From the Diet of Porvoo to a Church of Its Own

The church that today calls itself the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Finland did not begin as its own body at all. Christianity in Finland traces to the Catholic church organized under Swedish rule from the 12th century, and for centuries afterward Finland's congregations were simply the eastern half of the Church of Sweden, sharing its bishops, its Reformation and its confession. That Reformation, beginning under King Gustav Vasa from 1527 and largely complete by 1560, brought Sweden, and Finland with it, into the Lutheran fold along with most of Scandinavia.

What separated the two churches was not theology but geography and politics. Russia annexed Finland from Sweden in 1809, creating the autonomous Grand Duchy of Finland under the Russian tsar, and the Diet of Porvoo, convened that same year on March 29, formally established Finland's church as a constitutionally autonomous body distinct from the Church of Sweden it had shared for nearly three centuries. The church kept its Lutheran confession and its episcopal structure unchanged through the transition; what changed was that it now answered to Finland's own constitutional order rather than Stockholm's. That autonomy carried through Finland's later independence in 1917 into the church's present shape: a national church still bound to the state through its own Church Act, with more than three and a half million members and an archbishop seated in Turku presiding over a General Synod that meets twice yearly.