A secular Bible: Bibel 2000 at the intersection between religion and politics in postwar Sweden

The purpose of this study is to investigate religion as a decisive, but hitherto overlooked factor in the postwar Swedish society. This will be achieved by studying the state Bible translation Bibel 2000.

A purportedly secular state buysing itself with translating a religious scripture is a clear indication that religion continued to hold a public importance during this period of time.

At the same time, for the Bible to fit in the postwar welfare state, it was apprehended in terms of culture rather than religion. In this way, a ’secular Bible’ was constructed.

Bibel 2000 can thus be understood as an institutional embodiment of the normative concepts associated with the welfare state: rationalization, progress and standardization. This will be studied within a theoretical framework of institutional translation.

As a translation event, it will be possible to understand Bibel 2000 as a process with temporal qualities, indicative of how the postwar societal institutions were also gradually changing.

The study will be conducted during three years, generating important new knowledge on how the informal societal and political institutions of the period interacted with religion, which has been overlook by earlier reserch as a consequence of a conceptual blindness to different forms of religion.

The study will also show how the Bible as a cultural and historical artefact has continued to hold a role even in what is generally perceived as highly secularized societies.