Biblical Affects: A Response to Scripture and Secularism in Modern Scandinavia and Beyond.” Based on the discussions in this special issue and his own work, Beal further suggests two key directions for future research in the field of biblical reception.
In the article “Digging for Roots: Biblical Assemblages and Perceptions of the Secular in the Swedish 1957–1958 Public Debate on Women’s Ordination,” Frida Mannerfelt aims to uncover some of the roots of the entanglement between secularity and the Bible during the 1950s, a decade when the secularization processes were gaining momentum in Swedish society and legislation. Drawing on religionization theory and Hannah M. Strømmen’s concept of biblical assemblages, Mannerfelt identifies three different perceptions of secularity, paired with particular and distinct biblical assemblages.
Richard Pleijel sets out to investigate responses to the production of a new official Swedish Bible taking place in 1972 onwards in his article “Responding to Secularization: The Bible as Public Scripture in late Postwar Sweden.” The translation committee, appointed by the Swedish government, had as one objective to produce “a Bible translation for all Swedes” using supposed “scientific” and “objective” approaches in their work. Pleijel analyzes the critical response to the translation project by two seemingly contrasting groups of societal actors: feminists and conservative Christians. By inquiring how scientific knowledge became the object of more serious contention in the public sphere, Pleijel argues that it lost some of its authority as an epistemic foundation of the Bible as public scripture.
In his article “Children’s Bibles as Sites of Collective Memory in Denmark: Between Ecclesial Christianity and Cultural Christianity,” Kasper Bro Larsen analyzes how Danish children’s Bibles function as cultural sites of memory that bridge ecclesiastical Christianity and cultural Christianity. Larsen finds that children’s Bibles often simplify and reshape passages from the canonical Bible to align with modern expectations, thereby contributing to the stabilization of a culturally informed biblical canon. Furthermore, the article illustrates how children’s Bibles navigate between tradition and renewal by enabling a dual affiliation to both religious practice and cultural identity. The conclusion posits that children’s Bibles are crucial in shaping a culturally remembered Bible, through which Christian traditions are both reinterpreted and transmitted within a secular society.
Helge Årsheim explores in his article “Always Too Much, and Never Enough: Nordic Laws and the Bible” the tension between legal receptions of the Bible and other sacred texts in recent legislation and case-law in the Nordic countries. He argues that due to its centrality in the cultural codes surrounding Nordic law, the Bible has played a variety of different roles in the legal system. It has served as a source of authority and inspiration for the contents, structure, and procedures of the secular legal system, and an object of veneration and respect. As such, the Bible is understood as one sacred text among many, whose status is contested and controversial, particularly in relation to hate speech and the freedom of expression.
Hanna Liljefors and Linnea Jensdotter examine how references to scriptures in Swedish parliamentary speeches function as tools to reinforce ideas on who is considered part of Swedish national identity by using Michael Billig’s thesis on banal nationalism. In their article “Scriptures in Swedish Parliamentary Debates: A Hot Qur’an and A Banal Bible,” they illustrate how references to the Qur’an express what Billig describes as “hot” nationalism, while references to the Bible express “banal” nationalism. The study’s findings reflect Billig’s thesis, that while “banal” nationalism operates in the background, on a latent level, it is essential to make the “hot” nationalism logical.
By examining biblical reception in the abovementioned spheres, that all relate to secular(ized) contexts (such as secular press, law, politics, and audiences, and a Bible translation for “all” Swedes, that is, regardless of faith) and divergent notions of what characterizes the “secular,” we aim to contribute to the fascinating conversation outlined in this introduction regarding the relationship between scripture and secularism.
Generally, a secularist worldview tends to hold that there is something called “religion” that can be clearly defined, identified, and delineated from the secular domains of public life, such as government, education, the market, the law, and the media. We side with Schewel and Wilson, who stress that “the secular” and “the religious” are not fixed entities, but rather categories that carry different meanings in different contexts (Schewel and Wilson 2020:2–3). The articles in this issue will grapple with different aspects and definitions of the secular, secularism, and secularization. For an introduction to the different terms, see Casanova 2009. For a summary of the secularization theory, and critique thereof, see Furseth 2018a.
The issue emerges from an ongoing scholarly conversation where, as a part of the Knut and Alice Wallenberg Foundation-funded interdisciplinary research project Scripture & Secularism: biblical influences in and on Modern Publics, scholars from a wide range of fields were invited for a workshop designed to expand and deepen the discussion on the entanglement of “the Bible” and “the secular.”
The concept “heritagization” is used to describe the political-aesthetic process in which something – places, buildings, traditions, objects, ways of life – is selected and recognized as cultural heritage. As Birgit Meyer and Marleen de Witte (2016) points out, since heritage formation entails a process of being set apart och lifted up, it undergoes a process of sacralization. Conversely, when religious expressions (the sacred) are considered ‘cultural heritage’, they are often subjected to a profanation in which their original sacrality is lost (Meyer and de Witte 2016, 275–277).
The concept “Lutheran secularism” highlights that the Scandinavian notions of the secular are heavily impacted by the majority religion – the Lutheran state churches – and, in particular, the Lutheran doctrine of the two kingdoms (Berg-Sørensen 2010, 208–210). See also, for example, Barrling (2024), who characterizes Sweden not just as “the most secular country in the world”, but also “the most protestant country in the world,” due to the fact that culture, moral, values, society’s organization and legislation, and well as its notion of secularism is permeated by Lutheran social imagination.
Although the Scandinavian countries differ regarding their approach towards immigration, asylum seekers, and integration, the general trend of restrictive asylum policies prevails in all three countries (Garvik and Valenta 2019).
This does not indicate that the Bible is referred to more often in parliamentarian debates (cf. Løland 2023) and further it might not mean more influence of religious actors and arguments but rather contribute to more political control of the public presence of religion, or less influence of religious organizations (Lövheim et al. 2018).
This of course does not pertain to Jewish and Christian communities for whom the Bible remains an important set of texts to be read, who treat the Bible as sacred scripture, and who assiduously read and re-read biblical texts.
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