Chapter Nine - Contesting the nation

Summary

In a country where religious matters do not customarily make front-page news, the Word of Life has attracted extensive and dramatic coverage in the Swedish media. Attention was particularly focussed on the group during the 1980s, when Ekman became a nationally known, even notorious figure. He was described in the press as, among other things, a ‘shaman’, ‘God's capitalist’ and the leader of a ‘hidden Religious Right’ (see Coleman 1989:166–212). Faith adherents are regularly depicted as either passive, brain-washed victims or active aggressors against those deemed to have insufficient faith, particularly the poor and the sick. In chapter 3, I noted that at one point the Movement was even linked to a suspect in the Palme murder trial: a more potent metaphor of threat to national security and values could hardly have been presented to the Swedish public.

During the 1980s, the Archbishop of Sweden released two ‘Statements Concerning the Word of Life’ which captured something of the tone of the wider moral panic surrounding the group. He referred to spiritual movements ‘born in foreign environments … often foreign to our own Christian interpretation and tradition of faith. Among these movements there is one which is closer to our own Church than others. I refer to the tendency which is often called Prosperity Theology and which describes itself as the Word of Life or Faith preaching.’