Thousands of people have resigned from the Lutheran Church in Finland, after the nation\u2019s parliament approved a same-sex marriage law and the church\u2019s archbishop expressed support for the vote, Finland\u2019s Yle News reported.<\/p>\n
By late Saturday, around 7,800 people had officially resigned from the state-supported Lutheran Church via an online service, which was specifically created to ease the registration process.<\/p>\n
The resignation frees the individuals from obligatory church membership taxes, which is where the majority of the Lutheran Church\u2019s income comes from. By the end of 2013, some 75 percent of Finns \u2013 4.1 million people \u2013 were listed as members of the church.<\/p>\n
The media suggested that the main catalyst was a comment made by the Archbishop of Turku and Finland, Kari M\u00e4kinen, in support of the Friday-passed law for same-sex marriages. In a Facebook post, the church leader stated that he \u201crejoiced\u201d after the vote passed.<\/p>\n
\u201cI know how much this day means for rainbow people, their loved ones and many others. I rejoice with my whole heart for them and with them,\u201d M\u00e4kinen said. \u201cWe are in the same situation as our neighboring Nordic Churches: our concept of marriage needs a fundamental examination. Speaking for myself, I think it is time for reconsideration.\u201d<\/p>\n
Media reported that most of the comments under the resignations express disapproval of the archbishop\u2019s statements.<\/p>\n
The Finnish Parliament approved the \u201cgender-neutral\u201d unions by a narrow margin of 105-92 on Friday.<\/p>\n
The law gives homosexual marriages in Finland the same rights as heterosexual ones \u2013 couples will be allowed to share a surname and adopt children.<\/p>\n
Finland became the 12th European nation to allow same-sex marriages.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Thousands of people have resigned from the Lutheran Church in Finland, after the nation\u2019s parliament approved a same-sex marriage law and the church\u2019s archbishop expressed support for the vote, Finland\u2019s Yle News reported. By late Saturday, around 7,800 people had officially resigned from the state-supported Lutheran Church via an online service, which was specifically created … Continue reading “Thousands resign from church after same-sex marriage law”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2961,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[49,3],"tags":[3141,10636,7921],"class_list":["post-17051","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-europe","category-news","tag-finland","tag-lutheran-church","tag-same-sex-marriage"],"cc_featured_image_caption":{"caption_text":false,"source_text":false,"source_url":false},"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17051","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2961"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=17051"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17051\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17052,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17051\/revisions\/17052"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=17051"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=17051"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=17051"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}