As the whole world and his dog knows, Sweden didn’t go into lockdown in its response to the global pandemic. If you do a quick search for ‘Sweden & lockdown’ you’ll quickly see that half of the articles think this was ridiculous, irresponsible, negligent and worse. The other half think it was sensible and reasonable and almost all of them misunderstand or misrepresent the reasons why.

1. It was never about the economy
2. It wasn’t about herd immunity
3. It DID make mistakes in protecting the elderly
4. Any conclusions are STILL too early to make

What they did say early on was that coming out of lockdown would be much harder than going into one and you wouldn’t know which measures reduced the spread of the virus and in that, I think, they were right.

The figures for Sweden are still worse than its neighbours (although at the time of writing it’s growing faster in those countries than here) and will be for some time yet (see point 3) but the social problems are far less.

And as a church we simply haven’t had to face the difficulties that our friends in the UK or US for example have had to face. My friend Matt Hosier writes,

We are still not permitted to sing praises to God when we gather, even from behind our masks. I don’t know how we can celebrate the Lord’s Supper when we are masked. I haven’t yet worked out how we baptise people and adhere to social distancing rules. This is serious. And any failure of Christians to grasp how serious is a theological issue rather than an political one.

It does feel as though the decisions the government has made are significantly limiting, if not entirely preventing, us from ‘delivering the message of the free grace of God to all people in Christ’s stead, and therefore in the ministry of his own Word and work through sermon and sacrament.’ So is it time to resist? Is it time to remove the masks?

https://thinktheology.co.uk/blog/article/on_christian_obedience

None of that has been a problem for us in Sweden. We did stop meeting in person for four months but that was because our venue (which was a centre for the elderly) closed to outside users and not because of government restrictions. But we’ve restarted again and are operating under the 50 person limit set by the government. That limit means we can meet easily enough and whether we do or not is a personal decision and not a political decision. And we haven’t had to have discussions around conscience.

When we meet we can sing. We can celebrate communion. We don’t have to wear masks. We can be responsible (stay at home if sick, wash your hands etc…) and careful without being fearful.

There are rightfully and reasonably discussions about the mistakes Sweden made early on in its handling of the virus and in particular the large care homes, fair enough. But there was a philosophical approach that I’m appreciating more and more the longer this pandemic goes on. The freedoms that people are used to living under should not be lightly taken away.

Sweden sought to find an approach it could sustain for a long-ish period of time (say 2 years or so) and cause the least amount of disruption to the way people normally carry on their lives. I think they’ve done that and as a result as Christians, we have been spared the endless zoom meetings, the wrestling with impenetrable government restrictions and the theological discussions about whether or when to resist your own government.

In Sweden that would mean putting on a facemask and not taking one off.