Swedish study: Christian upbringing not crucial for keeping faith

The Evangelical Free Church in Sweden, together with the Pentecostal Youth and the Swedish Alliance Mission's youth, have worked in collaboration with the Academy of Leadership and Theology to conduct an ongoing research project where the goal is to better understand what makes some grow in faith while others grow away from it.

The project includes a partial study at the parish level. Six congregations (two from each congregation) are included in the study. In the six congregations, 330 individuals were active in 2010. "Of these, 195 later became members of the congregations and today, 118 of them remain", says Fredrik Wenell. He is the project manager for the study and spoke with the Christian Swedish daily Dagen.

One thing that stands out, according to Wenell, is that " both of those who have left and those who remain, experienced the congregation as a warm and welcoming place. But we can sense a difference. Those who remain in the church describe the importance of good role models to a greater extent, while those who have left have more and more problems with what they perceive as the Christian ideas".

Asking questions to those who remain in the congregations has, for obvious reasons, been easier than asking those who have left. But some have still chosen to participate in the project. "That they have left the church is often not due to any revolutionary events. Instead, they explain that they "slipped away"", says Wenell.