The Swedes and the Bible.

A new survey among 1000 Swedes has been conducted in January. The results are in many newspapers today. About 32% said that the Bible has importance for their views on ethical and moral issues. For the majority it has not. Only about 10% of the people reads the Bible once a month, a figure which has been about the same during the last few years.

One question in the survey was: Is there any sripture that has had big influence on your ethics and moral views? The Bible was mentioned here by 20%, second largest was the UN Declaration on Human Rights (4%). Other religious documents had very small percentages, eg the Quran 1%. There were also people mentioning as diverse documents as greek filosofers, Harry Potter, the Lord of the Rings, Anne Franks Diary, etc.

But most remarkably, 62% of the people said that no document at all had such an influence on them. This is a high figure and one can wonder what this on the long term is going to mean for ethical and moral views in the country. With no written document at all as a guidance ethical and moral views risk to become rather floating and and changing under unclear influences. One could speculate that a situation like this would make it easier for certain groups, propagating for values contradictory to what most people still view as good, to find a growing ground. Further one could speculate that, no external guidance in form of any document being of relevance, the own winning could become the measuring stick for what is good and evil. Of course all this is speculative, but still, this figure of 62% might be a warning bell.

For the Christian community in Sweden it must be a challenge to give the Bible a greater relevance in Swedish society. Indeed, interest for religion seems to be growing. God is discussed in the media more than some years ago.