Seminar: The marketized and/or singularized church?

Welcome to the seminar “The marketized and/or singularized church?”

This seminar presents and discusses research on how two Nordic majority churches – the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Finland (ELCF) and the Church of Norway (CoN) – use digital media and mass media to communicate who they are and what they offer to members and to the wider public. A particular focus will be on how these established churches draw on market‑oriented language in strategy documents and in and marketing campaigns.

By exploring and comparing research from both the Finnish and the Norwegian contexts, the seminar aims to discuss how these churches navigate and construct themselves in an increasingly mediatized, marketized, and singularized society.

The seminar is open for researchers and students of all levels and free of charge.

Program

13:00: Welcome
13:15: The Marketized Church: observations and reflections from Finland

Presentation by Marcus Moberg, professor, religious studies, Åbo Akademi

Marcus Moberg has examined communication strategies in several protestant churches. Building on his book Church, market and media (2017), this presentation focuses on how the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Finland (ELCF) employes market-oriented language and how this gets combined with a theological terminology. Revisiting his original study, Moberg will reflect on what has changed – and what has not – regarding the marketization of ELCF ten years after he conducted his study.

Respondent: Jakob Dahlbacka, associate professor, practical theology, Åbo Akademi

Plenary discussion

 14.15: The Singularized Church: observations and reflections from Norway.

Presentation by Elisabeth Tveito Johnsen, professor, practical theology, University of Oslo

Elisabeth Tveito Johnsen has studied how the Scandinavian majority churches present and enact themselves on social media. In this presentation, she discusses her ongoing research on how the Church of Norway (CoN) implements its communication strategy by analyzing the “drop-in wedding” campaign of 2025. Unlike earlier church marketing initiatives, this campaign sparked substantial media attention, and 277 couples chose to get married on Valentine’s Day as part of the event. Drawing on Andreas Reckwitz’s theory of singularization, Johnsen will explore how the church positions itself within a performative “attractiveness economy,” and what this reveal about churches and other religious communities in late modernity.

Respondent: Sofia Sjö, research manager, religious studies, The Donner Institute

Plenary discussion

15.30: Exchange and closing remarks

Marcus Moberg and Elisabeth Tveito Johnsen