on yesterday's election & the short history of pentecostals in power

Yesterday was the election for the parliament. The results in short were Centre party got 51 seats and remained the biggest although lost 4, the National Coalition wan a big time gaining 10 seats up to 50, and dropping Social democrats to 45 seats. They lost 8 seats.

The result shifts the parliament slightly towards right, but just slightly because National coalition in Finland stands in quite moderate right. They beat the moderate left social democrats by a positive spirited campaign. Social democrats took the beat with very confrontational campaign, which was aimed to defame national coalition - accorded by SAK's (the Central Organization of Finnish Trade Unions') TV commercial, which was pulled back before it was broadcast once. One conclusion of the entire farce is that in current state of affairs, the fins aren't tickled by negative confrontation, but rather want someone to take a positive lead towards mastering economics in global challenge and providing the national welfare - of which right wing parties seem to have best credibility.

National coalition attempted to be moderate in promising funds to different needs in the campaign, but emphatically promised the trickiest: fair spirited (responsible) market economy. That's a big of promise in the greedy world, but they got their change to show how to reach it. Now we just wait and see.

Other elected parties are Left Alliance (17seats) Green League (15seats) Christian Democrats (7seats) Swedish People Party (9) and True Fins (5seats). True Fins, as bombastic as it sounds, is more of a protest party that wants to leave EU etc. Swedish People Party is the most right wing group mainly supported by finnish swedish speaking folks. The people of Sweden are not allowed to vote in Finland. =)

Christian Democrats is a small, moderate right party that mainly speaks out in issues that touch Christian ethics. They remained the same in size this time. They are not a pentecostal party but do provide the most comfortable way into politics to many pentecostals - so much so, that it's hard to find a pentecostal candidate in any other party. On one side it's a natural result of the party raising up issues that connect well the Pent church folks, one the other hand it also might have roots in the Finnish Pentecostal story.

The revival history of the Pentecostal church shows that contrary to the other the evangelical churches pentecostal movement, at the peak of it's growth, it grew the fastest among working-class population. A lot of them, following the conversion, let go of their left party/communist party membership. The biggest reason for this was the strong atheistic tone that dominated the left wing politics back then. However, the people's mindset of the optimal societal system did not change, of course, and they remained left for that matter. This dilemma was handled by encouragement to dismiss politics as whole. As obscure as it sounds, some leaders of the pentecostal movement admitted back then that they can't encourage people to vote, because they'd vote wrong... In sum, the mainline teaching in Pentecostal churches for decades was to keep out from politics.

That was back then, now in many places politics are seen as important part of being involved in the community. However, as result of this history Pentecostals are still fighting to find their place in political stands. This leads them to mainly concentrate the issues that are the closest to their hearts, application of Christian ethics in the society.

This is not to underestimate the political credibility of any Christian democrat candidate, or the people who vote for them. However, I personally would like to see people with solid Christian values (and profoundly skilled in his/her area) in every aspect of power, and to those seats Christian Democrats as a small (sometimes protest) party are not offering ladders to climb. Neither are they currently offering any credible candidates to i.e. government seats, anyway.

So, I keep on hoping that a new generation will produce skilled Pentecostal politicians that will find their way to have impact in every area of the society. I also hope that the new generation will provide an atmosphere of freedom to choose what's really one's most comfortable and the most effective path into the political scenes.

Until that, I wait to see what the responsible market economy might mean.

Concratz to all who's candidates made their way through.