Now I want to tell you about my confirmation

Now I want to tell you about my confirmation. You don't have to be a James Michener to enjoy going back in history, back to the roots of things. I think sometimes in order to understand certain things, we need to know something about history.

Painting of Gustav Vasa by Jakob Binck

The first Christians who came to Norway, Sweden and Denmark were Catholic missionaries who established cloisters and abbeys and such. Then in 1523, a man named Gustav Vasa became king of Sweden and he was king to 1560. He was acquainted with Martin Luther's teaching and banned Catholics from Sweden. He established the Lutheran church as the state church of Sweden and it remained that way for 400 years.

So how does that connect to my confirmation? Well, when I was a kid, confirmation was mandatory for everyone because the Lutheran church kept all the records on the population. The baptism record was like a birth certificate. Then came first communion and then confirmation, then marriage records, and at the end, death certificates. There was no other form of registration for a long

Karin i Blåsten

and Astor Karlsson

from the 

confirmation 

photo

time. This is why when I was confirmed I was part of a class of 63 kids in a little town of 3000 or so people. That was pretty much all the 14 year olds in town.  There were other churches, but it didn't matter if you were Mission Friend, Baptist, Pentecost, Salvation Army, you had to be confirmed in the Lutheran church. At that time, we had all these other churches in town but they weren't called churches. What I mean is Kisa Kyrka, the Kisa Church, was the Lutheran Church. Salvation Army was Frälsingsarmen. The Pentecosts were called Sion and the Mission church was called Missionshuset. The Mission friends were an offshoot of the Lutheran church so they worked together a lot in our town when I was young and this was true for confirmation. The Lutheran church didn't have a big enough meeting hall to fit all of us kids, so our lessons were held at the Mission House, boys on one side and girls on the other. There would have been enough room in the Lutheran sanctuary of course, but it wouldn't have been proper to have rowdy kids taking lessons in the sanctuary! So we were over in the Mission House hall.

The Pastor

I enjoyed confirmation. Of course, I had learned things before in Sunday School and in regular school, but there was a lot about history and things which I found really interesting. We learned the Lord's Prayer, the Creed and we studied Martin Luther's Catechism. Karin i Blåsten and Greta and I were all in the same class, but Karin and I were on the young side of the class. You weren't supposed to be confirmed until you were 14. Karin was born in March so the Pastor said she was ok. I was born in June, though, and confirmation was done in May, so I wouldn't be 14 until a month after that, and Pastor almost didn't let me be confirmed. He called me in and talked to me individually and then he called Dad in and I think if it wasn't for Dad speaking up for me I wouldn't have been confirmed until the next year.

Mom's confirmation class. She's in the second row on the far right.