Church of Sweden hires imam

[Gustaf]

Controversy has emerged as the Church of Sweden in Stockholm hires an imam. The issue is basically whether the Church should really pay people from other religions to preach their beliefs.

[Gustaf]

     Yeah, hiring preachers from other religions strikes me as wasteful on every possible level. If you really want to, you could easily just go on the internet & find out what Muslims have to say about Islam.

The people responsible are calling their critics racist. The descent of the Church of Sweden into total and complete self-parody is tragicomic for me who is an actual member.

[Gustaf]

So what, exactly, has he been hired to do? Based on the information offered so far, it is utterly impossible to make any sort of legitimate judgment whatsoever.

Yeah, I haven't been able to find any link that isn't in Swedish.

From what I understand he's hired in a church youth centre that is mostly focused on urban "problem" teens.

I must admit that I have trouble seeing a legitimate position in a church for a preacher from another church.

An amusing sidepoint is that the Church of Sweden has worked diligently to purge priests who oppose female clergy from the payroll.

[Gustaf]

So... they hired a social worker who happens to also be an Imam? Why should that be problematic? Or did they hire him to preach?

Of course, the more interesting question is why the hell the Swedish state runs its youth centres through the state church.

He's not, from what I understand, a social worker who happens to be an Imam. He's an Imam filling a church position that would normally be filled by a priest. I don't think he would preach exactly, but he would offer spiritual guidance to youths. Presumably, he would do this based on his Muslim faith.

I'm not entirely sure whether this is the state's youth centre. But since we didn't separate state and church until the year 2000...

[Gustaf]

Ah right, that kind of theologian-dabbling-as-counselor role. Would probably have made more sense to just hire a Muslim social worker instead. But heh. Chalk that one up to "unavoidable inconsistencies caused by a church still pretending to be, and owning the assets, of a quango, in a country that does not consists almost entirely of followers of the state cult anymore".

I'm not sure what you're getting at here. From what I understand he will work in a church. The church, granted, is on the premise of a state-run youth centre. But it's basically like a hospital church. So the decision to hire this guy has nothing to do with the state. There is, for instance, nothing stopping the state from hiring an Imam to work with youths there if they think it is a good idea anymore.

And, again, the CoS today is independent of the state.

[Gustaf]

This doesn't strike me as problematic. If the CoS wants to hire people of another religion, I can't think of a reason why they shouldn't do so.

While one can argue to the contrary, I don't think most people would mind if they hired, say, a lawyer who wasn't a Christian. But the Imam is hired in his capacity as Imam. He's basically paid to spread Muslim faith to young people. Which is all fine by me, don't get me wrong, but I'm not sure why the church I help finance should be paying for it.

Anyway, this isn't an "omg muslim" thing for me it's more a "lol Church of Sweden" thing. They're rapidly descending into a state of utter parody. I mean, they're so ashamed of being Christian that they actually start spreading other religions...that would be a bit depressing to me if it wasn't also pretty funny.

[Gustaf]

They're not hiring him to convert non-Muslims, and I doubt he could get away with trying to.

Well...from what I can gather it seems to be about bringing in the stray sheep, so to speak. Of course, he probably will not literally be saying convert but I do think it is about instilling his values into these people to help them become better or whatever.

Again, I don't mind the practice in itself, but I do think it is odd that a church would pay someone from another religion to spread their values.

I'm reminded of a classic, when the archbishop of CoS was asked "does God exist?"

His answer was, paraphrasing from memory, "that depends on what you mean by exist"