Gunn Vayrynen

The humanist movement in Finland

One could of course maintain that merely the Welfare State and the ideology behind it is a manifestation of a humanist way of thinking. As such, however, the humanist movement is rather weak in Finland. The Swedish humanist movement is also weak, if compared to the Norwegian Etisk-Forbund.

As Finland is for most of the readers of this journal a remote and unknown country, let me at first sketch the historical atmosphere in which we have lived during the last two hundred years. To some extent there are features which resemble the Irish experience.

Finland was for many centuries the Eastern part of the Swedish kingdom, but, after the war of 1808

-1809, Sweden lost this part to the Russian Empire. Due to several circumstances the following period turned out to be the basis for the full independence which Finland got in 1917 -- this change again

being a consequence of the convulsions among the European powers.

As part of the Russian Empire Finland was allowed to retain the legislation and the religion it had had during the Swedish period. The Emperor wanted to have loyal subjects forming a barrier in the North West. Most of the century was a peaceful period when manufacturing prospered with foreign entrepreneurs founding sawmills and factories based on the rich forest and water power resources.

In the 1840s a wave of Romanticism, strong enough to awaken an awareness of nation and language, reached even us. That was nurtured among the students, but it had to be suppressed. The governing elite was now speaking Swedish and Russian -- would it one day be speaking Finnish?

During the last decades of the nineteenth and the beginning of the twentieth century, there was a period of 'thawing'. The so-called dissenters were allowed to leave the Lutheran Church to create their own parishes. Some academics were opposing the privileges of the Church asking for instance for civil marriages. Elementary education had been separated from the Church already in 1866. The philosopher, Rolf Lagerborg, managed to get a court declare him and his fiancee husband and wife - as a sentence on him! His close friend Edvaard Westermarck (1862-1939) had by then settled down in London, where he was to become Professor of Sociology at the University of London, 1907-1939.

Westermarck's influence

Westermarck was a pioneer in field research and he learnt the Berber language and stayed for long periods in Morocco. His study The History of Human Marriage was published in 1891 and the book The Origin and Development of Moral Ideas in 1906. Westermarck has been described as the best-known international Finnish scientist and consequently the sociologists' association is named the Westermarck Society.

As far I can see his influence on Finnish society was modest. The first academic dissertation about him was published as late as 1991, in Finland that is. Doctor Jorma Ihanus deals with the scientific method used by Westermarck, not the findings, which have most interested us: how moral ideas relate to the society in which they are created and are gradually modified by the needs of that community.

Towards the end of the nineteenth century, the awakened Finnish nationalism was confronted with its Russian kin, the Pan-Slav movement. This resulted in a period of suppression during which both the legislation (the old Swedish laws and some earlier favourable commitments by the emperors) and the Lutheran Church got the strong symbolic function as an important defence against the Eastern influence. The folklore -- especially the Kalevala songs -- the literature, art, and music were mobilised for the same purpose.

Ideological war

After the Russian revolution in 1917, Finland declared independence and this was followed by a civil war. The struggle was between the so-called Reds and Whites, and atheism and democratic socialism were seen as linked with the horror of communism. There were many losses and imprisonment among the losing 'Reds', but there were strong personalities working for amnesty. The war was followed by a continued ideological war against communism. In cultural life the idealising of national values in poetry, music and architecture continued, but even more introspectively than before.

As a scientist, whose mother tongue was Swedish and who was Rector of the Swedish University Abo Akademi, Westermarck could not be fully appreciated in this atmosphere which lasted until the late thirties. There had been another author wanting to 'open the windows to Europe', but Europe was mostly conceived of as Germany. Many eminent cultural personalities immigrating to Finland from St Petersburg after 1918 shared the fate of Westermarck.

Finnish legalism is said to be a heritage of the endeavours at the beginning of the century. Looking further back, the strong influence from Hegel again explains part of the weakness of the civil, the citizens' society. When I add that from 1939 to 1945 Finland was at war, then I have painted a rough picture of recent Finnish history, from which one can deduce the reason for the strong linkage between Church and State. Over 85 per cent of the population belong to the Church. If, as many people in Western countries are inclined to think, Finland had been behind the Iron Curtain, the situation could now be even worse. For most of the members of the Lutheran Church the membership is merely formal. The services of the Church are most indispensable in connection with death and catastrophe, as with the wreckage of the ship Estonia a year ago.

Before the recent recession and unemployment, the Churches were rather empty except at Christmas. Right now there is a search for new values going on, which gives way to different kinds of mysticism - the Eastern Orthodox Church being one of the more innocent. Some 1.5 -- 2 per cent have joined that.

We must not forget that the Union of Freethinkers was set up in 1937 and has done a good pioneer job. Before that there were local associations in some towns and in the twenties the students' 'Prometheus Association'. The image of the freethinkers has however been somewhat narrow and sinister. Their atheism has sometimes resembled a religious belief by being too much against instead of being in favour of something. This may be nowadays unjustified, but it was the situation when the first humanist association was founded.

Religious education

Until the end of 1922, every Finnish citizen had to belong to some Christian congregation, but then the freedom from all religious communities became possible and the demand was gradually voiced that the school should offer an alternative to religious education. The development here was very slow. At first the new subject was 'history. of religion', then 'history of religions' and finally 'philosophy of life'. The last stage was reached only after a complaint by the Finnish Freethinkers in 1979 to the UN Commission on Human Rights about the dominant role of the national religion in the curriculum of the history of religions. When Parliament resolved that the philosophy of life should be taught as an alternative, it was also resolved that this education was intended only for pupils not belonging to any religious communities. This restriction was demanded by the freethinkers, who wanted to ensure that the subject would be devoid of religious elements.

In the 1960s the Finnish education system was thoroughly renewed. As the sixties were a period of democratic awakening, it was not astonishing that a group of intellectuals gathered together to discuss the role of life stance issues in the curriculum of the comprehensive school. The group consisted of five to six persons with Dr Timo Vasama as the most formerly experienced one in these issues. I got invited on the basis of articles I had written in 1965.

The group wrote a memorandum about the ethical education of the comprehensive school, collected names of well-known people to sign the appeal and then met with the chairman of the committee drafting the curriculum. In the memo or appeal we asked for an education unconnected to any type of religious belief and - which was according to the principles of the new school system - given to 'all pupils together'. The social democrats feared (and maybe with full reason) that such a far-going reform would endanger the whole project of a comprehensive primary school and thus the idea was buried without any discussion.

Finnish Humanist Association

In spite of this disappointment the group continued to meet and now with the aim of founding an association. With the help of anticlerical lawyers and other supporters, the Finnish Humanist Association was registered in 1968, about a year after the 'Appeal about the Religious Education of the Comprehensive School'.

The Association had a down period in the seventies, but as chairman in the eighties Mr Jussi Pikkusaari managed primarily to inspire people in regional centres all around Finland to put up their own humanist associations and secondly, and as a conclusion to that, to found a national Union of these nine associations. This happened in November 1987 and after that the first association has continued as the Humanist Association of Helsinki.

The regional associations are arranging public discussions, some once a month, some twice or thrice a year. The return of the sun has sometimes been celebrated on the 22 December, but with less bloody rites than in the old days of the Northern countries.

The Union publishes quarterly a magazine, named The Humanist (Humanisti), the editor of which is Mr Pekka Elo, an employee in charge of ethical education (philosophy of life) at the National Board of Education.

Humanist days have been organised with a variety of themes. In 1989 it was 'Science and the Possibilities it Offers', when meeting in Hameenlinna, the birth town of Sibelius, we discussed 'Humanism and Art', in 1993 in Northern Kemi 'Humanism in Everyday Life' and in 1994 the 'Spiritual Climate of Society' with guests from Sweden and Estonia.

The total membership is modestly some 500 members and hence it is quite natural that, without a governmental subsidy it would be impossible to publish the magazine and arrange the seminars. The only obligation towards the donor is, that the grant is used for the purpose it is applied for.

A duty and at the same time opportunity is to be heard by the parliamentary committee preparing proposals from us to Parliament. Last winter the Humanist Union reported to such a committee about a revision of the Finnish Constitution, which strengthens the citizens' human rights, a revision long awaited for. Our task was restricted to the section about rights to the religious and to those with corresponding convictions. This part of the committee's proposal to Parliament was accepted without any further dispute, probably since representatives of the Church had also accepted it. In the revised Constitution we thus, for the first time, have the wording: 'Every Finnish citizen has the right to religious freedom and freedom of conscience. The revised Constitution came in force on the first of July 1995, but it seems that we will only gradually experience the results of the first legal acknowledgement of the secular life stance fully on the same level as the religious one. Much depends also on the organised humanists - what are we able to make of it? At least it will be reflected in our rewriting of the first Finnish 'Manual of Alternative Rites' first published in Finnish in 1992 and in Swedish in 1993.

I have written about the background and the current activities of Finnish Humanists and will conclude by mentioning that the Finnish humanists have been members of the IHEU since the 1970s.