‘Again the Same Hopeless Feeling’: Christian Queer Activism as a Personal Experience in Finland, 1960s–2000s

Abstract

Abstract LGBTQ people and the Evangelical Lutheran Church have a long history of tension in Finland. Christian queer activists have fought this tension since the late 1960s. This article asks how Christian queer activism was born and personally experienced in Finland from the late 1960s to the early 2000s. Theoretically, this article builds on queer history and affect theory. My data contains autobiographical texts and oral history interviews of the activists and their contemporaries, as well as statements by the Church, newspaper articles and a TV debate that help to contextualise the personal activist narratives. Using the method of close reading, I pay attention to affective circulation and moments in which activism emerged or started to decline. I argue that a wide circulation of negative affects attached to homosexuality in Finland in this era created an atmosphere that both inspired Christian queer activists to act, but as time went on, also caught them up in political despair when nothing seemed to change, making them reorient their activist hope.