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Augsburg Confession and the Church Assembly of the Church of Sweden in 1593. Church liturgy is laid down in the Handbook of the Church of Sweden and the Psalm Book. Few Protestant churches have kept as much of the medieval liturgy as has the Church of Sweden. The church's policies are laid down in law by the Church Assembly and the Riksdag. Although the church as such takes no stand on current controversial political or social issues, in practice the clergy in general still maintains its conservative attitude in most such matters; divorce and abortion, for example, are countenanced only in exceptional circumstances. Swedish Protestant leaders, notably of the official church, have been conspicuously active in the ecumenical movement. The first World Conference of Churches met in Stockholm in 1925 at the instigation of the Archbishop of the Church of Sweden.
c. Relations with the government
Although the Church of Sweden has kept considerably powers of self-government in church affairs, particularly at the local level, the national government is dominant over it, and national government subsidies constitute an important portion of church funds. Laws concerning church-state relations or internal regulatory affairs must be passed by both the Riksdag and the Church Assembly; the latter has only what amounts to a veto on such legislation, because it cannot amend but but accept or reject the Riksdag bills as a whole. In practice, however, the assembly has rarely used its veto. Although the King-in-Council in his name has the power to appoint the bishops, including the Archbishop, the professors in the theological faculties of the universities, and all church officials. The clergy has a dual civil and religious legal status—its members can be removed from their positions only through civil actions under the criminal code; the church officials then relieve them of their religious duties. The principal government ministry for church-state affairs is the Ministry of Education and Ecclesiastical Affairs. Its most important functions include supervision of the nomination of candidates for the clergy, preparation of that part of the national budget concerned with church affairs, and supervision of the operations of parish governmental bodies and the execution of church law.
Total church revenue in 1969 amounted to SKr1,060 million, of which SKr676 million derived from church taxes, SKr110 million from state grants, and SKr30 million from charges and fees for civil registration duties and other civil services rendered.
An official commission is studying the feasibility of gradually, over a 20-year period, severing all state ties with the national church. A reliable Swedish newspaper reported in December 1971 that the commission favored converting the Church of Sweden into a "free" church in 1976, with the state assuming its civil registration duties as well as its control over funerals. For 5 years after 1976 the church would retain its right to tax revenue, and the government would retain its authority to name bishops and some pastors, these reciprocal rights gradually to be relinquished from 1982 to 1992, a period in which some transitional state support would still be forthcoming. By 1992, according to the newspaper account, all official connections would be discontinued.
2. Protestant free sects
About 5% of Sweden's population belongs to Protestant "free" or nonconformist churches. The largest of them is the Pentecostal congregations, with 91,000 members in 1970, closely followed by the Swedish Missionary Society, with just other 87,000 members. Other "free churches" include the Salvation Army (36,200), the Evangelical National Missionary Society (28,200), the Swedish Baptist Church (25,600), the Orebro Missionary Society (19,200), the Swedish Alliance Missionary Society (13,800), the Methodist Church (9,000), and minor splinter groups representing the Seventh-day Adventists, the Society of Friends, and Jehovah's Witnesses. it should be noted that notwithstanding the greater fervency of belief implicit in the establishment of nonconformist sects, even the Protestant "free churches" have been losing adherents in the last decade or two, again reflecting the casualness with which Swedes are increasingly coming to regard the formal practice of their faith. The total number of "free church" communicants decreased from 357,140 in 1960 to 323,045 in 1969; only the small Holiness Mission and Swedish Salvation Army sects registered slight gains.
3. Other religions
Non-Protestant churches have very few adherents, amounting to fewer than 1% of the population. Such churches are located principally in foreign colonies of the larger cities. Since 1873 Swedish citizens have been permitted to join the Roman Catholic Church, but until the arrival of refugees from states along the Baltic—notably Poland—and of other continental immigrants seeking work after World War II, the membership was insignificant. In the 1950's these
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