It's just been Easter and I've been for the first time to a church service at a place that otherwise seems to be a training centre for bible studies. It just happens to be down the road. It was curious because despite the church service being held in just a fairly large room with overflow in a balcony, they still had the full complement of four (!) priests and an organ/piano player on hand. (One priest to do the service and the other three to aid with communion which as virtually everyone went up would have otherwise lasted for about 40 minutes).

Anyway that reminded me that a piece about religion in Finland was perhaps overdue.

Most people belong either to the Lutheran Church or the Orthodox church with the majority of them in the Lutheran Church as the (Russian) Orthodox church is mainly to the East of the country - i.e. in territory that either once was in Russia (pre 1700s) or bordered on Russia - although there is an impressive Orthodox cathedral in Helsinki. There are both Finnish-speaking Lutheran parishes and Swedish-speaking Lutheran parishes in bilingual areas - I don't know if there is any major different in the church services apart from the language though. (I doubt it).

Finns pay church taxes of ca 1% of brutto salary but can opt out of this at the cost of a few things such as maybe having problems getting married in a church and sometimes having to pay for a burial plot. Many younger people opt out these days (presumably a while after getting married in some cases).

Foreigners on the other hand do not pay church taxes but can opt *in* - I never have. Most probably don't.

In addition, there is a synagogue in Helsinki. The Jewish community arrived in Finland first towards the end of the 19th Century as until then as far as I can remember there were restrictions on their movements within the Russian Empire.

More recently there have been a certain number of Moslems who have immigrated to Finland (and some Finns have converted - usually women) and there is at least one mosque in Finland (probably more).

Then of course there are small numbers of Methodists; Baptists; Jehovah's Witnesses and the like.

However we should not forget a strange sect that is centred around an area in Western Finland (sorry but the name escapes me for the moment) all of whom have masses of children (and I mean 10 or more per family). For some reason they tend to drive very large cars or vans!

OK. That's enough about that. I might later post something about the design of churches (or I might not)