Keywords

Introduction

Secularization and the return of religion are two recurrent themes in the general discussion about religion in contemporary society that are also of immediate interest for the topic of this book. Secularization is a highly contested and ambiguous term. There are neither conceptual nor empirically sound arguments for understanding secularization as the fading away of religion as a consequence of modernization. Nevertheless, modernity has entailed a diminished and more peripheral role for religious faith and institutions, especially in Europe (Casanova 2009; Norris and Inglehart 2011) .Footnote 1 The second theme, the return of religion, is also highly debated and involves an increasing interest in the significance and role of religion for politics and culture in society (see Joas 2009 for an overview). These two themes are seemingly contradictory but only when seeing modernization as a zero-sum game with religion and secularity as two communicating vessels.

However, the two themes can be combined as two interrelated aspects of a certain perspective on modernization. I use the concept of post-secularity to capture and discuss this perspective with respect to the role of religion in society today. Basically, the idea is that secularization implies that religious institutions lose their hegemonic status and that their relation to other organizations therefore becomes horizontal instead of vertical. Furthermore, it implies that affiliations to churches or religious communities are no longer coercive and that faith is not inherited as a matter of course, but results from an individual’s own conscious choice. According to these processes religion becomes one phenomenon among others in society and this also makes it more visible, so that it becomes possible to discuss its significance for politics, culture, philosophy, etc. (Bäckström et al. 2011; Sigurdson 2009). One could say that secularization leads to the return of religion as a more visible element of society (Bergdahl 2010).

I use the concept of post-secularity to refer to a changed perspective on the role of religion in society and not to a (new) more religious historical period. The post-secular condition is a situation where attention is paid to the importance and presence of religious communities in an increasingly secularized society. Hence, the concept is about a changed attitude of the secular state, and in academic and political debates in the public sphere , with respect to the continued existence of different manifestations of religion and its influence on society (Joas 2004; de Vries 2006).

The fact that the hegemonic Christian church has pervaded European societies since late antiquity, both formally by law and politics and informally in the mentalities and practices of individuals, is an obvious argument for the need of a post-secular perspective in order to fully understand contemporary society. This historical fact would suggest that religious practices and theology and their imprint on society cannot disappear overnight. One aim for academic research is therefore to unpack traces of theology or religiosity in contemporary and allegedly secular practices and ideas. That would imply the undertaking of a religious genealogy of contemporary secular society .

There are several examples of genealogies of this kind. Theologians, philosophers and cultural historians have been able to show that liberal politics, modern philosophy and modernity as such cannot be fully separated from religion (Christianity) , but depend on a religious and theological heritage (Breckman 2005; Gillespie 2008; Gray 2007; Lilla 2007; de Vries 2006 just to mention a few). These are examples of intertextual research that study the emergence and formulations of political and philosophical standpoints and demonstrate their dependence on theology. An important conclusion is that religion and modern secular ideologies cannot easily be divided into separate categories.

The Altruistic Volunteer and the ‘Problem of Goodness’

In contrast to these studies of how traces of religion can be found in formal ideologies, I will use theology to interpret world-views in people’s ordinary talk in everyday life , and hence my interest is on a less formalized level. My aim is to use a religious perspective to enhance understanding of the world-views of individuals. This approach takes as its point of departure the premise that with a religious perspective one can shed some light on the meaning of social practices found in everyday life, inside as well as outside formal religious contexts . This means that religious discourses do not always require conscious deliberation, yet can structure how individuals talk about their lives (Wuthnow 2011) .

In accordance with the overarching theme for this anthology, I explore how volunteers perceive the meaning of volunteering , applying a theological framework . A religious perspective ought to be able to contribute to our understanding of the meaning of volunteering because of the long tradition of benevolence as a religious (here Christian) virtue and of religious charity organizations (see chapter of Haers and von Essen). From a historical perspective, volunteering can be said to have one of its precursors in the Christian calling of neighbourly love and in Christian charity organizations.

What I am especially interested in is how volunteers deal with the ‘problem of goodness’ . By this I refer to the tension they perceive between doing good for the sake of the other, being altruistic, while at the same time receiving ‘payment’ in the form of gratitude and fulfilment as a consequence of caring for their neighbours by volunteering. To give alms as a public gesture of piety is condemned in the New Testament ; instead Jesus urges for a division so that the good deeds will not be used as a merit before God (Matthew 6:1–4). Hannah Arendt also refers to this passage when she discusses the conditions of goodness (Arendt 1958). Hence, the experience that good deeds comprise gratitude and are therefore often valued as a moral worth, undermining the altruistic intention, is not a particular Swedish or Lutheran or even Christian predicament. It emerges and finds different solutions in various religions and world-views. However, since my empirical data is Swedish, I will describe and discuss how this problem is handled by using Lutheran theology .

That good deeds comprise morally desirable outcomes is a problem in a religious context. However, this is not necessarily a problem as such; it depends on which philosophical anthropology one prefers. Taking the economic man as an anthropological point of departure, the dilemma dissolves and the alleged altruistic motives of the volunteers can be interpreted as either naive altruism or as a camouflage for a cynical egoism . In order to go beyond these alternatives and take the utterances of the volunteers at face value, I will approach the meaning of volunteering from a religious perspective as an alternative approach to secular interpretations .

This is an explorative study. My aim is not to prove the influence of religion on contemporary secular culture. My presumption is that, by using a theological framework, it is possible to deepen the understanding of how volunteers deal with the moral dilemma that emerges in the tension between the intention to be altruistic and finding oneself rewarded by volunteering. If the theological framework can do justice to the utterances of the volunteers, it will be an argument for the reasonableness of my interpretative approach. This chapter, in accordance with the post-secular perspective, is an attempt to bridge the divide between religiosity and secularism by using religious themes to understand how people make sense of their volunteer efforts.

Volunteering and Altruism: A Disputed Relationship

Lack of remuneration is a core dimension in the concept of volunteering (Cnaan et al. 1996; Musick and Wilson 2008). As unpaid efforts for the benefit of others, volunteering can be understood as a form of giving. Therefore, volunteering is often perceived, but also critically discussed, as an example of altruism (Haski-Leventhal 2009) and is easily conceived of as something opposed to egoism , since altruism and egoism are often treated as dichotomous concepts. This dichotomy of motives is sometimes incorporated in volunteer research; for instance, to see whether they are correlated to different behaviour patterns among volunteers (e.g. Mesch et al. 1998; Rehberg 2005). As related to the concepts of altruism or egoism, volunteering is also perceived as a normative concept connected to the ongoing discussion in philosophical anthropology about the nature of man (cf. Clohesy 2000; Nagel 1970). Further, it is this normative dimension that makes volunteering a religious virtue (Musick and Wilson 2008; see chapter of Haers and von Essen in this volume). According to Haski-Leventhal (2009), the dominant perspective in theories and studies of volunteering in the social sciences is dependent, however, upon a ‘perception of human beings as rational and economical’. Hence, altruism becomes a problematic phenomenon that has to be scientifically explained away. In studies of volunteering, scholars try to bridge the gap between the altruistic character of volunteering, not least their motives, and the theoretical approach to human beings as fundamentally egocentric.

If, on the other hand, we treat volunteering as altruistic behaviour, the altruistic–egoistic dichotomy causes problems, since there are several studies that report how volunteers benefit from their efforts (for an overview see Haski-Leventhal 2009). In these studies, it is evident that volunteers often experience satisfaction and self-fulfilment as a result of their work. This is also reflected in the study this chapter is based upon (von Essen 2008; see Hvenmark and von Essen 2013 for similar results); the volunteers often stated that they felt satisfied or self-fulfilled and also mentioned that they made new friends, gained better self-esteem and gained experiences that could enhance their CVs. The good feelings, trust , profitable relations and learning experiences they received from their efforts were very important to them and they were eager to stress how rewarded they felt as volunteers, since the rewards were a marker of the importance of their efforts. Volunteering thus does not seem to be all that altruistic after all. The only thing they unanimously excluded and firmly rejected as a possible reward for their volunteering was money.

Of course, it is a well-known fact from other studies that volunteers report that they have both altruistic and egoistic motives for their work (Yeung 2004) ; and by perceiving altruism as a continuum, there is an alternative to the dichotomous relation between altruism and egoism (Krebs and Van-Hesteren 1994). However, to be content with pointing out this psychological ambivalence or to discuss altruism as a continuum does not theoretically resolve the ‘problem of goodness’ . Neither does it justice to how the volunteers talked about their volunteer efforts. They did not confine themselves just to noting their altruistic motives and accepting that they were rewarded. On the contrary, in the interviews, they tried to handle the tensions they perceived between their altruistic aim to help and all the good things they received as consequences of their helping .

So, how can we understand the altruistic motives of the volunteers when their efforts obviously bring rewards that are important to them? One, perhaps cynical, interpretation is that volunteering is best understood as calculated rational behaviour, implying that volunteers have egoistic motives after all, some of them overt and others concealed because volunteering is expected to follow a norm of altruism . Their altruistic motives could then be understood as a kind of camouflage adjusting to overarching norms. Such an assumption would, however, imply a ‘third-person perspective’ and to presuppose the economic man as an anthropological point of departure in search of objective causes for volunteering. Since I am studying how volunteers handle the meaning of volunteering by taking their own perspective as a point of departure, such an explanation would become a kind of category mistake .

Religion and Volunteering

There is an interest among academics in the relation between religiosity and volunteering, and more precisely, whether religiosity fosters volunteering. For obvious reasons, there are two main perspectives and research agendas on this topic. Firstly, and preferably among social scientists, there are studies of volunteering as civil society activism, from which perspective religion becomes just one of many predictors of volunteering . Secondly, there is a theological interest in the practical consequences of faith and religiosity. In this perspective, volunteering is treated as an outcome of faith, since faith is expected to have an impact on civility and compassion (see chapters of Haers and von Essen; Roos; Fazlhashemi in this volume).

In studies coming from the first of these perspectives, religion is treated in many cases as a ‘black box’. These studies are often quantitative, where different forms or aspects of religiosity occur as independent variables in statistical analyses that tend to give proof of a positive correlation between religiosity and volunteering, albeit with variations according to different aspects of faith and religious practice . A frequent underlying assumption is that affiliation to religious organizations fosters volunteering and/or that religion generates altruistic values. There is also the conviction that internalized beliefs and values matter most when considering religion and that these values are best tapped by survey questions (Wuthnow 2011) . In consequence, quantitative surveys are preferred in studies of religious values. Below follows a brief review of some of the findings in quantitative research concerning religion and volunteering in Sweden .

In a study of young volunteers in the Church of Sweden, there was a positive correlation between volunteering over a longer period and traditional religious belief (Bromander 1999). A study of volunteering among Swedish youth also showed that religious individuals were more inclined to volunteer than non-religious ones. There were, however, no differences regarding inclination to volunteer between youths with a traditional religiosity and youths with a late-modern religiosity (von Essen and Grosse 2012). Finally, the most recent national study on volunteering in Sweden shows that individuals attending church on a regular basis were more inclined to volunteer than the population as a whole (Svedberg et al. 2010).

Swedish-organized volunteering has been remarkably stable and extensive in an international perspective during the last two decades (Svedberg et al. 2010), and about half of the Swedish adult population volunteer on a regular basis. At the same time, Sweden is a highly secularized country (understood as low church attendance and little consciously held religious belief), hence religiosity is not a major explanation for this extensive volunteering in spite of the positive effect on volunteering suggested above. One can therefore call into question whether overt religiosity really is an important factor for understanding the overall amount, shape and role of volunteering in contemporary Sweden.

Method and Material

Considering the long hegemony of Christian churches, practices and theology in Europe , it seems odd that, apart from overt religiosity as a cause for volunteering, the role of religion in volunteering has so seldom attracted attention. The theological ideas that permeate culture and influence society are too seldom explored, understood and given explanatory power (see Alexander and Smith 1993 for a similar argument). In order to go beyond the relation between overt, formal religiosity and volunteering I interpreted how volunteers talk about why they volunteer and what their efforts mean to them with the help of a theological framework . Consequently, I am not studying their speech as an expression of causes, but as a justification after-the-fact to render actions meaningful (Mills 1940; Wuthnow 1991) and to describe the actors’ identity (Arendt 1958; Taylor 1985) .

This chapter is based on 40 interviews with volunteers in four traditional Swedish volunteer organizations, none of them religious. The interviews were conducted within a broader research project concerning volunteers’ perception of volunteering as a social phenomenon and what their efforts mean to them as individuals (von Essen 2008). The original research project was thus not to study religious aspects of volunteering as such, but had a more general interest in the conceptual and existential meaning of volunteering.

Conceptually, I searched for commonly held themes that constitute the meaning of volunteering and found five such themes, according to which volunteering is unpaid , beneficial to others, a free choice, a personal engagement and enacted in some sort of a community. I then used interviewee statements to illustrate these themes. By using single volunteers and their concrete stories as examples of the commonly held themes, I was able to describe and discuss the abstract themes that were the results of my analysis (see Bellah et al. 1985; Wuthnow 1991 for a similar technique). The original research project also included an existential perspective and questions about what volunteering meant to the volunteers as persons and its role in their everyday life . These questions generated material demonstrating how experiences of volunteering influence how people formulate and handle meaningfulness and moral issues. In this chapter, I discuss some aspects of my findings.

Since the original project aimed at uncovering the meaning of volunteering from the volunteer perspective, the approach to their statements was phenomenological (cf. Yeung 2004). That is to say, I was primarily interested in the life-world of the volunteers and how they perceive and understand it. Using a phenomenological approach, I searched for themes beneath the surface of the individual descriptions that capture a common understanding of the meaning of volunteering (Polkinghorne 1983). The phenomenological approach is also valid for what I want to discuss in this chapter. Since I am interested in their opinions on volunteering and what it means to them from a first-person perspective, I take their utterances at face value. I do not pass judgment on whether their utterances are false or true, for that would demand a third-person perspective. I am solely interested in how the interviewed volunteers express what they perceive as the meaning of their voluntary work.

Twelve of these 40 interviewees were involved in environmental issues as members of the Swedish Society for Nature Conservation and 12 as members of Friends of the Earth Sweden. Ten persons were volunteer soccer coaches and recreation leaders for the Älvsjö AIK Soccer Club, and six persons were involved in social action, mainly within the Red Cross. These organizations are open, democratic and based on individual membership. In that sense they have a traditional form and are typical for how organizations in Swedish civil society are structured by the popular movement tradition (Hvenmark 2008). The selection is due to the original project’s aim to include both ideologically oriented organizations and apolitical organizations oriented towards service production, as well as to study whether the perceived meaning of volunteering differed between voice- and service-oriented organizations. As a further aim was to study whether changes occurring in time affected the meaning of volunteering, organizations established in different time periods and with individuals from different age groups were also included; but since the original project was not concerned about religion and volunteering as such, there was no need to select a religious organization. Religiosity or belief in God was mentioned by almost none of the interviewees as a motive for doing volunteer work. From their perspective, volunteering appears to be a strictly secular matter. To interpret their utterances with the help of a theological framework does not imply that they were unaware of being religious, however, and I do not argue that they believe in God after all. As Ann Swidler (2001) has pointed out, to describe available cultural resources we have to deal both with what people believe and what they disbelieve.

The age distribution among the interviewees ranged from 19 to 66, 15 of them men and 25 women. Age and gender were equally divided between the organizations. Among the volunteers interviewed, there were both core activists with a long history of volunteering and newcomers, but the largest group (17 persons) had been active for between 4 and 10 years. During the research period, two persons were unemployed and the others employed or students. Twenty-three of the volunteers had an academic or postgraduate degree. None of them deviated conspicuously from a middle-class life trajectory. All in all, these volunteers were in accordance with the overall Swedish socioeconomic pattern of volunteers that persists in the national surveys of volunteering in Sweden (Svedberg et al. 2010). An analysis of the interviews did not show profound or important differences with respect to age, gender, education, organization, etc., but rather a commonly held perception of the meaning of volunteering.

The material that emerged from the interviews was interpreted by customary hermeneutical methods. Phenomenological and hermeneutical methods supplement each other, the first describing patterns or themes and the other interpreting the meaning of those themes (Polkinghorne 1983). Paul Ricœur (1975/1991) among others has criticized descriptive phenomenology for its alleged objectivity. I concur with this critique and consequently do not restrict myself to a phenomenological description.

Empirical Accounts

In this section, I will present how the volunteers articulate the dynamic between volunteering for the benefit of someone or something and being rewarded for their efforts. Their understanding of this dynamic involves how they perceive the meaning of volunteering . Then I will briefly sketch some relevant aspects of Lutheran theology to finally be able to discuss how the volunteers try to deal with the ‘problem of goodness’ .

Unpaid

That volunteering is unpaid was the most unanimous and most articulated of the five themes I found in the interviews. The volunteers unanimously excluded and firmly rejected money as a possible reward for their volunteering. The reason for this was that money made their voluntary efforts instrumental, which would render them meaningless. The volunteers maintained that their efforts were meaningful only if they were to the benefit of someone or something and if they were expressions of their own wishes, personal values and, in the end, themselves as persons. They had to be sincere to find their volunteering meaningful. Therefore, the meaning of volunteering would disappear if financially remunerated.

At the same time, the interviewees were volunteering in their spare time and most of them were employed and paid for carrying out their ordinary occupation. Of course, they did not think that being paid as employees was wrong or problematic; it was when they considered themselves as volunteers that money became a problem. They perceived employment and getting paid as both a natural and necessary condition for managing their everyday life . One woman described her gainful employment as a condition for managing her life as follows:

On the job there are certain things that have to be done…. One is there for the money, and you want the money to be able to survive.

To earn one’s living is for most people a precondition to manage life and is, as for this woman, perceived as a necessity and not entirely as an act of free choice. Many interviewees referred to the need to earn one’s living when they declared that or explained why volunteering gave them something else than gainful employment. Another woman made this point by differentiating between the ‘inner satisfaction’ she got from volunteering and the money she got from her ordinary work. She, like many others, talked about the sincere self and the ordinary person as merely different aspects of herself. One man expressed this contrast between the necessities of ordinary life and the meaningfulness of volunteering as follows:

Well, it [volunteering] makes my life more meaningful…I must say. I think it encompasses something more than everyday life. Everyday life is like food and that kind of stuff, it is important; it is necessary for everyone of course.

Furthermore, money was the paradigmatic example of instrumentality . There were of course other instrumental motives and rewards as well, such as enhancing a CV or gaining an employment. However, unlike money, other instrumental or external rewards could be accepted if received under certain conditions.

Freedom

According to the volunteers, freedom was another condition for the meaningfulness of volunteering. When asked if there were ideologies, duties or virtues that the volunteers considered as compelling and which demanded that they should do volunteer work, most of them answered that their voluntary efforts stemmed from free will and that they would volunteer as long as they were enjoying it. A man expressed this opinion by saying:

…I’ve never seen volunteering as a duty, but rather as something I’ve really wanted to do.

This seems an unexpected opinion from dedicated people aiming at the good of the environment or their neighbours. Not even direct demands when confronted with the needs of fellow men or urgent threats to nature made them talk about their volunteering as compelled or necessary. By referring to themselves and their emotions instead of virtues, obligations, ideologies or even the needs of ‘the other’, they made their volunteering into an expression of their authenticity . By saying that they were volunteering only as long as they ‘felt like it’ or were enjoying it, they assured that it was their own free choice. Freedom was also a reason for the volunteers to reject money as a possible reward for their volunteering since a monetary reward would have turned their voluntary commitment into gainful employment and a means to earn their living. Of course, they did admit that the everyday volunteering reality was sometimes characterized by promises and commitments and hence not totally free; but they maintained that in the end their volunteer efforts were of their own free will .

The demands of sincerity and freedom are a key to understanding how the volunteers handled the relation between their altruistic motives and the rewards of their volunteer efforts. To be rewarded (thus in a sense coerced) would threaten the freedom of their inner self, instrumentalize their efforts and hence deprive them of meaning. The volunteers perceived themselves as authentic if they were sincere and if their efforts stemmed from free will and authenticity was a condition for finding their volunteer work meaningful.

Rewards as Unexpected By-products

In my interviews with the volunteers, I challenged their altruistic motives, reminding them about all the good things they received through their volunteering. One man who got an apartment lease through his volunteering talked as follows about the true character of volunteering:

… to work, to fight for something, without anything being that clear, that this is what I will gain from it. There’s nothing to say this is what you will get. Sure, I got // … // an apartment. One does get things. One can feel better about one‘s self, one can make friends, but there is nothing that can be guaranteed. The only thing that is guaranteed is that you are fighting for whatever it is you‘re fighting for.

As illustrated by this quotation, confronted with my objections to their alleged altruism, they rejected an instrumental interpretation of their volunteering . Instead, a recurrent theme emerged that is contradictory to both the continuum perspective of altruism and the either-or logic that follows from the egoist–altruist dichotomy (cf. Jeppsson Grassman 1997). The volunteers were not troubled because of what they received, nor did they feel that it challenged their altruistic motives, as long as the rewards were not expected or calculated. So long as their intention was to give, without expecting anything in return, they had no problem receiving material and immaterial goods (except for money). Therefore, as long as the rewards of volunteering were interpreted as unexpected by-products, they were not in conflict with the altruistic character of volunteering and with their authenticity (cf. Wuthnow 1991).

This dynamic between the right (non-calculating) intention and being rewarded is reflected in the following, where a man, volunteering in his son’s football club, talks about his commitment:

Well, it’s unpaid labour…you know, one performs, to be sure one does, one has a mission…that one is supposed to do, and one does that and you are not getting paid for it. For some people this may sound odd that…but I am getting paid in a sense…partly I get to spend more time with my son. I can see that he is enjoying himself, how he is developing, and I can see all the other kids in the team, how they are developing. So that is, like, payment in itself. Or one never thinks about payment…if one thinks in that way, one should not do volunteering.

The fragmentary character of his answer suggests that he finds this dynamic complex and contradictory. It is hard to explain and he imagines that is difficult to understand for some people, probably people without experience of volunteering. In the end he declares that one should not become involved in volunteering if calculating in terms of payment. This theme is also elaborated upon by a woman who explains that she would be alienated, in her expression ‘on her own’, if she did it for her own sake; instead her satisfaction is to see that she can bring joy to the children she is helping. A calculating relationship to volunteering is incompatible with being rewarded, not only because it would be improper to expect payment from volunteering but also because to calculate would also preclude the unexpected rewards the volunteers receive. Authenticity is a precondition to be able to receive the rewards of volunteering.

As illustrated, this insistence on a non-calculating intention cannot be explained by the idea that the volunteers are consciously cynical, adapting to a conventional norm of altruism by concealing their instrumental motives. Rather it has to do with the meaning of volunteering. This dynamic between motives and meaning is displayed in the case of one man, volunteering in the Red Cross, who described what volunteering meant to him. He was anxious to emphasize the importance of altruistic motives for volunteering and that it was aimed at helping people in need. But at the same time he said:

…it is almost contradictory. As a consequence it has…I feel some sense of well-being, but that is not my aim. However, that is the result if one follows the process to the end. It will end up in a sense of well-being for myself.

He has to be authentic and his efforts have to meet the needs of others to be meaningful, but in turn it will give him satisfaction; being altruistic ends up being rewarded .

To be rewarded, according to the volunteers, demands from them that they are authentic. If not they would not be able to receive the relationships, fulfilment and self-esteem that their volunteering gives them. The way the volunteers described and discussed the dynamic between the motives and meaning of volunteering can be understood in accordance with the distinction between internal and external values (MacIntyre 1981). External values are arbitrary and connected to a practice, such as wages for a job done, whereas internal values are integral parts of the practice itself, such as the joy engendered by the actual doing.

To the Benefit of the Other in the Realm of Freedom

It became obvious that the differentiation between the ‘inner’ sincere self and the ordinary person made it possible for the volunteers to maintain that they were authentic in their volunteering while at the same time employed and being paid. Hence, the volunteers were, in a way, parts of two social settings with different ethical styles (Tipton 2002). This divide is crucial since it made it possible for them to care for others without expecting anything in return, and without the expectation that they should be thoroughly altruistic also in their everyday life. That would have been a naïve and unrealistic moral demand.

As employees and in ordinary life, their actions were driven by social commitments and their motives were often calculative. As employees they received external values (money) for their efforts. As volunteers, on the other hand, they strived for authenticity and they received internal values for their efforts. Some of them did admit, however, that they received rewards—employment, networks or a better CV—that could be understood as external values, but categorized some of these rewards as internal values. For instance, they talked about relationships as something internal to the practice. Rewards categorized as external values such as employment or an apartment lease could be accepted as unexpected by-products without depriving their efforts of meaning.

This did not cause them problems as long as these two settings were separated. The problem arose when they were mixed or the border was blurred. External values such as gaining cash and other arbitrary rewards threatened the meaning of volunteering since it threw suspicion on their authenticity , while having non-calculating motives as an employee was considered stupid or naïve.

When talking about what they received from their efforts, the volunteers most often talked about values internal to the practice of volunteering. Most important of the internal values was the satisfaction they felt when they could help someone. If the voluntary work did not include ‘the other’, it would lose its meaning. A man engaged in an environmental organization expressed this perception as follows:

If it’s not to the benefit of others then it’s not really volunteer work. Then it’s more of a hobby…. I definitely think it should be beneficial….

This means that the intention to be beneficial to someone is not only a motive but also has conceptual significance. If their efforts did not have any effect and would therefore not be to the benefit of someone, the interviewees would find their volunteering meaningless. To be needed and to be able to meet the needs of someone was obviously at the heart of what made their efforts meaningful. Calculating motives, then, would jeopardize the internal values of volunteering since their help had to be given for the sake of the receiver, not in order to receiving gratitude. Gratitude would otherwise become some sort of payment for their efforts and therefore render them meaningless. The internal values that made volunteering meaningful presupposed that the volunteers did not expect anything in return (see also Jeppsson Grassman 1997; Johansson 1998; Wuthnow 1991). I will try to demonstrate that these themes that I have discussed and illustrated together make up a coherent structure that becomes visible when it is understood within the framework of Lutheran theology .

The Lutheran Doctrine of the Calling

At the heart of Lutheran theology is man’s total dependence on God for her salvation and consequently man’s independence from earthly conditions when it comes to her relation to God, since it is solely through the grace of God that man is saved (Sola Gratia) . However, Luther did not disregard that man is simultaneously living in society and therefore dependent on earthly conditions for her everyday life. This theological approach obviously creates a duality. In The Freedom of a Christian from 1520, Luther makes an anthropological divide between the inner and the outer man (Luther 1989, see chapter by Haers and von Essen for a fuller account of this aspect of Lutheran theology) . This divide is theologically motivated and makes it possible for Luther to assert that the inner man is free in the sense that nothing in the secular outer world can determine her relation to God and at the same time that man is everybody’s servant. Since man is not dependent on her merits in relation to God, she is free to be her neighbour’s servant. Hence, the freedom of man is central for Luther, and it is to maintain that freedom that Luther declares that she is totally dependent on God. According to Luther, freedom does not imply that man is autonomous and self-determinant in the contemporary use of the term; that would be an anachronistic interpretation. Luther could not conceive man without God; rather, he implied that nothing but God’s grace through his word (Logos) could define man’s relation to God .

Historically, this can be regarded as the foundation of, and prelude to, the emergence of modern subjectivity, and has resulted in an anthropological divide between the outer and the inner man where the inner man is free regardless of outer conditions, and where religiosity is located in the sincere inner man (Borowitz 1984; Sigurdson 2009). As noted above, a similar anthropological divide was also found in the interviews and made it possible for the volunteers to maintain their authenticity as volunteers when they simultaneously worked as employees and were financially rewarded .

According to Luther, man is not made righteous in the eyes of God by his deeds, but liberated by God’s grace to respond to the calling (vocatio) to serve. At the core of Lutheran theology then lies man’s responsibility to her neighbour, not her own righteousness. Man will not be righteous in the eyes of God if she responds to the calling with the calculating motive to deserve, or earn, righteousness through her deeds. Therefore, man’s righteousness can be described as an unexpected gift. Of course, this goes back to the thesis that man cannot earn salvation through merits but solely by the grace of God (sola Gratia) . This doctrine has become a cornerstone in Lutheran theology and of preaching in Lutheran churches (see, e.g. Confessio Augustana article 20 in Grane 1959) .

This one-sided emphasis on the grace of God for the salvation of man is often said to differentiate Lutheran theology historically from Catholic soteriology, since the Catholic Church accepted a more synergic-oriented thesis: that the will of man and the grace of God cooperate in man’s salvation (Schneewind 1998). It is, however, important not to simplify this difference between Lutheran and Catholic theology, since man’s total dependence on the grace of God can be found already in the Bible and in the writings of Augustine. Thus, Luther was working in an already established theological tradition that can be found outside Lutheran theology as well .

According to Luther, there are two uses of the law. The first use of law is to ‘bridle the wicked’, that is, to regulate everyday life and the worldly societal order. The second use of the law, however, is to convince man of her profound sinfulness. Luther argued that when man answers to the law in its second use and tries to become righteous through deeds, she will realize that she is profoundly sinful, more interested in her own salvation than in the good of her fellow man and that the needs of fellow men always will transcend what she can achieve. Therefore, in despair over her self-interest and the fact that she cannot respond to God’s calling, man will stop trying to save herself since the needs of her fellow men are endless. As a result, she can only be redeemed by the grace of God, that is, by relying solely on her belief in God (Sola Fide; see chapter by Haers and von Essen, also Schervish and Whitaker 2010). Trusting solely in the grace of God, man will be free and able to respond to God’s calling and serve her fellow man and live in peace with herself and with God. So, when man answers God’s calling to serve her fellow man for that sake alone, she will then become righteous, or be rewarded, to use an improper but contemporary terminology .

A Religious Perspective on Volunteering

I have tried to capture how the volunteers articulate the dynamic between the meaning of volunteering and the motives of action by interpreting their utterances with the help of some central aspects of Lutheran theology. First, the volunteers distinguish between the sincere self and the ordinary person, similar to the anthropological division of Luther. In both cases the division manages to separate and defend the pure sincere self from the necessary realities of worldly, everyday life. For both Luther and the volunteers this division is crucial in order to avoid a cynical interpretation of man’s relation towards God and respectively ‘the other’ .

If the volunteers had calculating motives when helping their neighbours, their actions would not be meaningful as volunteering since they would not transcend themselves and include another person. The help has to be given solely as a response to the need of the neighbour and not for own satisfaction. Yet by authentically meeting the neighbour’s need, they would nevertheless gain ‘inner’ satisfaction, since it is the internal value, to be able to help, that makes their volunteer efforts meaningful. The satisfaction that comes from being beneficial to someone cannot be earned by one’s merits or good deeds; instead it has to be an unexpected by-product. Luther’s doctrine of salvation through the grace of God makes this dynamic intelligible. A calculating motive would turn their satisfaction into some sort of payment for their volunteering efforts or their good deeds. Then their volunteering would be for their own benefit and not for the good of another person, and in consequence, meaningless.

Freedom is obviously as central for the volunteers as it is for Luther. This is perhaps surprising considering the fundamental differences between the pre-modern times of Luther and contemporary Sweden . The volunteers maintained that volunteering must be unpaid in order to be free since it made them independent of the necessity to earn their living. This is similar to how Luther presupposes man’s total dependence on God in order to be independent of the world. In order to maintain their freedom, the interviewees categorized volunteering as a social setting separate from their ordinary life and from the straitjacket of gainful employment, whereas Luther solved the problem of freedom by uniting man with God through Christ. In these two solutions, the fundamental difference between contemporary society and the pre-modern time of Luther becomes evident. To be autonomous is a precondition for freedom for the volunteers, whereas the anthropology of Luther is totally relational. Hence, it is not freedom as such that differentiates between secular volunteering and Luther’s teaching of the calling. It is rather about how freedom is established, as personal autonomy or in dependence on, and confidence in, God.

There is, finally, another aspect of this difference between the volunteering perspective and Luther’s doctrine on the calling: The volunteers do not (ostensibly) believe in God. Consequently, they do not refer to God when they depict their volunteering and explain what gives them the inspiration to carry on, and they also do not see their efforts as being required of them, as in Luther’s second use of the law. In contrast to Lutheran theology , they argue that they would volunteer as long as it was joyful and gave them pleasure. This means that they cannot refer to something outside themselves and their emotions to make their efforts meaningful. This is an important difference and in this respect the volunteers express immanent worldviews, where they refer to the autonomous self and not to the heteronomous self, which relies on the grace of God to make sense of their efforts .

I argue that by using a theological framework in the interpretation of the interviews, it is possible to understand some recurrent themes about the tension the volunteers perceived between their aim of being altruistic, while at the same time receiving gratitude and fulfilment as a consequence of caring for their neighbours. Hence, to study how volunteers perceive the meaning of volunteering by the help of a theological framework can deepen the interpretation and go beyond economic or psychological anthropologies that are reductive and deterministic to the obvious fact that individuals have both altruistic and egoistic motives . It can do justice to moral and existential issues, here ‘the problem of goodness’ , that would otherwise run the risk of being treated as a kind of camouflage adjusting to dominant norms or simply as anomalies. Thus it seems as if the Lutheran scheme fits and can offer an alternative to an interpretation of the motives to volunteering, leading to a dichotomous choice between a naive altruism and a cynical egoism .

Finding Religiosity Lost in Secularization

This chapter is to be considered as a contribution to an alternative perspective on the relation between religiosity and volunteering as compared with the more frequent interest in religiosity as a cause for volunteering. Hitherto, I have made no claims for any historical influence of Lutheran theology on contemporary Swedish society . However, this question lurks beneath the surface and I will finally address this issue and sketch an argument for the plausibility of such an influence. My point of departure is the assumption of Norris and Inglehart (2011) that world-views, originally linked with religious traditions, still shape cultures, even in secular societies and among secular citizens. In doing this, I concur with the approach of Lars Trägårdh (2014) when he argues that the impact of Lutheranism is one of many factors that explains the social contract and the welfare state in contemporary Sweden. To be clear, what I have called the ‘problem of goodness’ is, as such, not particular Lutheran. This interplay between giving and receiving seems to be a universal dynamic that people can recognize notwithstanding their cultural or religious heritage. What I have tried to unfold is how volunteers in a society with a Lutheran tradition try to handle this problem.

There is theoretically oriented research that is concerned with the question of how culture is preserved through history, used in everyday life and dependent on contexts (see, e.g. DiMaggio 1997; Somers 2007; Swidler 1986, 2001; Thelen 1999 and Lichterman in this volume). This research is of course necessary as a theoretical backdrop for the plausibility of a Lutheran influence and to challenge the idea of Sweden as a straightforward secular society by arguing that religion (principally Lutheranism) is best understood as an ingrained inheritance in the Swedish society of today.

Embedded Religion

Religion is a part of culture, and this holds true for the very secularized country of Sweden as well (Pettersson 2009). Until the mid-1900s, Sweden was a rather monolithic society where, among other dominant institutions, the Lutheran Evangelical Church of Sweden and the free churches exerted great influence. It was only as recently in 1969 that a new education policy abolished Christendom as a confessional school subject and replaced it with the non-confessional study of religions. In the shift between the 1960s and the 1970s, the number of non-religious funerals began to increase while church weddings, baptisms and confirmations began to decrease (Hagevi 2009). The Church of Sweden lasted as a state church until the new millennium when it was finally formally separated from the state, although still remaining as one of the major Swedish civil society organizations .

Both institutional and individual secularization on a broad scale thus appeared surprisingly late in Sweden. Yet in spite of secularization, in 2011, 69 % of the Swedish population were still formally members of the now non-state Lutheran Church (www.svenskakyrkan.se). Individuals become members either by being baptized into the Church of Sweden or by applying for membership. This implies an annual membership fee, the amount of which varies between parishes but on average is 1 % of taxable income. Members can then use the services of the church for free. In spite of secularization , there is evidence that church buildings and the social efforts of the Church of Sweden are still important to the Swedish population (Bromander 2005; Bäckström and Bromander 1995).

So the situation is contradictory. Sweden is, on the one hand, a highly secularized country where not more than about 10 % of the population is religious in the traditional sense, that is, believe in a personal God and attend church on a regular basis (Hamberg 2001). On the other hand, Swedish society has been formed for centuries, and is still characterized by, its heritage as a ‘monolithic society’. Together with the popular mass movement tradition, an extensive welfare regime and other powerful institutions, it was long dominated by a hegemonic Protestant theology, in which the former state church and the free churches held a strong position. That the Swedish population still trusts the Church of Sweden and the free churches in spite of being so evidently secularized can probably be explained by this heritage. Today, Sweden seems to be a good example of the vicarious practice of religion, where the former state church operates on behalf of a population that very seldom attends religious services (Davie 2001).

In a secularized country with a long religious tradition such as Sweden , religion is still held as a set of beliefs, values and attitudes by only a small part of the population, but it is used outside faith and religious institutions as a kind of cultural resource to express, interpret and make sense of actions to others and to ourselves (cf. Williams 2003). Since the religious institutions such as churches and congregations have lost their monopoly over the ideas propagated through religion, it has now become just one public phenomenon among others that can be used outside these institutions and their active participants. As a public phenomenon, the meanings and uses of religion are open to interpretation (Turner 2011). Religious symbols, for instance a crucifix or a Christmas crèche, have their origin in and derive their meaning from religious institutions and practices but are used today without signifying a personal belief and therefore have a secular meaning as well. Their secular meaning is dependent, however, on their formal religious origin. In this way, religion is an active and visible part of culture even in a secularized country such as Sweden.

So far, I have discussed such explicit aspects of religiosity as symbols, rites and expressions. But religion, in Sweden not least Evangelical Lutheranism, has permeated the culture and contributed to the shaping of the society on a more fundamental level. The paradigmatic example of religion as an invisible presence in culture is of course the thesis that a Protestant ethic contributed to the shaping of the spirit of capitalism (Weber 1978) . Another example is the French Laıcité that was moulded by its counterpart, the Catholic Church (Hervieu-Léger 2001) . Since religion permeates and is still forming culture on this fundamental level, theologians have argued that there are no distinct borders between what is religious and what is secular culture (cf. Martinsson 2007; Sigurdson 2009). This is true not least of Swedish society, which has been so monolithic for such a long time. This means that what were originally religious themes are now embedded in language and used in secular culture that is often unaware of its source (see Gillespie 2008 for a similar argument). This is obvious when it comes to existential and moral matters, as contemporary literature, movies and art illustrate (Miles 1996; Sigurdson 2003), but also in popular culture (Turner 2011) and political discourse (Mendieta and Van Antwerpen 2011; Sigurdson 2009).

It is obvious that the teaching of Luther cannot by itself explain how contemporary Swedish society is influenced. It is rather a question of how the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Sweden (not least reinforced by the pietistic revival during the eighteenth century) and the Lutheran free churches have maintained this scheme in their theology, teaching and practices over the years. There is no explicit reference to a Lutheran heritage in the interviews. However, considering how religion is embedded in Swedish society, I think it would be worthwhile to take the question of a Lutheran influence seriously and study whether this can be traced in Swedish society of today in terms of worldviews, conceptions of the interplay of man and society, morals, etc.

The hypothesis that religious or confessional traditions have an explanatory value for the shaping of societal values is supported by findings that indicate that the highest level of intrinsic support for democracy is found in ‘Protestant Europe’ (Welzel 2009). Furthermore, the Lutheran anthropological divide between the exterior man in worldly society and the inner sincere man in relation to God seems to be a promising perspective for understanding the specifically Swedish form of individualism that has been labelled ‘statist individualism’ since it is a form that does not presuppose an antagonism between an exterior societal order and the inner free self (see Trägårdh 2007, 2014).

Concluding Remarks

Grace Davie is one of the scholars who argue that we have to consider the scope of European secularization with some moderation, pointing to the fact that ‘…the faith communities of modern Europe are crucial players in civil society.’ In civil society there are movements that are overtly religious, movements with a secular agenda but with a substantial religious constituency and movements (for instance the Green movement) that can be analysed as if they were religions (Davie 2001, see also Jacobsson 2014). As a consequence, I would add that religion, or theology, can sometimes be used to interpret how volunteers perceive the meaning of volunteering .

This means that we have to complement a more traditional—or perhaps modern—perception of religiosity as consciously held confessions or identities with a post-secular perspective in which there are no clear boundaries between religion and secular society . Danièle Hervieu-Léger (2001) argues that in the course of time, religion has permeated society and culture beyond its original but eroding institutions and that secularization therefore has its limits. In this perspective, the increasing secularization of society would be transformed from being perceived as a threat to volunteering into an opportunity where religiosity as one belief among others becomes more accessible to a wider, secular public through the erosion of religious institutions (see Hagevi 2009 for a similar argument). Furthermore, the study of how religiosity is used when people try to understand the meaning of their commitment and when volunteering can be understood as a form of religiosity would call for a more qualitative approach to volunteering. Such a research agenda would combine cultural sociology and theology to expose theological themes and understand their function in contemporary culture and society (cf. Madsen 2002). By ‘bringing theology back in’, we can deepen our understanding of how people understand and make sense of their life-worlds and how institutions are shaped. Lastly, this perspective would contribute to the contemporary, post-secular theological debate that has opened up for the mutual influence of, on the one hand, secular society and, on the other, religiosity and theology.