Guarding the boundaries of belonging: the Church of Sweden, Gypsy mission and social care in the 1910s–40s

ABSTRACT Historically, social welfare providers have defined social and ethnic minorities such as ‘vagrants’ and Romani people as non-deserving and thus excluded them from their work. Gradually during the nineteenth century, however, Christian actors and organizations across Europe were among the first to recognize Romani groups as legitimate targets of relief. The operations required boundary changes where previously undeserving categories were transferred to deserving, thus becoming legitimate targets of relief. The article discusses the Church of Sweden’s social care for minorities, with a special focus on Romani groups from the 1910s to the 1940s. At that point, Protestant social work was permeated by conservative paternalism and focused on changing the individual through interventions defined as help-to-self-help, rather than challenging the unjust social structures in Swedish society. However, welfare measures were enacted differently depending on the majority/minority position of the individual; the recognition or rejection of minority rights affected the distribution and content of Lutheran social welfare. Examining church-led or church-endorsed activities, the contribution sheds light on the differentiation of social and ethnic subgroups and brings nuance to a field that has overlooked the Swedish state church as a welfare provider in the twentieth century. The instances of intersection between and sometimes confusion of social and ethnic boundaries serve as examples of the historicity of such boundaries and churchmen’s contribution to establishing these.


Introduction
For centuries, poor relief in Sweden rested on religious morality and community loyalty, ensuring at best that the destitute 'children of the parish' were taken care of.The church was at the centre of this arrangement; parishes were the smallest administrative units in local poor relief. 1 In the late eighteenth century, the right to poor relief was tied to legal settlement (Sw.hemortsrätt) and registration in parish records served as the official system of national registration until as late as 1990.Since residence rights predicated on presence in the records, parishes could deny entry to people who risked becoming a burden on the local economy, such as the poor, elderly and disabled people.Serving as a basis for welfare decisions before and after the establishment of the welfare state, registration in the records has hence been fundamental for peoples' wellbeing or lack thereof.
Swedish ministers, in their capacity as official recordkeepers, parish leaders and moral and spiritual guides, have been essential in managing the boundaries as well as the welfare of the community.The ministers' work implied making distinctions between different groups of poor. 2 Legitimate relief seekers were the acknowledged residents who had fallen into poverty by no fault of their own, for instance through illness or old age.They were deemed 'deserving' because they were assumed to be willing to work had it not been for their (temporary or long-term) incapacity.Illegitimate and, hence, 'undeserving' of relief were able-bodied residents who it was assumed could but would not work, and outsiders who did not belong to the community. 3uring the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, 'deviant' groups and individuals identified as undeserving poor based on their perceived immorality, ethnic background or presumed idleness, increasingly became the targets of charitable projects aiming to 'rescue' them. 4Many of these were driven by Christian women within a revivalist framework. 5In the early twentieth century, the Church of Sweden also became involved in such projects as leading church representatives (re)defined some social and ethnic minorities as worthy of social efforts.The operations required boundary changes where previously undeserving categories were transferred to deserving, thus becoming legitimate targets of Lutheran social work.This inclusive potential of church work stands out in comparison with contemporary differentiations between 'us' (the virtuous rescuers) and 'them' (the 'others' in need of intervention). 6Previous research on minorities' relation to the state church and state authorities, however, has mainly lifted the oppressive aspects of the relationship. 7Serving as a knowledge base for reconciliation processes, this focus is understandable and needed.Nonetheless, spotlighting oppression and abuse risks downplaying agency and simplifying complex and sometimes contradictory historical processes.
Scrutinizing a previously uncharted aspect of the Church of Sweden's activities in the social field, this article fills a research gap.The purpose is to examine the Church of Sweden's social care for minorities, with a special focus on Romani groups from the 1910s to the 1940s. 8The main questions concern the background and consequences of categorical boundary (re)drawing: which arguments were used, which groups were targeted, and what interventions and measures were proposed and implemented for different categories?In focus is the work of Svenska Kyrkans Diakonistyrelse, an -at the time -newly established national church board, engaged in solving social problems.The analysis is thus set on the national level, but the church's top-down approach centred on changing attitudes and behaviour on the local level. 9Drawing on a range of archival and published contemporary sources, the article discusses how the recognition or rejection of minority rights affected the distribution and content of Lutheran social welfare in early twentieth-century Sweden.Methodologically, I have screened the material in search of statements, recommendations, decisions and pleas concerning the status and situation of social and ethnic minorities.Particular attention has been paid to instances where the church (or church representatives) claimed responsibility and argued for a change.Identifying how ideas of social or ethnic heterogeneity and homogeneity conditioned the church's work and the social inclusion of minorities, the aim is to contribute to and nuance the historiography on minorities and state church social welfare promotion.

The problem of mobility and the 'community of value'
The association of social rights to settlement and residence, and the local financial and administrative responsibility of poor relief, enhanced the need to define the boundaries between those who belong and the strangers.People whose affiliation has been contested, notably members of social or ethnic minorities, have thus been highly dependent on the decisions and actions of local elites and church-state representatives. 10Categorizations have changed over time and with the introduction of new laws, as have entitlements to relief.National boundaries grew in importance as local and regional boundaries became economically and administratively less important. 11In Sweden, the transition from local or regional to national boundaries as demarcation lines in social care largely took place between the mid-nineteenth century and the early twentieth century.Freedom of movement increased as internal passports were abandoned in the 1860s.In connection with the First World War (to which Sweden declared neutrality), international passports were introduced, and immigration legislation was established. 12egardless of legislation and whether the provider has been local or national, however, the sedentarism bias has been persuasive in all types of welfare activities.Hence, controlling the movement of 'vagrants' has been seen as a crucial function of European states for centuries.As 'vagabondage' has been an easy crime to prosecute, the 'wandering Gypsy' has often been subsumed into the indefinite category of the 'vagrant'. 13The number of people identified as 'Gypsies' was negligible in early twentieth-century Scandinavia.Nonetheless, a Deportation Act adopted in 1914 sanctioned the rejection and deportation of unwanted foreigners, among them 'Gypsies'. 14Beneath the revised legislation lurked fears of strangers and the idea of a community under threat.Such fears are historically contingent and fundamental to practices of exclusion that, in turn, are based on and produce dichotomies of insiders/outsiders.
Those who are defined as belonging and placed within the limits of what is accepted are included in what Bridget Anderson calls the 'community of value'. 15This community is, ideally, composed of people who share patterns of behaviour expressed through ethnicity, religion, culture and language.Ethnic categories and boundaries, however, matter to a varying degree and are activated for different reasons, be it group honour, moral dignity, personal identity or access to (or exclusion from) pastures, public goods or political power. 16Ethnic boundary-making occurs for several reasons in different societies and historical times.Andreas Wimmer describes ethnic distinctions as fuzzy with sometimes soft boundaries and unclear demarcations.Boundaries have both categorical and social dimensions: the first divides the world into 'us and them', and the other offers scripts on how to relate to individuals classified as 'us' and 'them' under given circumstances. 17he community of value may be seen as offering such a script.The community is both valued and has value and must therefore be protected from the outsiders, who undermine its cohesion.Community members who completely comply with the social order may be described as 'good citizens', while formal members who are imagined as incapable of living up to the ideals are the 'failed citizens'.In between these two citizen categories are the 'tolerated citizens' who are not quite good enough but contingently accepted.The good, the tolerated, as well as the failed citizens, are defined in relation to the 'noncitizens': the outsiders, strangers and foreigners.Anderson asserts that both the noncitizen and the failed citizen, on different scales, are categories of the undeserving poor.The categories were central in the English New Poor Law of 1834, which influenced poor relief legislation in large parts of Europe in the nineteenth century, including Sweden.Even today, the concepts of deserving/undeserving are ingrained in the UK social narrative and frequently used in the public debate. 18he boundaries between categories are permeable; different groups and individuals can slip in and out of the community of value as deserving people are redefined as undeserving and vice versa. 19Through their official duties and ideological work in school boards and poor relief boards, Swedish ministers have both managed the contours of the community and acted as gatekeepers to legitimacy, notably for people on the margins of established society, for example, the ethnic groups that the Swedish state in 1999 recognized as national minorities: the Sami, Roma, Jews, Swedish Finns and Tornedalians. 20e church as a social welfare provider Swedish church-state relations were established during the Reformation in the 1500s, which implied the Crown usurping church influence and wealth.The clergy was incorporated into the state apparatus as officials with fiscal responsibilities such as population registration.Formerly church-led welfare functions like hospital care and poor relief became state responsibilities.From being an act of mercy awarding the giver with salvation in the Middle Ages, poor relief gradually became a question of merit on the receiving end: the poor had to prove worthy of social efforts. 21he church held no major reservations against the nation-state taking over responsibility for social protection.Indeed, until the late 1800s, many churchmen willingly regarded the state as an essential partner in the poor relief system.Nonetheless, the clergy's role in providing social care remained essential but ambiguous. 22The responsibility for welfare for both the able-bodied local poor, and the sick and disabled, was shared between the local community and the relatives of the poor. 23The system was fragile and demeaning, and it was challenged in the nineteenth century when agricultural transformations and industrialization forced people to become mobile labourers.Former farmers became proletarians, which increased the risk of poverty caused by unemployment.The number of poor without local bonds grew, thus testing community loyalty and threatening to exhaust local economies.
As the right to relief had been tied to a legal settlement, parishes had the right to deny relief to people without established residence. 24Nonetheless, the ongoing process of industrialization benefitted from a free labour market, which required a mobile workforce.The changing labour market and increased internal migration strained the already patchy and inadequate poor relief system, urging reformed legislation.Hence, the new Poor Relief Act of 1847 withdrew the parochial right to deny entry and registration to newcomers, but the right to deny relief, which was financed by voluntary fees and parish taxes, remained. 25As resources were scarce and more people were on the move, conflicts over settlement, that is, which parish should pay for a person's relief, were common during the nineteenth century and also continued to be a subject of dispute in the early twentieth century. 26The combination of poverty and migration has, hence, been particularly problematic for authorities to deal with. 27he arrangement of poor relief is a testament to the historical unity between the Swedish church and the state but, as Elisabeth Engberg asserts, it also shows that poor relief remained a concern for the minister and the congregation for a long period. 28The fact that decisions about social relief were made in proximity to the poor might have supported social solidarity and strengthened the bonds between parishioners, who were obliged to help each other in times of need. 29On the other hand, it highlighted social hierarchies and class differences, and increased differentiations between those belonging to the local community and the potentially needy strangers.
The demand to make boundaries is complex and has roots that stem from the past and stretch into the present.It has been connected to economic considerations, but also less visible ideas about who belongs and who does not.K.D. Snell describes the 'local cultures of xenophobia' that marked rural relations in England in pre-welfare-state times. 30He explains in particular how local ideas of belonging have been manifested in interparochial antagonism and conflict resulting in the exclusion of everyone deemed 'foreign'.Due to settlement laws and the local responsibility for Swedish poor relief, which specifically nurtured solidarity with one's own, there is reason to believe that similar 'cultures of xenophobia' also permeated the Swedish countryside. 31

Lutheran social work in the twentieth century
Sweden was one of the poorest countries in Europe in the early twentieth century. 32Class conflicts were common, and the state church took a conservative stance on these.Municipal enlargement, secularization and urbanization during the nineteenth century had considerably affected church-state relations and spurred internal discussions about the role of the church in Swedish society.Contrary to sentiments in the Catholic Church, the Lutheran Church of Sweden welcomed welfare state expansion. 33However, despite widespread acceptance within the church, leading church representatives argued that Christian perspectives and methods were still needed in twentieth-century social-policy work. 34Specifically, the Christian contribution was defined as voluntarism and personal care combining social and evangelical interventions.It was assumed that poor relief was both an economic and a psychological question: self-sufficiency would come about through the individual's moral reform.The growing Labour movement harshly criticized these ideas as preserving the unjust social order.All the while, as Pirjo Markkola asserts, the Lutheran worldview was 'losing its cultural hegemony' in the Nordic states. 35The change was slow, however, and it was certainly not accepted by the leading strata of the Church of Sweden.Instead, the church mobilized to retain (and regain) influence in Swedish society.Notably, the social field was seen as an attractive and important arena for public-spirited church work. 36o counteract marginalization, the church launched a new national organization in 1910: the Church of Sweden's National Board for Parish Life (Svenska Kyrkans Diakonistyrelse, hereafter DS).The DS became a central institution for the church at the national level, aiming to advise, inspire and unify the nation's many congregations.During its first decades of operation, the DS conducted intensive information and propaganda work and new initiatives were taken in the social field.Publications were created, informing about the contents of the church's social work and the envisioned target groups. 37Thematically, the publications often focused on the urgent social and spiritual situation of poor minorities, and the Christian responsibility in rescuing them.
Sweden was, like many countries, suffering from the Depression, and unemployment numbers soared high in the late 1920s and 1930s.Industrialization and urbanization ushered the young to the bigger cities, but the establishment of adequate housing and decent working conditions lagged.Hence, migrants coming from the countryside to the city hoping for adventure and to get a job instead risked meeting starvation, unemployment, homelessness and stigmatization.
Whether the poor were classified as 'vagrants', 'vagabonds', 'morally decadent' (Sw.sedligt förfallna), 'released prisoners', 'alcoholics' or 'fallen women' in the DS' publications, their mobility was considered a threat to moral virtues as well as the social order.Economic motives were also prevalent: the problematized groups were not self-sufficient according to the contemporary norms concerning gender, ethnicity, age and class. 38rotestant social work in general was permeated by conservative paternalism and focused on changing the individual through interventions defined as help-to-self-help rather than correcting the unjust social structures in Swedish society. 39The punitive dimensions could be prominent, as rehabilitation and discipline were considered two sides of the same coin.Before the institutionalization of social citizenship rights in Sweden and Europe, legislative rather than socio-political strategies were common 'solutions' to problems related to poverty and mobility. 40The elastic and vague vagrancy legislation in particular has been a useful state tool to regulate the mobility of the poor and unemployed. 41iming to prevent (or redeem) incarceration due to vagrancy, leading church officials sought to develop alternative social interventions on a theological basis.In the church's rhetoric, tens of thousands of unemployed men were assumed to roam the countryside and flock to the cities.The social problems attached to them, and their behaviour, were vagrancy, criminality and alcoholism, as well as their supposedly increasing moral decay. 42To help these social minorities, the DS established a Social Committee and hired a Social Secretary to coordinate the work.For marginalized, poor and mobile women, the overall threat was immorality in general and prostitution in particular. 43escue homes for prostitutes had been set up by bourgeois revivalist women's associations since the mid-nineteenth century; the DS did not include fallen women among their prioritized target groups. 44Instead, the DS invested in setting up institutions for 'vagrants' and would-be vagabonds.
In 1913, the Björknäs workhouse (Sw.arbetshem) for male 'vagrants' and released prisoners was opened. 45And in 1927, a bahnhofsmission functioning as a Counselling Center (Sw.Sociala råd-och hjälpbyrån) for newly arrived migrants (of both sexes) coming from rural areas and sometimes from abroad, was instituted at the Stockholm Central Station. 46For the unemployed and homeless male youth already present in the capital, shelters were opened in the late 1920s and early 1930s. 47Sometimes, the activities were designed specifically for a minority, as in the case of the 'Lapp mission' or the 'Gypsy mission' (see below).In other cases, ethnic minorities could be classified and treated as 'vagrants'.Indeed, the 1907 Poor Relief Committee commissioned the working group preparing the new vagrancy legislation to specifically focus on Romani people, at the time pejoratively called 'Tattare' and 'Zigenare'. 48egardless of the label, the categories had in common that they referred to people whose local affiliation and right to social assistance could be questioned at any time.Classification, categorization and establishing belonging are complex processes that take place on different scales and for different purposes.For instance, in 1915, the 'Gypsy' T, a 'Swedish subject', living in the city of Västerås, reported to the police authorities that a foreign 'Gypsy', a 'German subject', had registered as T and used his papers when travelling in the country. 49All the while, national legislation formally defined all 'Gypsies' as unwanted foreigners. 50Hence, at the local level and in church records, national Roma could be distinguished from 'foreign', and hence contingently accepted in the community of value.
The DS's institutions were partly established to solve the problems thought to arise when poor people without employment migrated and threatened local communities of value.In practice, however, the activities were very different from each other depending on the target groups' position in relation to the community.The workhouse clients, for instance, were released prisoners and 'vagrants' considered failed citizens.Their participation was voluntary, but they had to commit to staying at the Björknäs workhouse for at least one year.During this time, they were disciplined through a meticulously scheduled labour and missionary plan to reach the ideals of the good citizen. 51The clients of the Counselling Centre, on the other hand, were heterogenic.Judging by the reports and interviews with the manager, Sister Anna Eriksson, they were seen as good or tolerated citizens in need of only temporary help.Concretely this might have included offering unfortunate travellers return tickets to their home villages, escorting sick people to hospitals, guiding job seekers to trusted employers, and referring homeless newcomers to respectable lodging facilities in the capital. 52According to the revised Poor Relief Act of 1918, migrating people without money had the right to get assistance to reach their home municipality.The poor relief board of Stockholm commissioned the church-driven Counselling Centre to fulfil this social care task. 53In 1933, the Centre was taken over by the Stockholm City Mission, which is still operating.

The differentiation and registration of Romani minorities
Inclusion is a double-edged sword: it may give access to social welfare, conditioned, however, on the premises of registration and adherence to social norms.This is a paradox of welfare: aiming to alleviate distress, interventions may favour certain behaviours and human characteristics.Before the organized Swedish welfare state had settled and equality became a paramount goal, the interventions were often based on conservative and patriarchal norms concerning class, gender and ethnicity.Hence, early welfare measures were enacted differently depending on the majority/minority position of the individual.This is particularly visible in the church's work with Romani people, whose position partly depended on the ministers' classification of them.
The Swedish national minority of the Roma is not homogeneous but consists of several different groups.Today, minority status builds on a principle of self-identification; individuals decide whether they want to be treated as members of a national minority. 54Romani people identify themselves based on language variations, heritage and traditions in different groups such as Resande, Kelderash, Kale, Lovari, Arli and several others.At the same time, the Swedish authorities divide the minority into five subgroups departing from parameters such as nationality. 55One essential criterion for categorization is time: how long a group has been in Sweden is decisive for classification.
Today's national Roma minority is estimated to include 50,000-100,000 people. 56The Resande (also called Resandefolket) constitutes the largest and 'oldest' Romani group in Sweden; most families are traceable back to the seventeenth century.The other subgroups have arrived in different migration waves starting in the late nineteenth century, when some Kelderash Roma families from Eastern Europe and Russia appeared in Sweden.With this, Swedish authorities started to differentiate between the longpresent Resande and the newly arrived Roma.The former was identified as 'Tattare', a national population group, and the latter as 'Zigenare', a foreign group. 57The denominations had until then had been used as synonyms.Today, such derogatory terms are abandoned in official language.
Immigration control was introduced in relation to the First World War: 'Gypsies' (Sw.'Zigenare'), along with 'travelling musicians', 'beggars' and people suspected of prostitution or gambling were rejected at the border.Swedish borders were thus practically closed for Romani people between 1914 and 1954, when the Nordic Labour Market was established and Kale Roma from Finland started to arrive as labour migrants. 58The 1923 commission on vagrancy (Sw.lösdriveriutredningen), and other local and national inquiries from the interwar period, continued to differentiate and register the Romani people already present in the country. 59The interwar attempts to distinguish between groups and register them corresponded to the development of national policies aiming to include the national poor into suitable social programmes depending on sex, age, education, physical and mental ability, and social status, and exclude the groups defined as foreign.A critical motive was to establish who belonged to the community of value and had the right to welfare, and who did not. 60

'Gypsy mission'
The activities that the DS established in the social field during the early decades of the twentieth century can be understood as either part of the church's mission or as part of the diaconate.Diakonia, meaning service, was initiated in Protestant countries in the nineteenth century and reached Sweden through the evangelist movement. 61At the time, the demarcation between mission and diaconal work was partly a question of rhetoric (what theological arguments were put forward) and organization and economy (who ran and paid for the activities).Moreover, the target groups of the interventions also seem to have been important for the differentiation.Simplified, mission work focused on the 'others' outside of national borders, while diaconal work targeted community members at home and had a clear social agenda besides the evangelical.The Church of Sweden had long organized missions to spread Christianity to 'heathens' in distant lands. 62During the late nineteenth century, the clergy 'discovered' that heathens were also within the nation and thus argued for an Inner Mission, also called the home mission. 63Inner or home mission was a type of evangelistic activity developed in parallel with the diaconal movement in Great Britain and Germany during the early 1800s.It focused mainly on the victims of urbanization and industrialization: the working poor in the cities.A basic understanding was that the evangelization of the poor had to take their living conditions into account. 64he purpose of the Inner Mission was to spread the gospel and save the national 'baptized heathens within the country'. 65Unlike the international mission that targeted 'unbaptized heathens', the Inner Mission would hence focus on people who belonged but had (temporarily) slipped out of the community of value. 66In the German model, no clear distinction was made between diaconal and missionary efforts.The two presupposed each other because poverty and social misery were assumed to be caused by sin and a lack of true godliness. 67Moral decay was thus assumed to precede social decay, which specifically supported ecclesiastical efforts in the social field.The overall purpose was evangelization: social work would lead to the spread of Christianity and morality.
The nineteenth-century Protestant revival movements perceived Romani people as ideal target groups for missionary work.In Finland, missions and diaconal associations were the first to draw attention to the Roma as a group needing special efforts. 68Missions in Germany and England also provided frameworks for assimilating Romani groups. 69 tenacious tradition evolved: to conduct 'research' and rehabilitative (assimilative) work simultaneously. 70Rehabilitation would primarily come about through Christianization and education, it was assumed.The Englishman George Borrow (1803-81) was a key figure in this field; the British and Foreign Bible Society funded his research and mission trips to the Romanies in Spain and Portugal.Borrow was later declared a legend by the Nordic 'Gypsy experts' Arthur Thesleff (1871-1920) and Carl-Herman Tillhagen (1906-2002). 71As Hurd and Werther discuss, these so-called 'Gypsy friends' expressed a specific masculine persona that evolved during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. 72Representing a self-sacrificing paternalism and masculine heroism concerning the poor, the time's missionaries were typical 'Gypsy friends'.
The Church of Sweden had conducted missionary work among the Sami in the northern parts of the country since the seventeenth century, but the nineteenthcentury nation-state formation intensified the activities. 73Christian mission and colonial expansion in the north went hand in hand. 74The development was by no means limited to Sweden.In Finland and Norway, it was church men who, in line with the state's ambitions to register and homogenize all groups within the nation's borders, turned their attention to ethnic minorities.The Norwegian ministers Eilert Sundt (1817-75) and Jakob Walnum (1871-1925) formulated and implemented the Norwegian state's harsh policies towards Romani groups, at the time defined as 'Omstreifere', 'Fanter' or 'Tater'.The policies had two primary aims: breaking socialization processes between Romani parents and their children, and forcing the adults to settle down, register and get regular employment.From the early twentieth century (until as late as 1986), the Norwegian Protestant mission Norsk misjon blant hjemløse was responsible for fulfilling these aims through, inter alia, children's homes and workers' colonies specifically developed for the target group. 75n 1922, the Swedish Free Church pastor Sundberg proposed that the DS should follow the Norwegian example and establish a mission for 'Zigenare' in Sweden as soon as possible. 76In response to Sundberg's letter, the DS carried out a small investigation to obtain statistics and information about the Norwegian situation. 77Referring to a lack of manpower, however, they decided to not act on the data. 78The 'Zigenare' in Sweden were assumed to be a unique and foreign group of socially disadvantaged people, who required special knowledge and skills to be 'saved'.On that ground, the DS rejected 'Zigenare' as a target group for Lutheran social work in the 1920s.
The DS was deterred by the social heterogeneity and hybridity of categorical boundaries: who should be included in Sundberg's definition?One commentator argued that it was necessary to separate the 'Tattare', who were the primary target in the contemporary Norwegian interventions, from the 'proper Zigenare'.'Tattare', he argued, were already covered by the Swedish school, childcare and poor-relief legislation and thus did not require church intervention.And the 'proper Zigenare' were assumed to be foreigners and 'most certainly Catholics', and thus they fell outside the Church of Sweden's responsibility and interest. 79Hence, no Romani group was considered deserving of the church's welfare and missionary work in the 1920s.The differentiation and exclusion become intelligible using Bridget Anderson's concepts: 'Zigenare' were denied on the grounds of being non-citizens (of both the church and the nation), while 'Tattare' were ruled out as failed citizens unworthy of the Inner Mission and church-driven social care.In theory, Lutheran social work included all the nation's needy subjects.Studying Swedish DS representatives' practice and arguments concerning Romani groups, however, it becomes clear that people identified as 'Tattare' were indeed considered in need of support, but at the same time undeserving of the church's special attention.Presumably, the church's social efforts concentrated on groups perceived to be more susceptible to missionary efforts.
In the early 1930s, Free Church pastor Sundberg criticized the Swedish state's and the state church's lack of interest in organizing a systematic (inner) mission among Romani people: Why is there virtually no mission among these people, who number at least one and a half million souls on earth?[-] Statistically speaking, Sweden is the most missionizing country on the planet, as far as pagan mission is concerned, but would it not be a reason to missionize among the heathens within its own country's borders? 80 the following decade, a more positive view of the 'Gypsy question' developed in Swedish society; 'Zigenare' deserved and needed help.Simultaneously, in the public debate, 'Tattare' were often described as social scum, belonging to the lowest social strata of society.The National Board of Health and Welfare (Sw.Socialstyrelsen) launched investigations, performed by local police and social authorities, to number and register them.But voices were raised also by individual Roma demanding education for their children.Hence, in relation to missionaries and officials, some Roma had agency: they were not victims of circumstances, but sought to claim their rights. 81inally, in the early 1940s, the DS joined efforts with Sundberg and established the Swedish Gypsy Mission Foundation (Sw.Stiftelsen Svensk Zigenarmission, henceforth the Mission) with financial backing from the state.The purpose was to support the Roma spiritually and materially, primarily through education in ambulatory (travelling) schools. 82It was only those identified as 'Zigenare', at the time estimated to be some 500 people, that Protestant actors considered needing and deserving of interventions.This boundary change, where previously undeserving Roma were reconsidered as deserving, coincided with the expansion of the Swedish welfare state.The development implied the realization of social citizenship for more and more categories within the nation, which presupposed a well-registered population.However, the Romani group pejoratively described as 'Tattare' had been 'de-ethnified' and thus remained -for better or worse -out of sight for Swedish Protestant social workers.For certain, several Swedish ministers were inspired by the Norwegian examples and suggested similar interventions in Sweden: compulsory care of children and labour camps for adults.The Norwegian ministers Sundt and Walnum were also elevated as role models in the intervention proposals later presented in Finland and Sweden. 83In the end, however, the church did not start a mission targeting the Romani people at the time defined as 'Tattare'.
The differentiation and differential treatment highlight the hybridity of ethnic boundaries and Protestant actors' historical contribution to defining and (re)establishing these. 84he Swedish Resande and the Finnish Kale Roma largely share ancestry, and the Norwegian Romani minority 'Tater' (or 'Fanter') -the main target group of Norwegian missionary efforts -are roughly the national equivalents of the Swedish Resande. 85onetheless, at the time, the Swedish Resande were not acknowledged as an ethnic but a social minority, which excluded them from Christian charity and Lutheran social work.
An assumption often made concerning the historical relationship between disadvantaged minorities and authorities or social institutions is that minority members have been denied something that they not only had the right to, but also wanted to take part in.Such a starting point risks oversimplifying a complex reality and hiding the agency of individuals.Attention from the church could in many cases mean increased vulnerability and discrimination. 86Norway's ecclesiastically driven and implemented policy towards 'Tater', for instance, was stigmatizing, and has caused a great deal of suffering to individuals and families. 87Romani people have thus had many reasons to keep their heads down and stay out of the social reformers' and churchmen's sight.Still, being acknowledged in Protestant social work meant recognition as a legitimate recipient of -conditional -help.The boundaries of belonging were redrawn as groups whose rights had been previously denied, such as the Roma initially dismissed as foreigners, were redefined as deserving.

From charity to rights
The Swedish Gypsy mission was active for almost 20 years, from 1943 to 1962.Most of the funding came from the state, but some also came from gifts and membership fees. 88Early on, inspiration was taken from the education of Sami children and the Finnish 'Gypsy mission' active from the early twentieth century. 89Information was also gathered from the Finnish congregation in Stockholm as well as the Norwegian mission targeting 'Tater'. 90In the first meetings, Johan Dimitri Taikon, a leading member of the Swedish Roma community, participated, as he had previously demanded the state's support in educating Roma children in 1933.Hence, early in the Mission's work, some negotiation between the Roma and Protestant actors did take place.The content and extent of this, however, is not detectable in the sources.Restrained by the one-sided documentation and guided by our era's efforts to 'cast light on a dark past', previous research has mainly taken the perspective and motives of Swedish authorities, officials and teachers. 91Most of the Roma were illiterate, which made schooling and education the number one priority.The Mission decided to establish one permanent and two ambulatory summer schools and hired the leader of the Finnish 'Gypsy mission' and a teacher-trained woman as teachers. 92ventually, formalized cooperation between the Mission and local and state authorities and officials developed.The secretary of the Mission was appointed as a 'contact man' enabling communication among the Roma, the public authorities and the Mission. 93Ali Berggren, poor relief inspector and assistant director (Sw.byråchef) at the National Board of Health and Welfare, hoped that the Mission would stand side by side with the state in addressing the 'Gypsy question'.Underlining, however, that 'social care should not be a gift of mercy', he critiqued Protestant social work as charity, thus enhancing the social-citizenship rights dimension. 94In 1951, a meeting with participants from the national social and educational authorities and the Mission took place.The Mission had also invited the first secretary of the Norwegian mission, who informed about the Norwegian state's generous yearly contribution to their work: 350,000 Norwegian crowns.Compared to the Swedish state grant to the Swedish mission, 9200 Swedish crowns, it is obvious that the public-private cooperation around the 'Gypsy mission' in Sweden was more symbolic than substantial. 95he limited public influence of Protestant actors in managing (educating and assimilating) Romani minorities in Sweden should also be attributed to the unprecedented expansion of the Swedish welfare state and the universal education system after the Second World War.Sweden had declared itself neutral during the war and thus managed to keep industries and infrastructure intact, as well as the political and administrative systems stable.The ambitious social democratic state thus had every opportunity to launch a range of welfare projects in the areas of public health, rehabilitation, housing and education.The inclusion of social and ethnic minorities was among these projects. 96uring the 1950s, representatives from the Mission courted Christian members of the Swedish Parliament, who urged the state to investigate the Roma's situation.Suggestions also came from members of the Communist Party, alarmed by the socio-medical situation of the minority. 97In 1954, the government launched a national commission, and the report, Zigenarfrågan (SOU 1956:43), became foundational to the post-war measures regarding the 'Gypsy question'.Although the Mission's work was deemed important in the historical care of the ethnic minority, Protestant social work or the Church of Sweden had no place in future interventions.Instead, the initiative went to social medicine, epidemiology and pedagogy to investigate the Roma's medical, social and educational situation. 98In 1958, the state assumed full financial responsibility for the 'Gypsy question' and thus withdrew all support to the Mission from 1959.
The lack of funding seriously impacted the Mission's possibility to reach its main achievement: Roma revival (Sw.väckelse).This aim -rehabilitation through religious conversion -had been downplayed when the Mission (backed by state funds) provided Roma with education, help with authority contacts or monetary support.In 1952, the Mission was confident that revival would eventually come about.The teachers even claimed to see a 'spiritual breach' among the participating Roma. 99However, when the state subsidies drained, the Mission was forced to withdraw the costly educational, social and economic support, thus making evangelization its central and only activity.They assumed that their protégés would remain and become proselytes anyway. 100They soon had to reconsider; only a few years later, the Mission's board concluded in frustration that the Roma lacked interest in the Mission's evangelical work. 101Hence, despite efforts to amass continued support and funding, the Mission was forced to close in the early 1960s.
The state-church endorsed 'Gypsy mission' thus came to a definite end while, simultaneously, the Swedish state and sociomedical experts launched comprehensive projects and examinations to prepare and implement the state-driven rehabilitation of the Roma.Once again, only the minor Kelderash Roma subgroup consisting of less than 1000 people was included in the post-war welfare work.The much larger Romani group of the Resande remained outside the deserving 'ethnic category' as failed citizens.It took until the launch of national minority policies in 1999 before they were officially acknowledged as belonging to the national minority of the Roma. 102In a sense, Protestant social and missionary work paved the way and provided a starting point for the Swedish welfare state's work with (some) Romani minorities.In the process, however, the Mission contributed to making itself superfluous in the rights-based and highly secular Swedish welfare state.The active involvement of Johan Dimitri Taikon in the 1930s and early 1940s provided the Mission with arguments for its work, which helped secure state funding.Halted subsidies and the Roma's disinterest and diminished participation in the late 1950s resulted in the closing of the Mission's work.Hence, the history of the Swedish 'Gypsy mission' is also a testament to the agency and (however partial and temporary) influence of ethnic minorities.

Conclusion
In the long-term perspective, the social care of society's poor changed from being a dutiful act of Christian mercy -and gradually during the nineteenth century, a question of voluntary and private achievements -to a tax-financed community service and social right that expanded beginning in the 1930s.The article focuses on the Church of Sweden and brings nuance to a field that has overlooked the state church as a welfare provider in the twentieth century.Examining church-led or church-endorsed activities, the contribution sheds light on the delimitation and differentiation of social and ethnic subgroups from the 1910s to the 1940s.The instances of intersection between, and sometimes confusion of, social and ethnic boundaries serve as examples of the historicity of such boundaries and churchmen's contribution in establishing these.Historically, social welfare providers in Sweden and Europe have defined social and ethnic minorities such as 'vagrants' and Romanies as non-deserving and thus excluded them from their work.Gradually during the nineteenth century, however, Christian actors and organizations across Europe were among the first to recognize Romani groups as legitimate targets of relief.In the early twentieth century, leading representatives of the Church of Sweden formulated arguments to expand the community of value by developing measures and institutions for previously undeserving categories of social minorities.In the 1920s, the issue of the potential worthiness of 'Gypsies' was raised among leading church actors on the national level in Sweden.However, it took until the 1940s before systematic missionary work targeting a Romani group was established.This may be compared to the comprehensive church-led or church-endorsed activities focusing on Romani minorities in Norway during the same period.Notwithstanding, the missionary and social work that the Church of Sweden supported only addressed a specific Romani subgroup while ignoring others.