The Construction of Authority in Finnish Lutheran Clerical War Rhetoric: A Pentadic Analysis

Abstract

Finland's Winter War (1939–40) against the Soviet Union had been defensive, but the so-called Continuation War that broke out in June 1941 was not. This offensive operation demanded thorough justification, because neither the troops nor the public were unanimous about embarking on an offensive campaign in alliance with Nazi Germany. The Lutheran clergy were important in legitimizing the war because priests had formal power deriving from the peculiar relationship between the Finnish state and the Lutheran Church, whereby they were de jure officials of the state as well as of the church. Drawing on Christian and biblical imagery to support the war, they reached a receptive audience, as nearly 96 per cent of Finns belonged to the Lutheran Church. This article uses Kenneth Burke’s dramatistic pentad to analyze how the Lutheran clergy constructed their authority rhetorically during the Continuation War 1941–1944, strategically shifting the grammatical and theological foundation of that authority as the war progressed.