As anybody who has ever been passed on a Finnish road by a tiekirkko with its “oversize load” sign (and more often than not, legions of singing, guitar-strumming colored folks), it IS a network for summertime tourists.

But when the concept started in 1962, it was very much a way to get from point A to point B.

I think the idea is neat. Why have a roadside chapel, when you could be in a chapel on the road?

What’s the point of sitting in a stationary church service, when you could be moving and praying?

Personally I’m glad they’be ditched the steeples after that spate of bridge collisons in the 1970s and I don’t mind the new double-wide trailer tiekirkot at all.

In any case, I believe Finland has become a lot less religious over the past years and drastically so. The Lutheran Church is worried that it is becoming increasingly irrelevant to its members. I seriously think the road church network could also be interpreted as a cry for help: “Look, we’re here, nobody’s attending our services, please check us out!”

The fact that other secular countries with huge inactive Lutheran populations (my hunch that Germans are more religious than majority Lutheran countries is based on the German Catholic population) have similar road church networks proves my point.

Lutheranism is experiencing a crisis and increasingly the church needs people more than the other way around. As a vast majority of Finns (myself included) is still a member and pays the church tax, it’s absolutely natural that those tax monies should be used by the church to remind us members that it still exists and would like to offer its premises to whatever purpose needed.

http://www.duluthnewstribune.com/collections/index.cfm?collection=finnfest

Africa is a country? Who are you, George Bush?

AN African village. Always under scrutiny, Phil, always under scrutiny.