ABSTRACT
Until 2000, Sweden had a state church system.1 Since the sixteenth century, the Evangelical Lutheran Church had been the state church.2With the state church system abolished, the Lutheran Church of Sweden is still the majority church, counting over 70 percent of the population as members.3 Compared to membership in the Church of Sweden, other religious communities in Sweden are extremely small. The Roman Catholic Church, the Mission Covenant Church of Sweden, the Pentecostal movement, the Eastern and Orthodox Churches, and Muslim communities each claim about 1 percent of the population as members or “served.”4 There is also an atheist organization in Sweden,5 but its official membership is even less than that of most minority religious communities.
