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CHUIiCH AND RELIGION.
335
Every attempt is made to organize voluntary church work according to existing
institutions and the increasing utilization of layman activity is aimed at. Within
the parochial areas, efforts are directed towards awakening a sense of mutual
responsibility and mutual interest in church matters ("parish movement"). In
dioceses "synods" are arranged and voluntary "diocesan boards" constituted, in
several places. As a central organization — more supporting than directing in its
character — the Church Voluntary Work Board (Diakonistyrelsen) was formed to
assist all this activity in 1910. Sunday-schools and children’s services are
organized. A Young People’s Church movement is being strongly developed, largely
as a superstructure on the preparation of confirmands, to the advancement of
which assistance has been afforded by the student Christian movement ("the
Young People’s Crusade"); corps of "church volunteers" have been formed, from
among Christian students, for this and other purposes (e. g., activity in industrial
centres). An endeavour to meet the unparallelled increase in the church’s tasks
is being made in the great cities, by means of the division of parishes, the
provision of new places of worship, the increase of the number of priests, etc. The
Society for the Promotion of Church Pastoral Work has been operating to this
end in Stockholm since 1893.
The old spheres of church activity in the prisons, hospitals, and homes for
the sick, and in the field of poor-relief, have been extended, and the work is in
progress to enable her to fulfil her growing tasks. A new field has been opened
up in the spiritual care of conscripts. The scheme of training for laymens’ work
has been borrowed from Germany. The Institute of Deaconesses at Ersta, in
Stockholm, founded in 1851, has now nearly 400 "sisters", and the Samaritan
Home in Uppsala, active since 1893, has 80 deaconesses and "congregation sisters".
In 1912 a third institution of the same kind started operations in Härnösand.
There has been an establishment for the training of deacons since 1898, which
is now at Stora Sköndal, outside Stockholm; it has trained some 50 deacons.
The Young Men’s Christian Association, and The Young Women’s Christian
Association are treated in a special article in the following. The Christian Student
Movement in its present form (with about 500 members) has developed out of the
Scandinavian Christian student conferences, dating from 1890; in connection with
which there is a school-boy and a seminarist movement.
The National Evangelic Union displays great activity in the spread of
literature; it is the greatest religious book-depot in the country, and has in its
employment about 200 travelling agents and preachers; affiliated with it are over
300 missionary associations and a young people’s movement ("the League of the
Young"); its missionaries and preachers are trained at the Missionary Institute
in Johannelund.
About 1 300 congregations with 94 000 members are incorporated in the
Swedish Missionary Association, divided into 14 districts, and served by about 550
regular preachers trained at the Mission School at Lidingö. Here, too, a young
people’s organization is to be found — Yong People’s Branch of the Swedish
Missionary Association (Svenska missionsförbundets ungdom).
The Salvation Army in Sweden has 221 corps, and 4 200 officers and
noncommissioned officers; it has established 79 institutions for social work.
Together with certain smaller foreign congregations, consisting of the English
Episcopal, French Reformed, and Greek Catholic churches (with 300 members
altogether) there have existed in Sweden, since the last third of the 18th century,
a number of widely scattered reformed sects, viz., Baptists, 53 000; Free-Baptists,
3 200; Methodists, 17 500; Catholic Apostolic, or Irvingites, 900; Mormons, 1 900;
and Adventists, 400, etc. Of these, only the Methodists and the Catholic Apostolic
church have legally seceded from the Swedish Church, and formed their own
community acknowledged by the State. Another such is the "New Church" or
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