Ritröð Guðfræðistofnunar - 01.01.1990, Page 240

Studia theologica islandica
accept Christianity in the form advanced by the national church, membership
in the Church of Iceland was taken for granted. Only 6% of the respondents
said that they had actively reconsidered their membership in the national
church. 65% professed to accept the tenets of the church, while 7% claim to
reject them utterly. A certain idendfication with the national church is to be
found even among those who don’t belong to it, including those who profess
non-belief. Only 4% of the respondents favored cutting the ties between
church and state. One in three wanted no change in these matters, and an-
other third had no opinion. 15% favored a review of church-state relations
with the objective of strengthening the position of the church. This last group,
along witli the respondents who favored a separation of church and state, were
among those who took an active interest in politics. 70% of the respondents
thought that the position of Bishop of the Church of Iceland was of impor-
tance for the nation. This and various other findings indicate that people have
certain expectations of the church and its leaders which are not religious in
the traditional sense. The church is viewed as a positive force which strength-
ens national consciousness and solidarity concerning the value of Icelandic
culture. In this connection, the notion of „civil religion" was discussed.
A large majority of Icelanders thinks of the Church of Iceland as being so
firmly rooted in the body politic that it would be nearly as unthinkable to with-
draw from the national church as to withdraw from Icelandic society. To this
may be added that many, and perhaps most, church spokesmen accommodate
themselves in various ways to this „civil“ aspect of Icelandic religion. But they
do this on somewhat different grounds, that is to say theological grounds,
looking to the evangelical function of the church in Icelandic society.
At the end of chapter II, which discussed religious views and attitudes, there
was some discussion of the question whether the Icelanders were really Chris-
tian. The attempt to answer to this question relied upon the attitudes which
people took toward traditional Christian religious ideas; but it was mentioned
that this question, by nature, cannot really be decided. No survey, no human
effort can master the mysteries to be revealed on the Day of Judgement. Even
so, an answer is looked for. It is only natural that when a survey is done on the
religious life and views of the Icelanders some thought be devoted to the status
of the Christian faith in Iceland. We think that the results of the survey give
various indications concerning the faith and religious devotion of the Icelan-
ders, although there is much which of necessity remains hidden.
We have arrived at the conclusion, which might also be called a hypothe-
sis, that with reference to the previously-described reliance upon Christian
religious conceptions, and also to religious devotion of various types, we may
rather clearly discern a group of people who profess Christianity unreservedly
and who are outstandingly self-consistent in this respect. How big is this group?
We take our survey data to indicate that it includes about 40% of our respon-
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