Children Who Have Limited Right to Learn

Citing European human rights law, a Laestadian family in northern Sweden have managed to overturn a decision by their daughters’ school, which had refused to allow the three girls to skip out on ”sinful” dance class during physical education (PE).

Also  Conservative Laestadian families in Finland have opted to keep children out of school’s dance and theatre education (often also physical education , i.e. gymnastic exercises with music). The National Board of Education had assigned exemption to attend theatre visits and dance lessons, according the require of the Central Committee of Conservative Laestadian Congregations (Suomen rauhanyhdistysten keskusyhdistys ry., SRK).

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Stop the Victims of Laestadian Ban of Birth Control – NOW

– There have been these kinds of occasions were the enemy has tempted some with practicing birth control.  It’s not according to God’s word – it’s not according to the teachings of God’s kingdom. – Pastor Eric Jurmu, a Mother’s Day sermon 2012, Phoenix Laestadian Lutheran Church.

CNS NEWS Video

Laestadianism’s rejection of contraception is an important topic, literally a matter of life and death for some women. There is no excuse for an institution to discourage its members from considering all viewpoints on such a grave matter, especially when it claims that those members are accepting life-threatening pregnancies in accordance with their individual consciences.

Laestadian people need to open their eyes and hearts, before any more of women and babies bleed to death on the sacrificial altar of a faith that requires their fertility for its survival. It’s about time.

Speak Up for the Children

A Laestadian woman in Phoenix was arrested Thursday for the suffocation death of her ninth child, a six-day old baby. Let your heart break for all the victims in this tragedy. Let yourself feel righteous anger at the authorities in her life that allowed this to happen, despite all the warning signs. [Tapauksesta uutinen suomeksi tässä.- Toim.huom.]

 

But please, stay angry. Let your anger motivate action. Talk to your relatives. Write to the preachers. Leave a comment on the news article. Write to the court. Do something. 

Laestadian Banning of Contraception Leads a Man to Plight

 A Conservative Laestadian Kari, a man in his thirties, says that he is deeply hurt how the Laestadianist ban of contraceptives is seen generally as a problem only for women.  – Outsiders see the men even as tyrants who oppress their wives. Most fathers are victims just like the mothers, says Kari, a father of five. However, Laestadian women self often doesn’t accept birth control although suffering of the whole family and health dangers would be absolutely obvious. It seems that people does’nt know that there does not exist any biblical nor Christian position against contraception.

The Conservative Laestadians’ (Laestadian Lutheran Church’s) teachings ban

Rebekka Naatus: Laestadian Women Resist Big Family Pressure and Criticize the Ban on Contraception

The women rights have got a important step forward, when the  Finland’s First Conservative Laestadian Female Priest, Mrs. Mari Leppänen, was  secretly ordained as priest in 2012, in order to start her work in Lieto parish, near to Turku. Listen here the detalis of the issues in English (information on womens’ rights and bans in the Conservative Laestadian movement in general, too).

Also Mrs. Rebekka Naatus, a journalist, divorced Laestadian woman is making waves by speaking out against the treatment of women with the movement to which she belongs.

Rebekka Naatus, the PR and information officer of Evangelical Lutheran parishes in Oulu, has published an article about these questions in an  anthology Iloisen talon kellareissa (”In the Cellars of a Merry House”, not translated in English).  She has been interviewed in media on the womens’ situation in the biggest revival movement in the country, Conservative Laestadianism. Are their bodies really their own, or has the religious community colonised them to reproduction where no anyone is allowed to refuse?

The focus is in the problems following from the very tight and strict community of the religious or rather ”ethnic” group. The community has a strong power in the individual’s everyday life and in the choice of personal lifestyle.