Saga - 1984, Síða 174

172
PÉTUR PÉTURSSON
ligious beliefs, where chance more than anything seems often to have been the de-
termining factor. Unexpected connections between ideas, groups and individuals
are a strong feature of that decade; examples of which are that Haraldur Níelsson
was on the first governing board of KFUM (YMCA) and the surprising link be-
tween the Evangelic Lutheran Free Church and the Adventists. But during the first
decade of this century divisions become more clear-cut and the two movements
which were to dominate the religious scene the next decades stand out: KFUM and
related groups on the one hand, and spiritualists and the occult movement on the
other. Independent religious sects never gained any permanent footing in Icelandic
society and had little effect on the religious beliefs of the people. On the other hand
KFUM and KFUK (YWCA) were movements within the State Church, more
specifically the old Reykjavík congregation (Dómkirkjusöfnuðuritm) and spiritualism
looked upon itself as a scientific movement whose goal was education.
Finally, three main aspects of the development dealt with in the first part of the
essay, may be summarised as follows:
1. Church, society and culture had previously been an indivisible whole but to-
wards the end of the 19th century the foundation for this whole began to
crumble and people became increasingly aware of a trend towards separation.
This was the emergence of an idea that began to make itself felt in newspapers
and periodicals in the 1870’s, namely that the state of church and religious matt-
ers was critical. This idea had gained considerable following from the 1880’s on
and was widespread by the turn of the century. KFUM and related organisat-
ions wanted to remedy this situation by encouraging a revival on the basis of
profession of faith and Lutheran orthodoxy with its stress on the spiritual
rebirth of the individual. The crisis in religious matters, according to this
belief, was the result of the fact that the Church no longer spokc to the people-
Spiritualism and the occult sciences on the other hand laid emphasis primarily
on the religious experience of the individual and felt that the teachings and doc-
trines of the church were in need of reevaluation in the light of the latest dis-
coveries in science. The crisis, they felt, was the unavoidable result of the out-
of-date world view to which the Church clung.
2. The social basis of spiritualism and occultism was in the beginning the emerg-
ing middle-class but the movement quickly spread to the general public and
spiritualism became a kind of folk belief. The ideological role played by the
occult societies for the middle-class was most apparent in the late teens and
early twenties. The social background of the KFUM-movemcnt on the other
hand was the lower classes. For a young working-class boy the KFUM acted
as an incentive to and a vehicle for upward social mobility.
3. Although these movements fought to remedy what they saw as the crisis in the
Church, they were never anti-clerical. They operated in and as part of the
Church. A seperation of Church and State was the subject of political debate
during these decades and a complete separation would probably have come to
pass had these movements done more to support it by establishing themselves
outside the Church.
Transl. by M.J. Driscoll and Ragnheiður Mósesdótttr