Protestant
Protestantism is a branch of Christianity that emphasizes Justification (theology), justification of sinners Sola fide, through faith alone, the teaching that Salvation in Christianity, salvation comes by unmerited Grace in Christianity, divin ...
denomination in
Sweden
Sweden, formally the Kingdom of Sweden, is a Nordic countries, Nordic country located on the Scandinavian Peninsula in Northern Europe. It borders Norway to the west and north, and Finland to the east. At , Sweden is the largest Nordic count ...
.
History
It was established on 4 June 2011 by the merger of the
United Methodist Church
The United Methodist Church (UMC) is a worldwide mainline Protestant Christian denomination, denomination based in the United States, and a major part of Methodism. In the 19th century, its main predecessor, the Methodist Episcopal Church, was ...
Mission Covenant Church of Sweden
The Mission Covenant Church of Sweden ( – until 2003 'Swedish Mission Covenant'), founded in 1878, was a Swedish evangelical free church in the Radical Pietist tradition. It was the second-largest Protestant denomination in Sweden, after the ...
.
Initially the name of the unified denomination was the Joint Future Church (), before the name was changed during a conference in
Karlstad
Karlstad (, ) is the 20th-largest city in Sweden, the seat of Karlstad Municipality, the capital of Värmland County, and the largest city in the province Värmland in Sweden. The city proper had 67,122 inhabitants in 2020 with 97,233 inhabitan ...
on 11 May 2013 to the present Uniting Church in Sweden or in Swedish.
Organization
The Uniting Church in Sweden consists of about 640 local congregations in Sweden, which collectively have about 59,000 members. The church serves around 130,000 people .
Since 2007, the merging denominations also had a common youth organization called Equmenia. The intention to form the new denomination was made in the respective conferences in 2008, 2009 and 2010 before the final decision was made in 2011.
Since the inaugural meeting in 2011, the denomination's president was Ann-Sofie Lasell, who was succeeded in 2014 by Tomas Bjöersdorff and in 2017 by Susanne Rodmar. The current president, Kerstin Torkelsson Enlund, was elected in 2020. The church conference in Linköping in 2012 elected Lasse Svensson as church leader and Olle Alkholm and Sofia Camnerin as deputy church leaders. All three were re-elected at the 2016 church conference in Stockholm. At the 2020 church conference, Lasse Svensson was re-elected as church leader, and Karin Wiborn and Joakim Hagerius were newly elected as deputy church leaders.
The Uniting Church in Sweden runs
University College Stockholm
The University College Stockholm (), formerly the Stockholm School of Theology (), is an independent school for theology and Human Rights, human rights in Stockholm, Sweden,Södra Vätterbygdens folkhögskola. Together with the Swedish Alliance Mission, it runs the aid organization . The Uniting Church in Sweden is a member organization of the study association Bilda. Along with a number of other Christian denominations and organizations, it runs the nonprofit social work organization .
Ecumenism
The ecumenical agreements that previously existed between the
Church of Sweden
The Church of Sweden () is an Evangelical Lutheran national church in Sweden. A former state church, headquartered in Uppsala, with around 5.5 million members at year end 2023, it is the largest Christian denomination in Sweden, the largest List ...
, the Mission Covenant Church of Sweden and the United Methodist Church of Sweden have since 2016 been adapted to a similar agreement between the Church of Sweden and the Uniting Church in Sweden.