Religious Innovation in Southern Sweden. : A case study on the congregation Kingdom Center Sweden.

Abstract: Kingdom center Sweden is a small-town Pentecostal community located in the Swedish province of Scania. What, on a surface level, distinguishes this community from other Christian communities in Sweden is that the congregation operates a cowboy-themed wilderness center. Religious communities that operate businesses is not in itself a novel occurrence; instead, it is the cowboy theme in particular that potentially alludes to a phenomenon, novel to a Swedish context, that is, cowboy Christianity. Thus, this essay centers on examining if and how the congregation can be understood as a representation of cowboy Christianity in Sweden. In addition to this, a theological reading is performed in order to further examine the roots of the congregation. The results of the examination suggest that Kingdom Center Sweden, outwardly, shares characteristics with other movements within the cowboy Christian milieu; this, based on images in the congregation’s e-book and on their YouTube accounts in which members of the congregation both dress in cowboy-themed clothes when appearing as a congregation, and to some extent has appropriated practices such as baptism in a horse through and wedding services on horseback – all of which has been previously connected to the cowboy Christian phenomena. Moreover, the information on their YouTube account and e-book brings out how the congregation promotes itself as existing within a cowboy Christian milieu, which consists of cowboy churches, rodeo ministries and profiles within the Christian cowboy community. However, the analysis of the theological material suggests that this, seemingly isolated case of Cowboy Christianity in Sweden, is not merely the result of cowboy Christianity mushrooming from the Great Plains to rural Scania. Instead, the examined material suggests that, theologically, the movement kept it ties with the prosperity theology associated with faith movements and the Swedish Word of Life. Thus, suggesting that after the congregation was excluded from the Swedish faith community, they appropriated the material culture and traits of the cowboy Christian phenomena. Hence, rooting the congregation in another contemporary offshoot of Christianity.