The priest plays satanic music for confirmands: 'It's fun to poke at their prejudices'

This book, I think, was unpleasant to sing from when I went to the priest, says parish and youth priest David Odin Findlay.

He shows his confirmands from Stilling Parish the hymnbook.

- I didn't understand what was written, and the language was foreign to me. But black metal taught me to understand some of the symbolism that is in the hymnbook.

David Odin Findlay is now trying to pass this on to his confirmands. He asks them to find hymn seven in the small thin book and plays the music player.

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Challenging preconceptions

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The hymnbook is part of the curriculum when the country's 7th and 8th graders go to confirmation preparation. However, priests have largely free rein to determine how they will bring the hymns and the rest of the curriculum into the teaching of the confirmands.

According to David Odin Findlay, the texts in the hymnbook are closely related to metal music. So for him, it was the natural way to go to help the young people translate the hymns, he says.

Therefore, he is happy that priests have the opportunity to self-design the confirmation preparation, so that it both interests the priest and the confirmands.

- We are free to proclaim the gospel in our own way. It is a great gift that there is no decree from above about how we should teach. I think that would destroy the spiritual freedom that characterizes the folk church, he says.

Even though the music in the confirmation room today surprised Asta Aggerholm Kristensen, she thinks it's cool:

As a rule, confirmands wake up when there is a little disturbance in the traditional understanding of what one is allowed to do, David Odin Findlay, who also tries to reach young people on the social media Tik-Tok, explains.

- It certainly gives an immediate wow effect, and they become so; what's going on? It's fun to poke a little at their preconceptions about what Christianity and going to the priest is.

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Hold fast to the old traditions

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The teaching looks different in Ikast with parish priest Jens Peter Garne, where they sing hymns, pray the Lord's Prayer and - and where the confirmands are tested on how well they know the Bible and Christianity.

According to Jens Peter Garne, his confirmands are happy to be tested – and he sees it more as an opportunity to repeat the Bible – not as an exam that must be passed, as confirmands otherwise had to do in Grundtvig's time to be confirmed.

- It's also about stepping into tradition and continuing it. And of course doing it with humor and empathy. So I continue.

Parish priest Jens Peter Garne from Ikast is preparing his confirmands for the upcoming test that the young people will go through, where they will have to show that they can remember parts of the Bible by heart. The test is inspired by an old exam form - an interrogation - that confirmands had to pass to be confirmed. The interrogations were abolished more than 100 years ago. (Photo: © Michael Lyck Poulsen, DR)

Even though it may seem old-fashioned to some, it is not the experience that many of the confirmands sit back with.

- No, I don't think it's old-fashioned. We are confirmed that we have some knowledge of the Bible in front of friends and family. So I think it's a nice tradition, says Johan Valdemar Andersen.

Neither Christopher Reding Kamradt thinks that Jens Peter Garne's confirmation preparation is either dull or old-fashioned – nor the upcoming interrogation:

Jens Peter Garne believes, like his colleague from Stilling, that priests should still have the freedom to teach in the way that the individual priest thinks is best.

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