Authors

• Church Research Institute

Keywords

Protestantism, beliefs, church, donations to charity, participation, religion, religious doctrines, religious experience, religious movements, religious practice

Abstract

The survey studied religiosity and church membership in Finland as well as people's participation in parish activities. Questions also charted personal faith, spiritual matters, attitudes towards religious communities, and family.

The respondents were first asked about helping others, donating money to charity, and the meaning of their own work. Questions surveyed why the respondents helped other people (e.g. they felt it was their duty as a citizen or a Christian, they felt good when helping others), how much money the respondents had donated to charity in the past year, and whether the respondents thought it was important that they could help and serve others in their work.

The next questions focused on how the respondents spent Sundays and holidays. The respondents were asked, for example, whether they usually went to worship service on Sundays, ate a more festive meal, cooked, or cleaned. The respondents' Easter and Christmas celebrations were also examined with questions on whether they fasted or participated in a worship service on Easter and whether they visited graves or read the Christmas Gospel on Christmas. Further questions focused on fasting and the meaning of fasting to the respondents as well as the respondents' views on the importance of religious ceremonies in connection to big life events (e.g. when a child is born, marriage). Religion and worldviews were surveyed next with questions related to different religions and their teachings, spiritual matters, the existence of God, and the firmness of the respondents' belief in a number of religious tenets and phenomena (e.g. a good God, angels, the Devil).

The respondents' personal spirituality was charted with questions on how often they prayed, read the Bible, watched or listened to religious programmes on TV or radio, and visited websites related to religion. The respondents were asked which books (excluding sacred books of religions), songs and spiritual influencers had the most significance for them spiritually. The respondents' religious and supernatural experiences, such as God answering their prayers or foreseeing a future event, were also surveyed. Religious traditions, family and childhood were surveyed next. The respondents were asked to choose which statements about religion and religious activities they thought described their childhood home and whether they had taught or would teach their children a bedtime prayer. Questions also charted how important the respondents thought it was to pass on various religious traditions, such as baptism, attending worship service, and celebrating Christmas as the birthday of Jesus Christ, to future generations.

Attitudes towards the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Finland were also surveyed. The respondents were asked whether people close to them viewed the church with a more positive or negative attitude, what they thought the church's role was in mitigating climate change, and whether the church should support same-sex marriage. Next, membership of a church or other religious community was examined. Those who were members of the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Finland were asked about the importance of a number of reasons for Church membership as well as whether they had considered quitting the Church. Those who were not members of the Evangelical Lutheran Church were asked whether they had previously quit the Church and what their reasons for quitting had been. Attitudes towards Finnish identity and different groups of people were also surveyed.

Background variables included, among others, the respondent's age, gender, level of education, occupation, household size, household income, type of housing, NUTS2 region of residence, household composition, and political party preference in the 2019 parliamentary elections.