2000+ people left the Finnish EL Church in 24 hrs

[Ronja]

It's still Tarja Halonen? wow, I thought her retired for some time (then again, I'd never have believed how long Vigdis Finnbogadottir lasted in Iceland until I saw it)

Twice six years is a pretty long time. My kids have never known a male president - the idea is a bit strange for them, even though they accept the possibility that a man can be a good president, too.

I just looked at wikipedia about the government of Finland, and the parliament... It's weird... the center party is represented as the rightmost political formation in parliament... is that just a relativistic effect because they are less to the left than the others, or are they really to the right, with laissez faire economics, small state and the bells and whistles?

I don't think that a party that was really fascist hard to the right could get that many seats in Finland... then again, just how bad are they? Do you have fascists of any significance?

That picture is utter crap. The actual seating order is in the picture that you hopefully will see as an attachment. I'll explain the acronyms in my next post, if the picture uploads nicely.

BTW, you speak of this whole business of quitting the church like it was a matter of administrative importance? Is there a matter of church tax involved?

The church tax is one of the most important (or at least most tangible) issues involved: every person who leaves, takes away 250-300 euros per year from the ELCoF. The total is a bit difficult to estimate (the tax is tied to income, and the percentage varies from 1 to 2 depending on the county where one lives), but the church itself has already admitted to losses of two million euros annually - and I think that is a bit low.

[beige]

If you start thinking of doing this, I can put you in touch with the people who have the most experience about how to do it, and can give both valuable tips and working software, if you ask them nicely.

I get the impression that Finland's tech related laws are leaps and bounds ahead of most places. You guys have a law that prevents employers discriminating against people by doing background searches on things like facebook as far as I'm aware. Not sure how well our laws match up. Not to mention that I'm not sure how much churches here would accept it, the catholics are pretty funny about letting people renounce faith, but even if you do that, you can't even totally leave their little cult officially. You're stuck for life.

I might look into it, but am currently rather snowed under so probably wouldn't be able to contribute the kind of time necessary to push something like that forward.

:sighsm: The things I could do with a watch that stops time.

[Ronja]

Additional info to the picture (one step up)

The numbers show how many representatives each party has.

Vas = Left Alliance (communists) ; SDP = Social Democratic Party ; Vihreät = Greens ; PS = Fundamental Finns ; Keskusta = Middle Party ; KD = Christian Democrats ; Kokoomus = National Alliance ; RKP = Swedish-language People's Party

IMO RKP and KD should switch places, and then we would be near a "true" left-to-right continuum, but all is relative. In some things e.g. PS are extremely reactionary, in some other almost uninterested (let the big parties decide).

[Ronja]

... Not to mention that I'm not sure how much churches here would accept it, the catholics are pretty funny about letting people renounce faith, but even if you do that, you can't even totally leave their little cult officially. You're stuck for life.

That is actually something that I have started to think about - at least within the EU, could the Catholic Church(es) not be forced into letting people resign for real, based on the human right to freedom FROM religion (the "flip side" of freedom of religion), if one so chooses?

Their current shenanigans smell of forced membership, and at least in Finland that is against the law, even against the constitution, AFAIU.

[beige]

... Not to mention that I'm not sure how much churches here would accept it, the catholics are pretty funny about letting people renounce faith, but even if you do that, you can't even totally leave their little cult officially. You're stuck for life.

That is actually something that I have started to think about - at least within the EU, could the Catholic Church(es) not be forced into letting people resign for real, based on the human right to freedom FROM religion (the "flip side" of freedom of religion), if one so chooses?

Their current shenanigans smell of forced membership, and at least in Finland that is against the law, even against the constitution, AFAIU.

Again it comes down to the time and funding to test it under the law.

Considering the privileged status of especially the larger religious sects, bringing and reasonable resolution down on the b ones presents a pretty major challenge.

How big is the EL church in Finland compared to others? (Maybe I'll google it, I should stop being so lazy!)

Edit: (79.7%) EL! Well, this news is better than I thought. The faster the tumble the better Sets a very nice precedent.

[Ronja]

OK, and now for some pictures of the break-through day, and then I'm off to bed.

1 of 3: The daily cumulative graphs 16th to 18th October ; 16th = light gray, 17th = dark grey, 18th = red (at 11 PM)

[Ronja]

2 of 3: The daily "speed" graphs (resignations per hour) 16th to 18th October ; 16th = light gray, 17th = dark grey, 18th = red (at 11 PM)

[Ronja]

3 of 3: The yearly stats 2007 - 2010, broken up per month ; blue = winter months (Jan, Feb, Dec) ; green = March-May ; yellow = June-August ; brown = September-November

[fordo]

[Svartalf]

If you start thinking of doing this, I can put you in touch with the people who have the most experience about how to do it, and can give both valuable tips and working software, if you ask them nicely.

I get the impression that Finland's tech related laws are leaps and bounds ahead of most places. You guys have a law that prevents employers discriminating against people by doing background searches on things like facebook as far as I'm aware. Not sure how well our laws match up. Not to mention that I'm not sure how much churches here would accept it, the catholics are pretty funny about letting people renounce faith, but even if you do that, you can't even totally leave their little cult officially. You're stuck for life.

I might look into it, but am currently rather snowed under so probably wouldn't be able to contribute the kind of time necessary to push something like that forward.

:sighsm: The things I could do with a watch that stops time.

Meh, if I lived in a place where there's an actual church tax, you'd see me a lot more active in officially renouncing catholicism... or maybe I'd found a church... maybe a cult to Reason, or some neopagan flavored group.

[Tero]

HS in English.
http://www.hs.fi/english/article/Up+to+ ... 5260979317

This is a bit embarrassing, they still have me as a Lutheran, as I pay no tax.

[charlou]

Re resigning from the catholic church ... I think there is a site where you can have your name removed from their membership roll ... though I've not looked it up personally as it doesn't apply to me. IIRC, the topic came up at RDF? and quite a few of the members, including a few ratz, mentioned going through the process.

[Ronja]

OK, thus far, per day:

Tuesday 21:00 - 24:00 - 222
Wednesday - 2,633
Thursday - 2,032
Friday - 3,473
Saturday - 4,545
Sunday - 5,738
Monday - 6,773

25,416 is the total since the evening of Oct 12th until last midnight (if I / the Ubuntu Calculator can count).

BTW - our morning paper has pages 1-3 all covered in this news (we subscribe to the Swedish-language HBL). Still, I would not be surprised if the trend "1,000 additional resignations every day" broke today - it just can't go on for ever, can it?

All the real-time (updated every hour + for each day at midnight) graphs are here: http://www.eroakirkosta.fi/static/ek-tilastot/
The daily = midnight->midnight counter (new, with some graphics) is here: http://eroakirkosta.fi/static/ek-tilast ... onnut.html
The "since the TV program began" counter is here: http://eroakirkosta.fi/static/ek-tilastot/ylea2.html




Edit: added the link to the "since 21:00 (9 PM) on October 12th" counter

[Ronja]

And the latest, fairly up-to-date news from the YLE website English pages:

http://yle.fi/uutiset/news/2010/10/chur ... 64653.html
http://yle.fi/uutiset/news/2010/10/bish ... 69059.html

Interestingly, I have not found this news on BBC / ABC / CBS / CNN yet - or is my searching faulty? Atheist Nexus, Slashdot, League of Reason, Secular Café, etc have threads, though.

[Svartalf]

It's not even reached the news here either... my guess is that if it's commented in Sweden/Denmark/Norway, it won't go any further. It's local news, not something that rings bells in international news services.