Anna Lindhagen och Kommittén för medborgerlig ungdomsundervisning : Borgerlig konfirmation i Stockholm omkr. 1933–1938

Sammanfattning: This essay examines a movement practicing civic confirmation in Stockholm in the 1930s. Organizing the civic confirmations was The Committee for Civic Youth Education, led by civil- and human rights advocate Anna Lindhagen (1870–1941). The practice of civic confirmation is examined within the context of the early 20th century Swedish labour movement and the criticism of church and religion often expressed therein. Based on Janken Myrdal’s method of multiple sources, the essay utilizes several different kinds of sources, consisting of unpublished archival material as well as press and periodical journals, in order to examine the background, purpose and practice of civic confirmation. The origins of the civic confirmations are found within the critique of what was perceived as a too dogmatic and compulsory school education in the Christian faith, leading to a desire to politically reform the religious education of the public-school system. When this failed, Anna Lindhagen and her peers took matters into their own hands, organizing a course of lectures on religious and philosophic thinkers throughout history as well as on contemporary matters deemed important for adolescents. The purpose was to give youths a proper religious education, thus enabling them to become morally and spiritually sound members of society, and to eventually replace the practice of church confirmation. Courses were held throughout the 1930s, but the movement’s fate thereafter is unknown. The civic confirmations in Stockholm were similar to practices in southern Sweden as well as in Denmark and Norway. They were also in many ways typical of how the labour movement had organized its opposition to church practices in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. This particular instance of civic confirmation in Stockholm may have had limited effect on society, but within a broader context of secularization in northern Europe, the early and mid-20th century civic confirmations could be understood as forerunners to similar movements organizing civic or humanist youth confirmations in the 21st century.