LOSING CUSTOMERS

Denmark has an established state Lutheran church, with the monarch as its head. There is a Church Minister, and the Government pays priests' salaries and for the upkeep of buildings. A small increase in the income tax covers the cost of all of this; you don't have to pay it, but you have to opt out if you don't want to.

This system has worked well for more than 300 years (though there are some who think that the link between church and state should be broken, as it was in the similar system in Sweden). But it is now being undermined by a precipitate fall in numbers. The church itself reckons that 1,000 members is the minimum required if a parish is to be sustainable. Yet of the country's 2,201 parishes, just over half (1,144) have less than that, and 40 have less than 100 members. These are nearly all on islands or on the west coast of Jutland, which have experienced population declines as the young move to the cities. Maintaining an old building for such a small population is not economic, particularly in these straightened times.

All of which means that the church is having to think out of the box in the same way as every other major Danish organisation. Priests will have to serve more than one parish, some parishes will not have services every Sunday, in the worst case some churches will have to close or be used for alternative purposes. The church has survived religious strife, heresy and schism, but it has difficulty dealing with indifference.

Walter Blotscher