Deportability of Christian Converts and the Controversy Over Faith in Finland

This is a self-archived version of an original article. This version may differ from the original in pagination and typographic details. Author(s): Title: Year: Version: Copyright: Rights: Rights url: Please cite the original version: CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ Deportability of Christian Converts and the Controversy Over Faith in Finland © 2023 The Author(s). Published version Horsti, Karina; Pirkkalainen, Päivi Horsti, K., & Pirkkalainen, P. (2023). Deportability of Christian Converts and the Controversy Over Faith in Finland. Nordic Journal of Migration Research, 13(4), Article 4. https://doi.org/10.33134/njmr.586 2023 Deportability of Christian Converts and the Controversy Over Faith in Finland KARINA HORSTI PÄIVI PIRKKALAINEN *Author affiliations can be found in the back matter of this article ABSTRACT The issue of conversion from Islam to Christianity has emerged in the aftermath of Europe’s 2015 surge in asylum-seeker numbers. In Finland, the increase in the number of deportation orders issued set in motion affective practices of resistance in the religious field across denomination boundaries. Critical frame analysis to public letters and other documents by religious leaders is combined with thematic analysis of interviews with converts’ supporters in the religious field. This dual perspective reveals how affects and emotions are central in institutional-level processes whereby faith-based communities participate in asylum politics. The article argues that emotions such as fear are not only felt for those who are under deportation or deported but also for the religious communities themselves. The individuals’ and the community’s trust in the state gets called into question, along with the genuineness of their right to freedom of religion. The article demonstrates that affective practices become a means of resisting both deportations and the perceived violation of the right to define one’s faith. SPECIAL ISSUE ARTICLE CORRESPONDING AUTHOR: Karina Horsti University of Jyväskylä, FI [email protected] KEYWORDS: Deportation; asylumseekers; affect; conversion; Christianity TO CITE THIS ARTICLE: Horsti K, Pirkkalainen P. 2023. Deportability of Christian Converts and the Controversy Over Faith in Finland. Nordic Journal of Migration Research, 13(4): 4, pp. 1–17. DOI: https:// doi.org/10.33134/njmr.586 2Horsti and Pirkkalainen Nordic Journal of Migration Research DOI: 10.33134/njmr.586 INTRODUCTION In 2017, the news media reported a new ‘phenomenon’ in Finland. After negative asylum decisions, people (mainly from Iraq and Afghanistan) reapplied on the grounds of conversion to Christianity. There were also increasing numbers of appeals to administrative courts on decisions related to post-departure conversions. While the Finnish Immigration Service (Migri) does not have official statistics for conversionbased claims, it estimated that 70% of the 7,500 appeals filed with administrative courts in 2017 and also of new applications to Migri (a proportion equating to 2,000 in 2016) were based on claims of religious conversion (Migri 2018; Niemi 2017). This led to faith-related controversy that set the Finnish Immigration Service against Christian converts, converts’ supporters in the various congregations, and the Finnish Ecumenical Council—which brings together various Christian churches to strengthen their voice in the public sphere.1 International human rights law and the fundamental laws of Finland articulate the right to choose one’s religion. In Finland, the majority of the population, nearly four million people out of a total population of over five million belong to the Evangelical Lutheran Church, which status is defined in the constitutional church law. Traditionally, the relations between the state and the Lutheran Church have been close. A small minority of people belongs to other Christian churches that as organizations remain independent from the state and church law, such as Pentecostal and Free Churches. In terms of asylum-seeker issues, Christian churches commonly cooperate through the Finnish Ecumenical Council. Legally, religion is understood as religious belief, identity, and a way of life, and ‘one should not be compelled to hide, change or renounce this in order to avoid persecution’ (UNHCR 2004; see McDonald 2016: 137–138). Accordingly, the Finnish Migration Service and the courts are required to examine asylum applicants’ ‘conditions of conversion and its genuineness’ (Supreme Administrative Court of Finland 2009). However, what counts as a genuine belief, identity, or way of life can be debated—and it is. All religions are complex and multifaceted, shaped by cultural and social contexts (McDonald 2016: 134–144). Even within the confines of a single society, there are various denominations and congregations, alongside substantial variation in individuals’ religious practices; furthermore, converts typically maintain some practices that could be defined as ‘religious’ from their life prior to conversion (McDonald 2016: 144). Since forced displacement creates a break with various aspects of the past, refugees and asylum-seekers may well start adopting spiritual ideas and practices when navigating new influences (Kraft 2017). Likewise, issues of interpretation and interpreters’ religious background complicate investigation of religious issues in connection with asylum hearings (Rose & Given-Wilson 2021). Clearly, specifying objective criteria for genuineness and investigating credibility is difficult, if not impossible. This issue is exceptionally challenging for bureaucratic systems based on a tradition of rationality (Weber 1946), and it can cast into sharp relief tensions between asylum-related bureaucracy largely situated within a culture of disbelief and religious institutions that hold belief at their core. 1 The Ecumenical Council in Finland was founded in 1917 and currently has 11 member churches and five observer member churches (including the Pentecostal parishes) comprising all of Finland’s major Christian churches. Despite lacking any legal status in political processes, the council has taken a public stance on the issues of asylum-seekers and engaged in collaboration with the Immigration Service, thus functioning as an important mediator between individual congregations and the state. 3Horsti and Pirkkalainen Nordic Journal of Migration Research DOI: 10.33134/njmr.586 As previous research on conversion and deportation has shown, beneath the administrative and legal examinations lie suspicions of non-genuineness: might post-departure (sur place) conversion be a ‘migration strategy’ (Akcapar 2006) or an ‘asylum tactic’ (Hoellerer & Gill 2021)? While this is sometimes the case (Akcapar 2006), following one’s beliefs and presenting a certain identity or way of life to others can, irrespective of its genuineness, put people in danger if they later get deported. For the Finnish bureaucracy, however, performative (or public practice of) religion counts only if it can be proven genuine. Hence, public debate emerged around questions of who possesses the capacity and the authority to determine what constitutes true conversion, the criteria for genuine conversion, and who is a true convert. In that debate, religious communities called out and rebuffed state institutions’ decisions and evaluations. For example, Evangelical Lutheran priests read out negative decisions during Lenten church services in 2017 (Askola 2017). These public performances positioned Christian congregations vis-à-vis state authorities, shifting the discussion to a more confrontational dynamic on this particular topic of conversions and deportations. The issue of conversion and deportation emerged in the aftermath of Europe’s 2015 surge in asylum-seeker numbers, when Finland embraced stricter asylum policies (Saarikkomäki et al. 2018; the introduction to this issue). The issue of asylum claims and post-departure conversions entered public debate also elsewhere in Europe, yet research on the topic remains scarce. That said, it has recently increased, largely in strongly Protestant regions: the Nordic countries, Germany, and the UK. Postdeparture conversions have gained attention, particularly at the intersections of religious studies, law, and migration studies. Our multidisciplinary approach that combines media studies and sociology is situated in deportation studies, a subfield within migration research, and we draw on literature from religious studies, law, media studies, anthropology, and sociology. Researchers have started considering asylum, deportation, and conversion with regard to media coverage (Hartikainen 2019; Pennarola 2019), narratives and motives for converting (Stene 2020), religion as alleviating the asylum system’s noncomprehensiveness (Nielsen 2019; Whyte 2019), legal aspects of determining the right to protection (Aarsheim 2019; Karras 2017; McDonald 2016; Møller 2019; Pernak 2018), social dimensions of asylum and court hearings (Rose & Given-Wilson 2021; on judges’ discussion of conversions during hearings, see especially Hoellerer & Gill 2021), and theological questions of conversion and baptism (Krannich 2020). However, deportation studies often focus on deportees and their experiences, whereas our contribution to the field widens the perspective to see how deportations also affect the deporting society and its communities (see the introduction to this issue).2 While in the abovementioned existing literature scholars have identified the processes and motives of conversion and the legal, theological, and public-debate aspects of the conflict between the relevant state and religious institutions, and the role of Christian churches in asylum policy making at the European Union level (Mudrov 2013), little is known of how negative asylum decisions and deportations or threats thereof shape religious communities more broadly. Furthermore, aspects of affects and emotions are often removed from the analysis of institutions level controversies and negotiations, that is, those between churches and the state. Our 2 We thank Professor Henning Theißen for the overview of German research presented at the CCME online event ‘Conversion in the Asylum Procedure—New Developments and Old Challenges’ (January 18–20, 2022). 4Horsti and Pirkkalainen Nordic Journal of Migration Research DOI: 10.33134/njmr.586 aim is to examine the role of faith-based communities in asylum politics, namely, how they respond to deportations and the deportability of post-departure converts at the public and institutional level, and why. Here, we examine these gaps in the literature, asking key questions in the Finnish context: What is the role of affects and emotions in negotiations on deportability at the public and institutional scale? How does deportability affect faith-based communities and what kinds of emotions motivate their actions? How do they respond through institutional channels to these affects, and in doing so, shape asylum policy? We examine these questions from a multidisciplinary perspective by combining media studies and sociology and by bringing together two different types of research materials: public letters and institutional-level documents by religious actors and thematic interview material with religious actors. Through these materials, we analyze public and nonpublic practices by Finnish churches that questioned state institutions’ practices and how particular conversions were assessed, in conjunction with some converts’ deportability. We trace tensions between ‘hard facts’ and ‘belief’ within bureaucracy in 2016–2021 via the theoretical framework of affective practices (Wetherell 2012). This framework highlights the role of affect and emotions in actions. In other words, the focus is on what people do and what are the outcomes of their actions. As Wetherell, McConville and McCreanor (2020: 16–17) have recommended, we focus here on affective practices as units of analysis by considering emotions, affect, meaning-making, and interactions between people, rather than sticking to single, basic emotions as analysis units. They found that ‘the making of meaning is central to what is felt, how it is articulated, and how social forces assemble, register, and have effects’ (28). Hence, affective practices are motivated not only by emotions but also by processes of making sense of them, so they create various emotional consequences for those involved. Instead of seeing affect merely as preconscious bodily reactions that lack cognitive and cultural elements, we understand affect and emotions as intertwined: emotions are expressions of affect produced and circulated in discourses and practices (Wetherell 2012: 39). Accordingly, we analyze how emotions and affect, as responses to negative asylum decisions, triggered a process of meaning-making: making sense of the emotions and responding through action became urgent. In addition, we examine how these emotions were shared across congregations and inter-denominationally via the institutional platform of the Ecumenical Council, alongside what kinds of actions and outcomes followed. First, we apply critical frame analysis to public letters and other documents from the council to understand how Finland’s religious leaders framed the issue: what they considered to be problems and how they wanted to solve them. Their framing of the issue reflects what we regard theoretically as a meaning-making process (Wetherell et al. 2020: 28). Problem framings are articulations aimed at making sense of a situation that is both rationally unacceptable and emotionally distressing at the individual and collective levels in the religious field. These framings—and the meaning-making process—should not be seen as an outcome of a purely rational practice. Rather, as our further analysis demonstrates, public framings are an outcome of affective practices. We expand frame analysis by going deeper into the processes preceding these public problem framings that materialized in open letters. Through thematic analysis of interviews with converts’ supporters, we examine how and why faith-based communities resisted state institutions, coupled with what consequences have followed. In this discussion, we analyze motivations and consequences through 5Horsti and Pirkkalainen Nordic Journal of Migration Research DOI: 10.33134/njmr.586 identifying affective practices the interviewees had engaged in. The analysis demonstrates that these practices influence life for those involved and profoundly shape their sense of citizenship and belonging. DATA AND METHODS The article refers to two interlinked sets of empirical data. First, we applied frame analysis to publicly mediated views expressed by the religious field: five public documents by the Ecumenical Council (the council’s web site, 2022), mainstreammedia interviews with religious actors, and their published letters-to-the-editor (13 media items from Helsingin Sanomat and Yle). This can be seen as the tip of the ice berg—rational problem framings that reach the broader public and institutional level of the society. Second, we analyzed thematic interviews we conducted with eight people who had created social ties with asylum-seeker converts and been part of their asylum processes. These interviews reflect the affects and emotions behind the public resistance, that is, the iceberg. Some interviewees had been directly involved in the council’s work. We also used materials provided to us by the General Synod of the Evangelical Lutheran Church, such as a list of religious actors’ visits to state institutions to discuss asylum and deportation issues. We interviewed people holding various positions (pastors and immigration-focused volunteers) with two distinct denominations (the Lutheran Church and Pentecostal Church) in several parts of the country (we refrain from identifying the municipalities and the interviewees, for anonymity’s sake). We also interviewed a lawyer who, because congregations know well that she is a Christian, had received requests to represent several asylumseeker converts as a legal assistant in asylum cases. Of the interviewees, whose ages ranged from 40 to 70, three identified as female and five as male. We conducted the interviews in spring and autumn 2020, two in person but others, because of the pandemic, online. The interviews were one to two hours in duration, and we recorded them, with the interviewees’ consent, for later subjecting our transcripts to thematic analysis (Braun & Clarke 2006). In this process, we first thematized emotions (either directly or indirectly expressed) and the types of interactions and practices they engaged in with asylum-seekers and with asylum-relevant authorities. Later in our analysis, we categorized these as ‘affective practices.’ OUTCOMES OF AFFECTIVE PRACTICES: PROBLEMFRAMING IN FINNISH ECUMENICAL COUNCIL DOCUMENTS We turn to the published documents first—the Ecumenical Council’s open letters, recommendations to parishes, and statements requested by state institutions that address the issue of deportations and conversions to Christianity. Our work focused on the frames that these specific agents promote to gain public support for their interests, positions, and concerns (Scheufele & Scheufele 2010: 111): we analyzed what these texts frame as a problem; what kinds of responsibilities they identify; and how, according to the authors, the problem should be solved, and by whom (Bacchi 2009). While these documents are addressed to specific actors, such as parishes or state officials, the public at large is another audience. The materials are available on the council’s website and were disseminated to Christian and mainstream media. While Christian media routinely report on publications of the Ecumenical Council, direct open-letter quotes began appearing in Finland’s nationwide broadsheet 6Horsti and Pirkkalainen Nordic Journal of Migration Research DOI: 10.33134/njmr.586 Helsingin Sanomat (Welling 2019) and reporting by public service broadcaster Yle (Mäki 2019) as the conversion issue gained momentum. Through these documents, the council thus actively entered the public space as a ‘frame sponsor’ (Gamson & Modigliani 1989: 6–7) to promote its understanding of the issue. Ever since Finland’s sanctuary policy developed in the mid-2000s, the Ecumenical Council has served as the forum for the Christian religious field coming together on migration-related issues (Ahonen 2020; Horsti 2013; Pyykkönen 2009). The council is connected to Europe-wide Christian networks, and issues related to asylum-seekers and refugees are discussed at that level. Experiences are shared and problem framings discussed jointly via the Churches’ Commission for Migrants in Europe (CCME), which is consulted by the European Union Agency for Asylum (EASO). The Ecumenical Council first raised the issue of asylum and conversions in October 2016 in a statement that the Ministry of Justice requested for the preparation of the National Action Plan on Fundamental and Human Rights, 2017–2019. The statement reminds that, ‘according to Finnish basic law, the freedom of religion or belief includes the right to confess and practice religion, the right to express belief, and the right to belong or not to belong to a religious community’ (Finnish Ecumenical Council 2016: 1). The council outlines four recommendations for action to realize freedom of religion or belief, and the third of them, on page 3, refers to the right to convert under the heading ‘Refugees and asylum-seekers’: Immigration authorities react with suspicion to conversions, which forces converts to take a test on religion that has given unreliable results. The process of belief-testing, according to which it is decided whether a person is truly Christian or not, is discriminatory and against freedom of religion, and the present form of exam does not serve the original purpose, the investigation of grounds for asylum. The fact that state authorities hold the power to test and judge a person’s belief and its sincerity is defined as a problem here. As such, this is a problem of fundamental rights—that is, rights concerning every individual and society. Hence, while the problem manifests itself in the context of a minority (converts among asylumseekers), it nevertheless involves everyone’s fundamental rights, those of the majority included (see also Finnish Ecumenical Council 2017a). In 2017, the council advised parishes of different denominations on how to proceed with asylum-seekers who were seeking protection on grounds of conversion. It published its ‘Recommendation for Churches on a Statement of Asylum-Seekers Who Have Converted to Christianity’ on January 25, 2017. The council based this recommendation on its negotiations with the Immigration Service, in which the two parties agreed that churches or parishes would write a statement about ‘their members who were seeking asylum and had converted to Christianity’ for the Immigration Service (Finnish Ecumenical Council 2017b). For a person who has been baptized, the statement should comprise details of the baptism and religious training. In addition, the signatory must supply ‘an assessment of the religious belief of the baptized’ and ‘a view on the baptized person’s participation in the Christian community and its activities’ (Finnish Ecumenical Council 2017b). Thus, the submitter evaluates three aspects of the applicant’s religiousness from the perspective of the community: religion as belief, identity, and way of life. Alongside these aspects, recognized by the UNHCR (2004), the Ecumenical Council added religious training and knowledge as aspects of religiosity to be examined. 7Horsti and Pirkkalainen Nordic Journal of Migration Research DOI: 10.33134/njmr.586 In its introduction to the guidelines, the first problem the Ecumenical Council identifies is that ‘church members have in their asylum interviews been cast in questionable light because of their belief in Christianity’ (Finnish Ecumenical Council 2017b). While the document uses the passive aspect and does not explicitly state that immigration officials find church members’ beliefs suspect, this meaning is clear from the context. Nevertheless, the most significant aspect of this problem framing is that the document uses the term ‘members of a church’ as the main signifier of the persons in question, and thus, not making a difference between a citizen and a noncitizen. The second problem framing that the council presents is not one it promotes: ‘It was difficult for the Immigration Service to know who had genuinely converted to Christianity and who used their conversion only as a reason to obtain asylum’ (Finnish Ecumenical Council 2017b). In this framing, the problem’s origin is asylum-seekers and their suspected inauthenticity. The documents make it clear that this framing is promoted solely by Migri and that it is not sponsored by churches that grant membership in their community (usually via baptism). This distinction is underlined linguistically too: the council is ‘concerned’ about the first problem but not the second. The third problem, in contrast, is common to both entities: ‘Both parties were concerned over conversions in which the baptized person did not know, for example, the meaning of baptism’ (Finnish Ecumenical Council 2017b). In this framing, the implicit origin of the problem is not necessarily the asylum-seeker so much as the church or congregation that has baptized someone erroneously or hastily, without providing training and gaining certainty of the person’s knowledge of Christianity. For solving this problem, the council suggests that the written supporting statement should not only evaluate the person’s belief and participation in the community but also make the exact hours and time of religious teaching explicit. The requirement to render the teaching hours and mutual commitment to baptism visible allows state authorities to evaluate the level of religious authority more objectively. In this connection, the Ecumenical Council does not object to the grounds for investigating the person’s belief, the requirement of genuine conversion. In fact, it participates in ascertaining whether that requirement is met and assists the state authority in this. By rendering faith in something measurable, the declaration produces a category of people (converts) who can be governed. Part of the aim for the statement, then, is to transfer the power of evaluating the sincerity of belief from state authorities to religious authorities (at least to some extent). Nevertheless, as the third problem framing reveals, the religious field is not unified: some churches baptize to bring in new members through looser criteria than others. The core of the controversy between religious and state actors became more clearly articulated in an open letter that the council sent out on August 22, 2019 (Finnish Ecumenical Council 2019). The gravity of the letter is underlined by its first signatory, Archbishop Tapio Luoma (serving since 2018), followed by 16 other top-level church leaders. The first problem addressed is a concern that asylum-seekers are forcibly removed to unsafe regions and ‘possibly even to death.’ The council, therefore, demands that the non-refoulement policy be obeyed. The second problem identified is a ‘deep concern’ over how some ‘active members of our Churches have received an official decision that their Christianity is not genuine or that they supposedly could return to countries where their lives might be threatened.’ An important linguistic device visible here too is the reference to the persons of concern as members of the same community as the signatories. 8Horsti and Pirkkalainen Nordic Journal of Migration Research DOI: 10.33134/njmr.586 The third problem cited in the open letter is that the religious field as an authority on religious matters is undermined: The voice of our experts who are experienced and specialists in religious matters, however, is not sufficiently considered in asylum interviews or in administrative institutions. Administrators who do not have expertise based on education evaluate genuineness of religious belief. (Finnish Ecumenical Council 2019) Whereas the guidelines document of 2017 seemed more sympathetic with authorities’ difficulties, the open letter written two years later is more confrontational, demanding, and straightforward. As for solutions, the Ecumenical Council made this demand: ‘Our expert statements on evaluation of Christian belief must be heard’ (Finnish Ecumenical Council 2019). This demand is not addressed to any specific actor. Neither is the open letter as such. In its vagueness of address, the open letter leaves room for a consensus-seeking approach, yet its more demanding tone renders the letter exceptionally direct and confrontational. Comparison to earlier documents points to a possible shift in the religious field toward a more controversial position vis-à-vis state institutions. The dominant problem framing, however, remains the same: the main issue being that state actors undermine the authority and expertise of religious actors in matters of belief. Paradoxically, this can be considered to be in conflict with the fundamental right of religious freedom. The council’s first formulation in 2016 within the context of asylum and conversion suggested the whole activity of ‘belief-testing’ by state-actors to be a violation of basic law. All the same, later framings accepted this premise and sought consensus by first suggesting and then demanding that the religious field maintain (at least partly) the authority to judge the genuineness of a person’s belief. Next, we investigate what exactly happened in these crucial years: what kinds of events, emotions, and affects triggered these problem framings, and specifically, the more confrontational approach of 2019 at higher institutional levels in public. AFFECTIVE PRACTICES BEHIND THE FINNISH ECUMENICAL COUNCIL PUBLIC ACTS After identifying the problem framings promoted by the religious field through the Ecumenical Council, we apply thematic analysis to our interviews with eight people who have been active in asylum cases for Christian converts. We identified affective practices (Wetherell 2012) in resistance to decisions and processes of state institutions, the Finnish Immigration Service, and the administrative courts. According to our interviewees, the Christian ‘love thy neighbor’ ethic guided their practice, but other theological issues too emerged in our conversations with them. In addition to diakonia—the love and care for any person—one Pentecostal pastor quoted Matthew 28:19 in citing mission (in Finnish, Lähetyskäsky) as the second motivation behind actively seeking out asylum-seekers: ‘Go therefore and make disciples of all nations’. 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