TA 3/2011 (116. vuosikerta)

Gender, Actorship and Change: ”Novelty” in the Neo-Charismatic Movement — The article discusses the problematics of gender and religion from the perspective of change and agency, i.e. actorship. In the Neo-Charismatic movement, the role of actor seems to transcend the often-quoted principle used to justify segregation of genders: ”it is a shame for women to speak in the church”. Even when gender roles are defined as per fundamentalist Christianity, attitudes to personal experience and the impact of the individual spiritual gift overridingly govern actorship. The discussion here focuses on how religious actorship is seen as gender-specific in the research literature and how religious actorship is manifested in a Neo-Charismatic environment in particular. A further consideration is how actorship defined from within a religious tradition may be used to change the structures of that tradition.

Religions in Helsinki: Religious Change in the Light of Religious Community Mapping — Religious supply has increased markedly in Finland during the recent decades. Pluralisation of the religious field is most evident in the big cities, especially in Helsinki. This article provides an overview of the religious field in Helsinki in the year 2008. The religious field is described by documenting and classifying all religious communities and groups active in Helsinki during the research period. The results of the numerical analysis of communities belonging to different religious traditions show that about two thirds of them are of Christian origin and one third from other religions. Of the active membership, more than three quarters are Christians. These results show that while the religious field is becoming increasingly diverse, there is no single religious orientation or tradition driving the change. Christianity is diversifying along with the increase of immigrant religions and new spiritual groups. However, the results in some way confirm the sociological theories that emphasise the importance of individualisation in the sphere of religion.

Statistical Estimation of the Religious Backgrounds of Immigrants in Finland — The article discusses the opportunities and constraints in estimating the religious backgrounds of immigrants in Finland. It also estimates the religious backgrounds of first-generation immigrants from 1990 to 2009, based on information from the population structure statistics of Statistics Finland and the World Christian Database. According to the estimate, the religious backgrounds of immigrants in Finland in 2009 were as follows: Christians (53%–61%), Muslims (17%–19%), Non-religious (11%–21%), Buddhists (4%), Ethnoreligionists (2%) and Hindus (1%).