Abstract
This article examines religion in Finnish newspapers, arguing thatreligion-related discourses have changed from one of Lutheran dominance to one of diversity. The main data consists of a longitudinalsample (1946–2016) of the most popular Finnish newspaper, HelsinginSanomat, and especially of its editorials and readers’ letters. Additionaldata covers a wider variety of newspapers from the 1990s to 2018. Thedata is analysed using quantitative content analysis and a discursiveapproach. It will be suggested that it is possible to discuss diversityboth as an emergent discourse and a theme in the Finnish media sincethe mid-1990s, thereby overcoming earlier frameworks that took Lutheranism for granted or gave it a special role in the private sphere.The analysis shows that these shifts do not provide clear support forthe idea that newspapers and journalism are anti-religious; rather, itsuggests that they may be understood as having a ‘liberalizing’ effect,especially when religious values are not seen as compatible with thoseof journalists and newspapers.
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