In this presentation, I analyze whether it is possible to trace a similar phenomenon among Finnish Millennial Christians as the Exvangelical movement has been in the United States in the past decade. There are Christian groups in Finland that have historically been influenced by Anglo-American Evangelicalism, the most important of them being the so called “Fifth revival movement” (from now on "the Fifth"). In the presentation, I analyze how comparable is the situation of the Finnish Millennial ex-members of the Fifth in the 21st century with the situation of American Millennial Evangelicals who deconstructed or left their Evangelical background behind in the United States. To support the findings, I present more general insights about the American influences on topical discussions within and around the Fifth revival movement in Finland.
The Exvangelical movement emerged in the United States among the Millennial generation in the mid-2010s and was connected with certain writers and books, such as Rachel Held Evans and her “Searching for Sunday” (2015), and certain podcasts, such as Exvangelical by Blake Chastain, who also coined the term in 2016. The movement grew out of the disappointment with the politicization of the Evangelical tradition in which these people had grown up. This current was underlined by the responses to the 2016 presidential election results in which 81 % of White Evangelicals voted for Trump, and eventually the ways in which some Evangelical churches embraced the claims of voting fraud in the 2020 election and supported the events of January 6th 2021 at Capitol Hill. (See e.g. Bullivant: Nonverts. The Making of Ex-Christian America, 2022, 145–150; Du Mez: Jesus and John Wayne, 2019; on Evans’s book as an example of the phenomenon, Mannon: I Grew Up In The Church, 2024, 134–140)
In the context of Finland, the Christian group that most resembles Evangelicals is the so called “Fifth revival movement”. There are five revival movements that operate inside the Finnish Evangelical-Lutheran Church, the former state church and current majority church in Finland. The Fifth is named after the fact that it emerged later than the four others which have longer historical roots. Originally, the Fifth has its roots in pietism, but as it grew in popularity and significance in Finland in the 1960s, it was also influenced by Anglo-American Evangelicalism. Even though the style of this movement resembles Evangelicalism, it has a different status in Finnish society as it has never held such a key role societally or politically as Evangelicals and Christian Right in general have in the United States. But the role of the conservative Christians affiliated with the Fifth in Finnish politics has not been insignificant either. The movement has had connections to Christian-Democratic party, which has, despite its relative smallness in the political field, occasionally held positions of power in Finnish government.
There is an embedded saying in the Finnish Christian circles that the biggest revival movement in Finland are the ex-members of the Fifth. (Eetu Kejonen in Spiritualiteetti 2020-luvun Suomessa, 2022) Traditionally this has referred to the older generations who grew up within the movement in the 1960s and later left, wounded by spiritual violence or milder versions of pressuring to certain beliefs. But I argue that there are also younger generations who have distanced themselves from organizations linked with the Fifth in the 21st century, around the same time as the Exvangelical movement took its form. Eetu Kejonen’s article on the former members of the Fifth suggests that there are such experiences among the younger generation as well. (Kejonen 2022) This is still, however, a field that has not been widely researched in Finland.
When looking at specific events that overlapped with the assumed trend of Millennials’ distancing from the Fifth in the 2010s, two stand out. The first one is the television debate titled “Homoilta” (Gay Evening) that was broadcasted at the Finnish Public Television in 2010. In the debate, especially the anti-gay remarks of the Christian Democrat politician Päivi Räsänen angered liberal viewers and lead to a spike in the resignments of the memberships of the Evangelical-Lutheran Church of Finland. The reaction was strong, even though Räsänen was there as a representative of her political party, not as a representative of the Lutheran Church or the Fifth.
The second event that I argue is in the core of this trend is the gospel music festival Maata Näkyvissä. The festival used to be the largest Finnish gospel music event to which church youth groups from around Finland travelled to and gathered. The event was and still is organized by the The Lutheran Evangelical Association of Finland (LEAF), which is one of the largest organizations within the Fifth revival movement. The organization does not accept homosexuality and also does not recognize female ordination, which the Lutheran Church in Finland has allowed since the 1986. Especially due to the rejection of female priests, many Lutheran congregations in Finland increasingly began to boycott the event in the 2010s. These two examples show how the unchanged attitudes among the Fifth-affiliated groups and individuals in the position of power began to be more marginalized in Finnish society as the Millennial generation grew more liberal than older generations.
The transatlantic connections between the conservative Christians are also still present, and the latest example of that also links with the politician Päivi Räsänen. There was a widely covered court case that started in 2019 in which Räsänen was accused of hate speech when referring to the Bible. The event caught attention among the conservative Lutherans in the United States who supported Räsänen and gave publicity to the case. Already in 2004, The Heritage Foundation – which is linked with the Missouri Synod – had funded the publication of Räsänen’s pamphlet on the topic. (See e.g. Huttunen & Lehtipuu: The Bible as Hate Speech? – The Nordic Bible. Bible Reception in Contemporary Nordic Societies, 2023)
The presentation presents the premise and first findings of this emerging research project that traces transatlantic influences between the United States and Finland on Evangelical Christianity and its role in society and politics.
In this presentation, I analyze whether it is possible to trace a similar phenomenon among Finnish Millennial Christians as the Exvangelical movement has been in the United States in the past decade. There are Christian groups in Finland that have historically been influenced by Anglo-American Evangelicalism, the most important of them being the so called “Fifth revival movement”. In the presentation, I analyze how comparable is the situation of the Finnish Millennial ex-members of the Fifth in the 21st century with the situation of American Millennial Evangelicals who deconstructed or left their Evangelical background behind in the United States. To support the findings, I present more general insights about the American influences on topical discussions within and around the Fifth revival movement in Finland.