I was brainwashed into raging Laestadian beliefs

– Never give up to think critically about every ideology. Know that you are worth it.- Anonymous.

A Finnish young woman wrote touching description about her current life situation considering how to deal with the dilemma she is facing with the Laestadian beliefs which her family and friends are believing.

”I’m a 17-year-old female high school student in Finland. When it comes to religion, I’d say that out of all the young finnish people most are atheists (myself included).

However, I was born to a very strict and raging religion called

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A Stranger Among Them

Hanna Pylväinen is an author of a new debyte novel We sinners, a book that will be published in August 2012. The family portrait drawn from the author’s own life experience tells the story of a family of eleven in the American Midwest, bound together and torn apart by their Laestadian faith and its doctrines.

 

Pylväinen published in April an extract of the novel in The New York Times  where she writes about an eye-opening experience at her family’s church. Hanna Pylväinen is  a former Laestadian, obviously member of LCC. She doesn’t decribe herself by that word, it’s clear from the details within the text.

She made a deal with her parents when she left  the Laestadian congregation that she will return at Christmas and Easter to spend a time in the sermon. One Sunday she encounters a stranger, a black man, who makes her question her outsider status.