Behovet av en ny kyrkohandbok? En jämförelse mellan tidigare kyrkohandböcker och det nya förslaget 2012

Abstract

In 2010 the Church of Sweden initiated a project to elaborate a new handbook for church services and church documents. This handbook draft was ready to be tested in 2012. The first Sunday of Advent 2012 the church launched an extensive trial for the draft for the new handbook; this handbook draft will now be tested in a selected variety of Swedish parishes until Judgment Sunday 2013. Upon which the Church of Sweden will evaluate and respond to the comments and reactions from the Swedish congregations in terms of the handbooks proposal. My main goal with this paper is that I’m hoping to be able to examine where the need for a new handbook for church services originates. Does it come from the Swedish Church, from the churches and members of the Swedish congregations or do they originate from the surrounding community? This is a question which doesn’t necessarily have an answer to it. To investigate this, I will mainly use the Swedish Church handbook 1942, the Swedish church handbook 1986, the proposed new church handbook 2012 and the comments on the handbook draft 2012. Furthermore, I will examine the Church Sweden's processes around the new handbook proposal and the community around each handbook. The goal with this is to try to find out about what goes on within the Swedish church and out in the Swedish society in the drafting of the various handbooks. In this way I hope to find a clue as to what may be behind the Swedish Church’s handbook proposals 2012.