‘Losing the ability to talk about religion is like losing a language. You’re no longer aware of what you’re no longer able to think about, or about what you can no longer express and, eventually, what you no longer feel’, said Lotta Lundberg in her column in the Swedish newspaper Svenska Dagbladet in 2016. Her argument is that her home nation is now so adverse to the idea of faith or religion, that the ability to see something beyond one’s immediate experience has been completely lost. So extreme is the literalism, she suggests, that even reading a metaphor is now a struggle for her countrymen.
It can be a challenge to speak to others, particularly non-believers, about faith. The act of going to church itself can feel counter-cultural, it has gone full circle from something very traditional to an activity which wouldn’t cross the mind of most of my generation. Every Lent I vow to try to be more active in discussing my Christian faith and find it much more difficult than giving up chocolates or biscuits (tough as that is). A lot of that, I now suspect, is because of the ideas Lundberg describes in her article: it’s difficult to talk about your inner thoughts when society no longer accepts the ideas as valid and removes your language to express them.
Lundberg’s commentary on the decline of religion became one of the most shared articles from the newspaper’s website that year, the secular Swedes showing a surprising amount of interest in the idea that modern life has been stripped of a spiritual dimension. We should take heart from this: clearly many are at least interested, if not concerned, about what is lost when all religious notions are removed from daily discourse. It’s certainly something for me to keep in mind as we continue in Lent.
Frances Stratton
