Church of Sweden

The Church of Sweden (Swedish: Svenska kyrkan) is an Evangelical Lutheran national church in Sweden. A former state church, headquartered in Uppsala, with around 5.4 million members at year end 2024, it is the largest Christian denomination in Sweden.

A member of the Porvoo Communion, the church professes Lutheranism. It is composed of thirteen dioceses, divided into parishes. It is a national church which covers the whole nation. The Primate of the Church of Sweden, as well as the Metropolitan of all Sweden, is the Archbishop of Uppsala.

It is liturgically and theologically "high church", having retained priests, vestments, and the Mass during the Swedish Reformation. In common with other Evangelical Lutheran churches (particularly in the Nordic and Baltic states), the Church of Sweden maintains the historical episcopate and claims apostolic succession. Some Lutheran churches have congregational polity or modified episcopal polity without apostolic succession, but the historic episcopate was maintained in Sweden and some of the other Lutheran churches of the Porvoo Communion. The canons of the Church of Sweden states that the faith, confession and teachings of the Church of Sweden are understood as an expression of the catholic Christian faith. It further states that this does not serve to create a new, confessionally peculiar interpretation, but concerns the apostolic faith as carried down through the traditions of the church, as the Lutheran Reformation aimed at conserving the faith and traditions of the Church while removing what it saw as medieval innovations.

Its membership of 5,426,205 people accounts for 51.4% (per the end of 2024) of the Swedish population. Until 2000 it held the position of state church. The high membership numbers arise because, until 1996, all newborn children were made members, unless their parents had actively cancelled their membership. Approximately 2% of the church's members are regular attenders.

King Gustav Vasa instigated the Church of Sweden in 1536 during his reign as King of Sweden. This act separated the church from the Roman Catholic Church and its canon law. In 1571, the Swedish Church Ordinance became the first Swedish church order following the Reformation.

The Church of Sweden became Lutheran at the Uppsala Synod in 1593 when it adopted the Augsburg Confession to which most Lutherans adhere. At this synod, it was decided that the church would retain the three original Christian creeds: the Apostolic, the Athanasian, and the Nicene.

In 1686, the Riksdag of the Estates adopted the Book of Concord, although only certain parts, labelled Confessio fidei, were considered binding, and the other texts merely explanatory. Confessio fidei included the three aforementioned Creeds, the Augsburg Confession and two Uppsala Synod decisions from 1572 and 1593.

During the 19th and 20th centuries, a variety of teachings were officially approved, mostly directed towards ecumenism: