A community of emotions: pastoral care meetings in Conservative Laestadianism

This article studies Conservative Laestadianism, a Lutheran revival movement group located mainly in Finland. The focus of this article is so called pastoral care meetings which took place in the 1970s. The meetings were internal examinations of members’ belief with the intention of correcting spiritual errors and missteps of the members of the community and guiding them in the right direction. One important implicit purpose of the meetings was also to maintain the unanimous nature of the community. The article analyzes the emotional responses to these meetings; how the meetings were experienced by those who were forced to participate in them. Theoretically, the theme of emotions will be elaborated; how emotions could help in understanding and analyzing spiritually and religiously motivated violence and pressure. Empirically the presentation relies on collected narratives, internet material, interviews as well as documents, newspapers and official material provided by the Laestadian community.