En kamp om själar - Doria

16. English summary
The present study is an investigation of the influence of Civil War of 1918 on
the Evangelical-Lutheran Church in the Porvoo region (in Swedish: ’Borgå’).
No previous research has dealt with the same question in a similar region
composed of both rural and urban environments in southern Finland.
This study firstly shows that the Evangelical-Lutheran Church of Finland
and the local Evangelical-Lutheran congregation in Porvoo were in the first
hand faced with an ideological struggle. The great majority of leading
theologians within the church concluded that the Reds represented an antireligious
and materialistic ideology. Thus the struggle was either for or against
the Christian faith in Finland. Secondly, this study shows that the great
majority of the Reds in Porvoo did not fight against the local church but rather
for justice and better social conditions. This was the case despite of the highly
critical or even directly hostile attitude toward the church within the Red
leadership. This attitude was manifested e.g. at a meeting held in Forssa in
1903. On the eve of the Civil War both Whites and Reds participated in the
catechetical meetings of the local church.
By portraying various characteristics of the Reds and the Whites in several
tables the dissertation produces two personality profiles. The average White
person had attended elementary school and in many instances also high school
or even university. He came from stable economic conditions and in many
instances he was a Swedish-speaking Finn. The average person on the Red
side was typically very young. His reading ability was comparatively poor and
he could barely write. He had a low income and he earned his livelihood by
manual labour. He came from a poor home and he spoke Finnish. The latter
profile verifies the claim that the Reds had a limited capability of
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