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- If you look at Jackel\u00e9n’s Wikipedia page, you will see that her motto is “God is greater.” In Swedish, it is “Gud \u00e4r st\u00f6rre.”<\/i> In Arabic, it is “Allahu akbar,”<\/i> the words that muezzins in mosques around the world shout from the tops of their minarets.<\/li>\n
- We cannot know what is really in this woman’s heart; but one thing we can be sure of is that when Islam does eventually take over Sweden, her remarkable history of appeasement will not save either her or her Church from a brutal reckoning.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/div>\n
\nThe Church of Sweden, although no longer a state church, remains an important force in Swedish society. In a time when Sweden’s political, media, and academic establishment are eager to jettison pretty much everything that makes Sweden Swedish, no institution plays a more central role in the preservation of the nation’s cultural heritage than the national church. Yes, ethnic Swedes have become overwhelmingly secular, but, like their cousins elsewhere in Scandinavia, they still look to their national church as a bearer of tradition and a setting within which they wish to baptize and confirm their children and hold their weddings and funerals.<\/p>\n
Yet, even as the other key players in Swedish society have adapted to the rise of Islam within the country’s borders, so has the Church of Sweden. The church’s primate<\/a> \u2013 its equivalent of the Pope or Archbishop of Canterbury \u2013 is a 62-year-old woman named Antje Jackel\u00e9n, who holds the title of Archbishop of Uppsala. Popes and archbishops traditionally have official mottoes. Pope Francis’s motto<\/a> is “Miserando atque eligendo”<\/i> (“mercy and choice”). It was his motto as Archbishop of Buenos Aires, and he chose to retain it upon his elevation to the papacy. If you look at Jackel\u00e9n’s Wikipedia page, you will see that her motto is “God is greater.” In Swedish, it is “Gud \u00e4r st\u00f6rre.”<\/i> In Arabic, it is “Allahu akbar,”<\/i> the words that muezzins in mosques around the world shout from the tops of their minarets. These are also, of course, the last words that are heard by many people around the world before they are blown to bits by suicide bombers or run over by jihadists at the wheels of trucks. Some might argue, to be sure, that the Muslim deity is different from the God of Christianity, but Jackel\u00e9n is not one of them: she has said<\/a> explicitly that the two deities are one and the same.<\/p>\n
“God is greater” was Jackel\u00e9n’s motto in her previous position as Archbishop of Lund. It is also the title of a book<\/a> she published in 2011. She has always claimed that she took it from the First Epistle of John. Yes, the words do appear in that epistle, but only as part of the statement<\/a> at 1 John 3:20 that “God is greater than our heart.” In any event, her motto was not subjected to nationwide scrutiny until she was selected to head the Church of Sweden in 2013 and announced that she, like Pope Francis, would stick with the same motto. In response to this news, critics accused her of “flirting with Islam.”<\/a> The newspaper \u00d6stersunds-Posten<\/i> ran an editorial<\/a> calling her “clueless” and noting that in Swedish, the words “Gud \u00e4r st\u00f6rre,”<\/i> in isolation, sound strained and unnatural.<\/p>\n
- We cannot know what is really in this woman’s heart; but one thing we can be sure of is that when Islam does eventually take over Sweden, her remarkable history of appeasement will not save either her or her Church from a brutal reckoning.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/div>\n
![](\"https:\/\/www.gatestoneinstitute.org\/pics\/2945.jpg\")
Antje Jackel\u00e9n, the Archbishop of Uppsala, puts Muhammed on an equal plane with Jesus. Photo: Wikimedia Commons.<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n