Televangelism in Sweden—Now? : Is Channel 10 in Älmhult in Fact a Telechurch?

Ever since televangelism started in the United States, Sweden has been considered an impossible arena for that type of enterprise. In the 1960’s almost all Swedes were formal members of the Lutheran Church of Sweden, were heavily secularized, and were considered to be anti-Charismatic and fairly averse to the expression of personal religiosity in public, as in televangelism. Furthermore, the state monopoly of Swedish radio and television closely regulated the transmission of church services, and thus impeded any such evangelization initiatives via TV. Nevertheless, in 2005, when the heyday of televangelism seemed to be over in the United States, a new Charismatic TV channel was founded in Älmhult in Småland. The new channel was called “Channel 10” (Kanal 10). “Kanal” was a neutral designation witout any religious connotations and the number “10” was not used by any television channel in Sweden at the time. In 10 years, Channel 10 has grown into a successful business whose principal product is Pentecostal or Charismatic preaching. The chapter initially asks the question: How can it be that televangelism attracts Swedes today, when this was considered impossible only 30 years ago? The study explores the actors behind the channel, its contents, and the reception of the programs in the light of contemporary changes in the Pentecostal landscape, especially intergenerational conflicts of interest and ongoing mediatization. The material presented is discussed from a theoretical perspective on identity, inspired by Paul Ricoeur (2005) and Erik Erikson (1964), and nostalgia as advocated by Clay Routledge (2015)

From reel to ideal: the Blue Lamp and the popular cultural construction of the English ‘bobby’

Using the Ealing Studios film The Blue Lamp (1950) this article considers the shifting portrayal of the English police officer within the popular cultural imagination and how this has impacted upon attitudes to the police and their place within notions of ‘Englishness’. Drawing on a range of primary and secondary sources, I extend Clive Emsley’s (1992) seminal work on ‘the indulgent tradition’ of the English police by analysing how, in the immediate post-war period, a convergence of circumstances enabled The Blue Lamp to break with previous popular cultural representations. The article offers a series of insights into the deep cultural and interpretive work that had to be undertaken by Ealing Studios to produce PC George Dixon, the iconic image of the English ‘bobby on the beat’. It also suggests that despite this ‘Ealingization’ of the English ‘bobby’, for box office reasons audiences were also offered the metropolitan spectacle, glamour and turmoil of the chaotic life of the violent young ‘cop killer’ played by Dirk Bogarde