Study title

Church Resignation Forms Filed in Finland: Reasons for Resigning 2025

Dataset ID Number

FSD4052

Persistent identifiers

https://urn.fi/urn:nbn:fi:fsd:T-FSD4052
https://doi.org/10.60686/t-fsd4052

Data Type

Qualitative

Authors

• Tampereen vapaa-ajattelijat ry

Abstract

The online service eroakirkosta.fi allows people to resign from church by filling in an online form. After filling in the form, people are given an opportunity to explain their reasons for resigning in free-text format. This dataset consists of the reasons entered by people when quitting the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Finland or the Finnish Orthodox Church in 2025. The data is mainly in Finnish.

Background information includes age, gender and month of leaving church.

The dataset is only available in the languages used for entering the information (mainly Finnish).

Keywords

church; religion; religious affiliation; religious behaviour; religious beliefs; religious institutions

Topic Classification

• Social sciences (Fields of Science Classification)
• Religion and values (CESSDA Topic Classification)
• Social change (CESSDA Topic Classification)

Series

Reasons for Resigning from Church

Distributor

Finnish Social Science Data Archive

Access

The dataset is (C) available only for research including master's theses.

Data Collector

• Tampereen vapaa-ajattelijat ry

Collection Dates

2025-01-01 – 2025-12-31

Nation

Finland

Geographical Coverage

Finland

Analysis/Observation Unit Type

Individual

Universe

People who had quit the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Finland or the Finnish Orthodox Church on eroakirkosta.fi

Time Method

Cross-section

Sampling Procedure

Total universe/Complete enumeration

Collection Mode

Self-administered questionnaire: Web-based (CAWI)

Research Instrument

Programming script

Data Files

Textual explanations submitted by 484 persons in a single TXT file. Additionally, the data were organised into an easy to use HTML version and a CSV version.

Data File Language

The data files of this dataset are available in the following languages: multilingual.

Qualitative data are available in their original language only and are not translated.

Data Version

1.0

Citation Requirement

The data and its creators shall be cited in all publications and presentations for which the data have been used. The bibliographic citation may be in the form suggested by the archive or in the form required by the publication.

Bibliographical Citation

Tampereen vapaa-ajattelijat ry: Church Resignation Forms Filed in Finland: Reasons for Resigning 2025 [dataset]. Data version 1.0 (2026-01-19). Finnish Social Science Data Archive [distributor]. DOI: https://doi.org/10.60686/t-fsd4052; URN: https://urn.fi/urn:nbn:fi:fsd:T-FSD4052

Deposit Requirement

Notify FSD of all publications where you have used the data by sending the citation information to user-services.fsd@tuni.fi.

Disclaimer

The original data creators and the archive bear no responsibility for any results or interpretations arising from the reuse of the data.

FSD has not been informed of any publications related to the data.