2000+ people left the Finnish EL Church in 24 hrs

[Ronja]

There was a discussion about homosexuality and society on Finland's most watched TV channel yesterday evening (Tuesday 12th October). Take a look NOW at the number of people who left the Evangelic Lutheran Church of Finland during and after Christians had presented their "best case" against homosexuality and homosexuals in that TV discussion. YAY!

http://www.mpolla.net/ek/

Edit: the light grey line is for the day before yesterday, the dark grey for yesterday and the red for today. The pink dotted line is the prognosis for the rest of today. Thus far a typical day has seen 100-150 people leave the church.

EDIT (added at OP's request):

Edit 20-Oct-2010: If you are new to this story, and want to read only one news article / summary about this brouhaha, please read: http://www.news24.com/World/News/Gay-de ... s-20101019

[Feck]

Nice ..serves them right .

[Ronja]

My Finnish freethinker friends are right now joking on Facebook that the woman who gave the most revolting comments, Päivi Räsänen (leader of the Finnish "Christian Democratic" party), should get the "Promoter of Freethinking" award this year... Unofficial pre-information about the statistics hints that many of the people leaving today were women in their 30ies (a statistically typical leaving person has just turned 18, i.e. does not need their parents' permission any more).

[Ronja]

Some news in English about the situation yesterday http://www.yle.fi/uutiset/news/2010/10/ ... 55243.html

[Robert_S]

Is there an English translation of the program?

[Ronja]

Robert: I doubt it, and neither M nor I have seen the program (ww were very busy when it was aired). We will be able to watch it on areena.yle.fi once we get a better net connection (we are out in the countryside now, with only 3G net, so video over the net just does not work - we have tried.

I'll see, if we can manage to get some kind of crowdsourcing going, to at least summarize the program in English. But I can't promise anything yet.

[FBM]

I guess they left because they were....




done.

[Ronja]

I ran an article in Finland's biggest Swedish-language newspaper HBL through Google translate, and got this:

Source: http://translate.google.com/translate?h ... v=_t&twu=1

Slightly corrected text below. Beware, though - machine translation from Swedish to English is usually pretty good, but I am likely to have missed something!

Caption for a photo: Päivi Räsänen again revealed her ignorance of what homosexuality is in TV2 A2 Teema talk evening on Tuesday night. (YLE Areena / Screenshot)

THE CHURCH
A record number left the church yesterday
Posted: 13/10 15:10> Updated: 14/10 07:55

Yesterday, 2633 people left the church via the Website eroakirkosta.fi ("leavethechurch.fi"). That is over 1,500 more than the previous record for one day. The reason is the clergy and Christian Democrat comments in the gay debate in TV2 on Tuesday night. Already late Tuesday night, while the program on A2 Teema, "Homo Night" lasted, the number of people leaving the church with the help of the web service eroakirkosta.fi was more than twice as many as usual.

The reason for the mass exit, which on Wednesday hit a new record, was the debate about homosexuality that was broadcast on TV2 on Tuesday night. Participants in the debate included the Christian Democrats' chairperson Päivi Räsänen and several representatives of the church. Räsänen's comments were not new, the Christian Democrats' niggardly attitude towards rainbow families has been commonly known a long time.

"For a child's development, it is optimal to have a mom and a dad", Räsänen said, adding that "obviously there can be accidents or the like that make one parent disappears from the scene, but ... one should not consciously strive for a situation where a child is deprived of a mother and a father". Tampere Bishop Matti Repo pointed out that the child is indeed entitled to parents, but that does not mean that parents have the right to children, which many interpreted as homosexuals not having the same rights as hetero couples to have children. Gay advocates pointed out for their part, that all people have equal rights in the society, also when it comes to adoptions and the like.

"It is quite clear that it was the television program that caused the peak, it is quite a safe bet, "said Heikki Orsila, the man behind eroakirkosta.fi, to the online magazine Uusi Suomi . According to Orsila similar peaks are never random, but occur regularly when the church and Christians show themselves in a bad light in public.

Towards the end Päivi Räsänen made a noted point with which she probably aroused great irritation: "I can well understand the tendency that you can feel attracted to the same sex, but it is not the same as to act on those impulses. It is for us Christians a moral issue. I have several friends with a homosexual identity who still oppose gay families and lifestyles ... A human being knows well enough in his heart that if he is in a homosexual relationship, he does something that - according to for example the Christian world view - is wrong."

Homosexuality was compared by the conservative debaters also with polygamy and promiscuity. The homosexuals were also invited to leave Finland for New Zealand or San Francisco "where people accept gays better." Although the tone was inappropriate at times, the discussion stayed to the very end on the typical Finnish, civilized level.

Already on Tuesday, 372 people left the church via the web, more than half of them while the program was going on. During a normal day approximately 140 members of the church leave in this way. On Wednesday, the figure rose to 2633 people, which is three times more than the previous daily record 1049, which was set on 31. December 2008.

HBL

[Robert_S]

To Finland!

[mistermack]

Some news in English about the situation yesterday http://www.yle.fi/uutiset/news/2010/10/ ... 55243.html

Is it my eyes, or is the design of that church inspired by the Ku Klux Klan?

Seriously though, did Jesus ever say anything anti-gay, or do they rely on the old testament? All this loving your fellow man sounds very gay to me. And a man who supposedly never married, in an era when it was a man's religious duty to marry, also sounds suspiciously gay. (nothing wrong with that).

Perhaps it's "thou shalt not covet thy neighbour's ass" that causes all the trouble.
.

[Svartalf]

Stupid question... but are the EL the basic and dominant form of the lutheran church in Finland, or is "evangelical" the operative word meaning that they are akin to American born agains and other complete loons?

[Robert_S]

I ran an article in Finland's biggest Swedish-language newspaper HBL through Google translate, and got this:

Source: http://translate.google.com/translate?h ... v=_t&twu=1

Slightly corrected text below. Beware, though - machine translation from Swedish to English is usually pretty good, but I am likely to have missed something!

snip
Homosexuality was compared by the conservative debaters also with polygamy and promiscuity. The homosexuals were also invited to leave Finland for New Zealand or San Francisco "where people accept gays better." Although the tone was inappropriate at times, the discussion stayed to the very end on the typical Finnish, civilized level.

Already on Tuesday, 372 people left the church via the web, more than half of them while the program was going on. During a normal day approximately 140 members of the church leave in this way. On Wednesday, the figure rose to 2633 people, which is three times more than the previous daily record 1049, which was set on 31. December 2008.

HBL

Thanks Ronja!

It looks like maybe that church needs to leave Finland for a different part of the world "where people accept willfully ignorant bigoted asshats better!"

[Chinaski]

Woo, perkele!

[Deep Sea Isopod]

That church looks cool.




To Finland!

Finland, Finland, Finland,
The country where I want to be,
Pony trekking or camping,
Or just watching TV.
Finland, Finland, Finland.
It's the country for me.

You're so near to Russia,
So far from Japan,
Quite a long way from Cairo,
Lots of miles from Vietnam.

[Ronja]

Stupid question... but are the EL the basic and dominant form of the lutheran church in Finland, or is "evangelical" the operative word meaning that they are akin to American born agains and other complete loons?

They are the dominant form of lutheranism - a "people's church", somewhat colorless and a bit boring. The Wikipedia article sums ELCoF up rather nicely; http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evangelica ... of_Finland

Yet, under the surface there is bitter strife between the liberals and the conservatives, which this TV debate brought - yet again - into light. One of our national newspapers, despite being a tabloid, had a pretty pointed editorial today, titled "Why does sex divide the church?", and it is indeed perplexing, why so many xian conservatives want to poke their noses into what other people do in private.

The total of people who have left ELCoF since Tuesday 12th October 21:00 (9 PM) when that TV program began is at 5:30 PM on Saturday 10,867 - 4 * 150 (highest number of resigners on a typical day, for four days) = at least 10,267 people. We are watching something epic here, and I'm sometimes gaping and sometimes happy and sometimes really, really sorry for my liberal xian friends, who have worked and hoped for that ELCoF would get their act together and forbid all forms of bullying in the name of religion, and now have to watch what failure to do so is leading to.

BTW: ELCoF has a website for joining the church. They have gotten usual traffic: less than one hundred new members joined using the site during Tuesday-Friday, their information officer has told the press.


Edit: typo and clarification