ALBERT

Description: It is generally recognized that in early modern society, the position of the church and clergy was very central. As many historians have stated over the decades, the church and state were closely connected and their power structures and ideologies supported each other. However, when studying the social and public role of the church and clergy, it soon becomes quite clear how pervasive this phenomenon was. The church not only created but also maintained and acted as a part of international, national, and local communities, structures, and cultures that connected people regardless of their social status and gender. The church was a spiritual, administrative, and social institution and experience environment, whose tasks, scope, and meanings changed and intertwined with the development, needs, and requirements of society. In this book, we investigate from different perspectives the motives and different means by which the church and clergy came to play a significant part in early modern society. In this volume, the church is considered both as an administrative institution and as a social space and cultural structure. Hence, we do not focus on the history of theology or doctrinal questions. Instead, we consider the social and public roles and meanings of the church. The church as such is understood in this book as transnational, a strong national and local institution, and also a space and structure. The church had its own institutionalized place in society and its activities and rights were defined by law (Church law 1696, the Law of the Swedish kingdom 1734) and by the decrees given by the Royal Majesty. The church had its own archbishop-led administrative organization under the Royal Majesty and it worked in close cooperation with the Crown administration and county governors. In this volume, we understand the clergy as church servants, a trained and appointed professional group, a separate estate (social class), and also as a wide social network constructed by their families. The approach of this book is social science history. In other words, the book examines the church and the clergy as an integral part of society and the individual communities who lived in the current Finnish territory during the early modern era. The topic is examined on the basis of three conceptual themes reflecting important new areas of research in the study of the social significance of the church and clergy: (1) the clergy and family as part of the community, (2) the church as a jointly built space, and (3) the church as an arena for interaction, knowledge, and politics. We approach this multidimensionality using different research questions, sources, methods, and theoretical approaches. The volume focuses on the 17th to 19th centuries, but many of the church and clergy-related phenomena are much older, and some of them extend to the present, so the articles also move beyond this time frame.

Description: The Centre Party of Finland was represented in almost all cabinets for decades, and it often held the post of prime minister during the reign of President Urho Kekkonen. When Kekkonen’s deteriorating health forced him to resign in 1981, the Centre Party, formerly the Agrarian Union, was in front of the crisis. The party was deeply divided along the lines of who would be the best candidate to succeed Kekkonen. The schism had prevailed for years, and contemporaries suspected the party would split up or at least lose its dominant position in Finnish politics. Besides, the numbers of core supporters making up the party, agrarians, were constantly diminishing. In addition, the Finnish party system was in a state of flux. The Finnish People’s Democratic League was in a deep downward spiral, while the Conservative Party’s support was ascendant. The power struggle between the three ‘big’ parties, the Centre Party, the Social Democratic Party and the Conservative Party, was fierce. The study describes and analyses how the Center Party survived the challenges it faced. How was the cohesion of the party rebuilt and maintained? How did the Centre Party manage to survive the inter-party contests and end up being the strongest party in the elections of 1991? The study is firmly based on source material from the party organization of the Centre Party and other relevant political actors, such as President Mauno Koivisto. The book provides new information on both Finnish domestic and foreign politics and the power struggles among the parties and leading political figures.