winterbadger (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
winterbadger) wrote2010-10-22 09:10 pm
winterbadger) wrote2010-10-22 09:10 pm
Entry tags:
both yay and grrr
I was about to post this as a comment in FB, but then at the last minute I noticed that what FB had shown me was a friend (![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
schizokitty) commenting in the FB of someone she knows, but whom I do not. Rather than going ranty on some stranger's page, I figured it would be more polite for me to post here.
The link was to this article in the Huffington Post, reporting that 30,000 Finns "resigned from the state church" after religious leaders made anti-gay remarks (albeit in what the article also describes as a "strikingly civil discussion") on national television.
This is why I don't care for the Huffington Post--it oversells everything. And it isn't always very accurate.
There is no state church in Finland; there hasn't been since 1923. There's a church that most Finns belong to (the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Finland), but it is not an established church (like the Church of England).
And, yes, 30,000 people is a big number. But it is less than one percent of the 4.3 million members of the Lutheran church in Finland. I would imagine that the percentage of Finnish Lutherans who are gay, let alone those who sympathise with and support gay people, is measured in the hundreds of thousands, perhaps even millions. So it's not a very impressive number, taken in perspective.
And it doesn't strike me as very "unexpected" or "remarkable" that this demonstration took place in a country where gay citizens enjoy more rights than in many European countries and American states. In fact, just the opposite. If it took place in *Nigeria*, now that would be remarkable and unexpected. But, still, even there I'm sure that less than 1% of the majority denomination doing anything wouldn't cause much of a ripple.
I'm tremendously glad that Finns are so accepting of homosexuality. I think that's great.
I'm a little less impressed by people simply walking out of a faith because their leaders say something they don't like or don't agree with, rather than trying to reform the church; it suggests they weren't very invested in the church to begin with, which then doesn't seem like that much of a statement. And 30-40 thousand people leave the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Finland ever year, so I'm kind of wondering if these are people who would have done so anyway and just hurried along their way a little because of the debate.
But most of all, I'm sorry that HuffPo seems to feel the aching need to be the Fox News of the left. It just makes me disinclined to consult it or take it seriously as a news source.
schizokitty) commenting in the FB of someone she knows, but whom I do not. Rather than going ranty on some stranger's page, I figured it would be more polite for me to post here. The link was to this article in the Huffington Post, reporting that 30,000 Finns "resigned from the state church" after religious leaders made anti-gay remarks (albeit in what the article also describes as a "strikingly civil discussion") on national television.
This is why I don't care for the Huffington Post--it oversells everything. And it isn't always very accurate.
There is no state church in Finland; there hasn't been since 1923. There's a church that most Finns belong to (the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Finland), but it is not an established church (like the Church of England).
And, yes, 30,000 people is a big number. But it is less than one percent of the 4.3 million members of the Lutheran church in Finland. I would imagine that the percentage of Finnish Lutherans who are gay, let alone those who sympathise with and support gay people, is measured in the hundreds of thousands, perhaps even millions. So it's not a very impressive number, taken in perspective.
And it doesn't strike me as very "unexpected" or "remarkable" that this demonstration took place in a country where gay citizens enjoy more rights than in many European countries and American states. In fact, just the opposite. If it took place in *Nigeria*, now that would be remarkable and unexpected. But, still, even there I'm sure that less than 1% of the majority denomination doing anything wouldn't cause much of a ripple.
I'm tremendously glad that Finns are so accepting of homosexuality. I think that's great.
I'm a little less impressed by people simply walking out of a faith because their leaders say something they don't like or don't agree with, rather than trying to reform the church; it suggests they weren't very invested in the church to begin with, which then doesn't seem like that much of a statement. And 30-40 thousand people leave the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Finland ever year, so I'm kind of wondering if these are people who would have done so anyway and just hurried along their way a little because of the debate.
But most of all, I'm sorry that HuffPo seems to feel the aching need to be the Fox News of the left. It just makes me disinclined to consult it or take it seriously as a news source.