Political Theology

Abstract

This is a special issue on political theology in the Nordic countries. The Nordic countries represent a region in Northern Europe and the North Atlantic and consists of five countries, Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Nor way and Sweden, including their associated territories, the Faroe Islands, Greenland and Aland. Around 25 million people live in an area of 3.5 million km 2 . Although there are significant differences between the countries, it would not be an exaggeration to suggest that they also share a common history, including similar societal structures, cultures and religious heritage. Linguistically, they all, with the exception of Finland and the Sami people (that inhabit Finland and Norway as well as Sweden), belong to the same language group, and throughout history there has been a constant exchange, sometimes of a more war-like and sometimes of a more friendly nature. In the fifteenth century, all of the Nordic countries were united in the Kalmar Union; it was not until the twentieth century that all five countries that we now have were independent from each other. Politically, Denmark, Norway and Sweden are constitutional monarchies with a parliamentary system, whereas Finland and Iceland are parliamentary republics. Iceland and Norway do not belong to the European Union, whereas the other three do. Religiously, Christianity has been the dominant religion in the Nordic countries for more than a thousand years, and the latter were all part of the Lutheran reformation in the sixteenth 1. Ola Sigurdson is professor of systematic theolog y and director of Centre for Culture and Health at the University of Gothenburg, Sweden. The author of more than fifteen books on systematic theology, political philosophy, theology and culture and political theology, his most recent publication is Theology and Marxism in Eagleton and Žižek: A Conspiracy of Hope (Palgrave Macmillan, 2012).