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The Role Of Migrant Churches In Danish Integration, Julie K. Allen

The Bridge

Christian religious belief has been a central factor in the creation and maintenance of Danish cultural identity for more than a thousand years, but it has also been an integral part of Danish interactions with the rest of the world. Although the Frankish monk Saint Ansgar (801–865)—the patron saint of Scandinavia—is often given credit for converting the pagan Danes in the ninth century, it was King harald Bluetooth’s baptism in 965 Ce that made religious identity and religious conformity a fundamental principle of membership in the Danish state. For the next nine centuries, the exercise of religious belief in Denmark …