"Den sanna kristendomen" : Religion, etik och bildning hos Carl Lindhagen

• Main Author: Eklund, Magne
• Format: Bachelor Thesis
• Language: Swedish
• Published: Jönköping University, HLK, Ämnesforskning 2021
• Subjects: Carl Lindhagen; bildning; kristendom; andlighet; etik; deliberativ demokrati; History of Religions; Religionshistoria; Sanna; Northern Sweden
• Online Access: http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:hj:diva-53675

Carl Lindhagen (1860-1946) is one Sweden’s most productive members of Parliament in history. Under his time in the second- and first chamber he wrote a total number of 1011 bills. He was in his time known as a freethinker and utopist, and furthermore as a driving force behind several issues for example Norrlandsfrågan (against the purchase of homesteads by the forest industry in northern Sweden), women’s suffrage and for peace and disarmament. In 1922, Carl Lindhagen put forth a proposal to the First Chamber in which he pleaded for the Lutheran doctrine in Sweden's state church, to be replaced by Christianity. What the proposal meant and how it would be implemented has not, what I have been able to find, been investigated before. Based on Lindhagens bill, the thesis aims to examine Carl Lindhagen's views on spirituality, Christianity, and ethics and to incorporate them into his view of society. A special focus is placed on the school's role in Lindhagen's future vision. The overall question for the study is whether Carl Lindhagen's ideas have been implemented today, already passed or even utopian demands which are still waiting to be articulated and applied? The method for the survey is taken from Mats Alvesson's and Kaj Sköldberg's aletic hermeneutic approach, where the hermeneutic circle oscillates between pre-understanding and understanding. The theoretical edifice for the thesis is that empiricism, facts, can never be distinguished from the interpretation, the understanding, but instead is the result of it.The result of the survey is that Lindhagen's view of Christianity was inspired by Viktor Rydberg and Tolstoyanism. For Lindhagen, Christianity meant the truth about a social ethic, which Jesus, but also previous philosophers and founders of religion, had taught. Man carried the truth within himself, but he risked being lost if he only pursued power and material possessions. Instead, spirituality, the virtues, needed to be cultivated. Truth and spirituality would direct man toward the "good will," the will to do good, which I associate with Jennifer A. Herdt's concept of excellence-prior eudaimonism. Through the moral development of individuals, society also became moral. To get there, the school needed to be transformed from a study- to an education school in the Bildung tradition. Which in turn would create a classless society where individuals could, through dialogue, organize society to the best of their ability. My understanding is that Lindhagen's view of society can be described as deliberative democracy. It also touches on Jennifer A. Herdt's dialogical humanism.In conclusion, Lindhagen's view that an equal and democratic society can not only be created through material prosperity but must also be based on the moral aspirations of individuals is still relevant and has its advocates in the contemporary ethical debate.