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Finland RELIGION
The right to worship freely is guaranteed by Article 8
and
Article 9 of the Constitution of 1919 and by the Freedom
of
Religion Act that went into effect in 1923. In the 1980s,
there
were about thirty registered religions in the country, all
of
which met the minimum requirement of having at least
thirty
followers. Despite this wealth of religions, the country's
religious life was dominated by one of its two state
churches,
the Lutheran Church of Finland, which had nearly 90
percent of
the population as members. The other state church, the
Orthodox
Church of Finland, had a membership of about 1 percent of
the
population. The remaining churches or religions had 2
percent of
the people in their congregations. Followers of the
smaller
churches included Jews, Muslims, Roman Catholics, a
variety of
Protestants, Mormons, Christian Scientists, and converts
to
eastern religions. Seven percent belonged to no church.
Data as of December 1988
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