The decline of Christianity in Finland

I was looking for a cute graph of the fall in church membership in Finland, to go with this tweet, and decided I had to make it myself. That led into a little bit of reading and organizing my thoughts, and I've collated the results here.

It was fully illegal to not be Christian in the Kingdom of Sweden. From 1634 onward, your choices were either to be Lutheran or leave the country. Some practical exceptions were made for Orthodox Karelians living in the eastern provinces, and I don't know to what extent individual people were persecuted, but basically the law said you belonged to the state church and that was that. They later allowed some other Christian denominations, mainly for foreigners: Swedish subjects weren't allowed to convert.

What got me reading was that I was curious as to what the status of Jews in Sweden was, and I learned that they were entirely prohibited from moving to most of the kingdom, including the Finnish provinces. In 1802 Sweden banned the immigration of Jews altogether, and although the law was soon repealed in Sweden, the Finnish provinces were lost to Russia in the war of 1808-09 and the law not only stayed on the books here, but was enforced until independence. I never knew that the Grand Duchy of Finland was so ferociously antisemitic. Jewish citizens only gained full civil rights in 1917.

So the religious situation in Finland at independence was basically that the law forced the entire population to be Lutheran. There was a small Orthodox minority, along with tiny Jewish and mostly Tatar Muslim communities, as well as some other, vanishingly small Christian churches. So officially, something like 98-99% of the population was Lutheran.

This only begins to change in 1923, when the first ever law on the freedom of religion is passed. Now, for the first time, it's possible to found new religious organizations and freely join or leave them, and even not belong to one at all. Full freedom of religion this ain't: the Lutheran and Orthodox state churches maintain their privileged positions, Christian churches get special tax exemptions, and the process for registering new religious denominations only recognizes religions that are Christian or broadly similar to Christianity. This is how the law still works: the Finnish wicca community, for instance, have been denied religious status because, among other reasons, they lack a holy book. This is a totally absurd criterion for a religion, but it's still the law.

The law came into force in 1924, so that was the first year Finnish citizens were allowed to leave the church. Since then, if I recall correctly, overall church membership has only gone down: there has never been a year in Finnish history since when the church had more members than in the previous year. Membership now stands at something like 68% and is continuing to fall.

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So what happened? Why is church membership collapsing?

A new religious freedom law was passed in 2003, which made leaving the church easier. Earlier, for instance when I quit the church, you had to actually go to a church office in person, fill out a form and talk to a priest, and if they couldn't talk you out of it, a month later your papers were transferred to the civil registry. The 2003 law made it possible to quit the church through a simple letter, which could be sent electronically. That same year, the Tampere "free-thinkers" atheist organization opened a website, eroakirkosta.fi, where you could input your personal details and they would take care of the process. As of this writing, they were coming up on 800 000 people having used the service, which you have to admit is a little bit impressive in a country of five million. But if you look at the overall graph, it's not like the trend started in 2003.

While the membership decline has been fairly steady, it's been given tremendous momentary boosts by both the church itself, of which more later, but also various public scandals involving religion. Several of those have involved Finnish Christian conservative politician Päivi Räsänen, a disgusting bigot who hates everyone different from her, and has consequently but presumably inadvertently done more to eradicate Christianity from Finland than anyone, up to and including the national hero who murdered a bishop with an axe. Whenever she shows her face on TV, there's a spike at eroakirkosta.fi. Lutherans sometimes complain about this, but the effect is real.

In my opinion, the fundamental reason behind the collapse of church membership is that the vast majority of people leaving the church were never Christians to begin with. We have no real information on how many people were actually Christian back when it was illegal not to be, because they didn't do a lot of polling back then, but also because the poll question would literally have been "do you confess to treason against God and your King".

What we do know is that in several surveys done by the church in the 21st century, the Finnish population divides into three approximately similarly sized groups. One is Christian and believes more or less what the church teaches; one believes in some kind of higher power or whatever, but not in the sense taught by the church; and one believes in nothing at all. So you could say that while some 70% of the population belongs to a Christian denomination, only about 30% say they're Christians. Suddenly the graph becomes a lot easier to understand, I think.

This also seems to be the mechanism behind the various Christian conservative-inspired brouhahas causing people to quit the church: if you don't actually believe in what the church teaches, and you see these odious bigots declaiming their hatred without any real pushback from the church, I think it's easy to see that this can lead quite a few people to ask themselves why, exactly, are they paying money to stay affiliated with this kind of activity.

As a point of interest, we have no compelling reasons to think that number of Christians was ever much higher. It may have been, but it may not have been; we have no direct way of knowing, but we can make some guesses. Until at least the 19th century, everyone in Finland had to pass an examination on the catechism to be confirmed into the church. It was never a particularly difficult examination, but in large parts of the country, people legitimately suffered with it and many were almost certainly being confirmed without passing it. This doesn't exactly make you think the average person was deeply devout.

Similarly, Finnish folk religion persisted well into the 20th century, and was only really wiped out by the elementary school system. While it incorporated lots of Christian language and ideas, it was still fundamentally a pagan belief system which the church tried to eradicate for centuries - in vain. Despite considerable efforts, the church also failed to impose Christian systems of gender and sexuality on the broader population; homophobia and strict bourgeois gender roles only became anything like universal in the 20th century through public education and conscription.

So we have no real reasons to believe Christianity was ever particularly popular or widespread in what later became Finland, in terms of things people actually believed in, whatever their nominal (compulsory) allegiance was. Again, I feel like this makes the decline in membership seem like a return to normality.

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Finally, there is a core reason for the collapse in church membership that it's considered taboo to really talk about. It's that what the church teaches is complete nonsense. The Bible is, in parts, an interesting collection of books with some historical value. As an actual guide to organizing your life or thinking about, well, anything germane to living in the 21st century, for the vast majority of us, it is useless. The Finnish Lutheran church officially expounds doctrines like the Trinity, which is pseusophilosophical garbage, and the resurrection, which is a very silly fairy tale. The question isn't really why people are leaving an organization that professes to believe in this blather, but rather why anyone would join it in the first place once they're no longer being forced to by state violence.

Education in what is now Finland was a church monopoly until the 1860s, and the modern school system was founded in the 1920s. I don't think it's a coincidence that as the quality of secular education improves, membership in organized superstition declines. Or in other words, when the church loses access to the coercive power of the state, and critical thinking skills become more widespread, church membership begins to collapse. Obviously it is a more complex social phenomenon or series of phenomena than just this, but if we're going to pretend that broadening access to high-quality education doesn't matter at all, well, that's a pretty big choice to make.

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So what will happen in the future? Who knows. A fellow theology freshman told me in 2012 that maybe god will send a new reformation to Finland. Who am I to argue?

Most commentators, even from the church, reckon that the membership decline will continue. If you think that the previously cited figure of 30-ish percent of the population being Christians will stay that way, then maybe church membership will drop to around that number.

A church with a membership around 30% will be quite a different organization from the state religious bureaucracy it is today. At that point, the church will probably no longer be able to discharge its remaining public functions, like burial services, and considerable state subsidies to a minority religion will hardly be a sustainable solution. As with schools, at some point in the not so distant future, the public sector will have to reclaim the rest of the public services the church has monopolized.

Even now, with a declining membership and massive pension burdens, the church is in a somewhat perilous financial position. They also have great swathes of real estate that may prove somewhat difficult to unload; who do you sell a cathedral to in Finland? The state already directly subsidizes the church to the tune of over a hundred million euros a year, not without controversy. There are those who think that the church is headed for financial collapse; I remember a panel at the faculty of theology where one provocative participant told the attending students that none of us would ever retire from the church, because it will have gone bankrupt by then. He may not be wrong.

The church may also collapse because there will no longer be any demand for it. So-called mainline protestantism has been in a global decline for quite a while, and the same seems to be happening in Finland. Roughly speaking, as more and more people are leaving organizes religion, the influence of the extremist bigots in churches is increasing. Maybe the most spectacular instance of this is the way white USian Protestants are rallying around, of all people, Dolan fucking Trump. The more influence these fanatics gain over their denominations, the more repulsive they will appear to the general population.

The strategy of the Finnish Lutheran church has been to sit on the fence as long as possible. They triggered one of the bigger waves in membership loss by their uncompromising opposition to women in the priesthood in the 1980s, and went on to resolve the issue in such a stupid way that clerical misogyny is rampant to this day. They're now doing a similar thing with same-sex marriage, which is accepted by the state and not the church, and the church's homophobic bigotry is one of the main reasons members are quitting. At the same time, the opposite side of the culture war professes to believe that the church has sold out to cultural Marxism or whatever they're calling it now, and bigots are also leaving the church.

It's easy, and not entirely wrong, to say that the church is choosing the worst possible alternative by equivocating. The truth may be that there's simply no position they can take without potentially catastrophic consequences. If the church came out in favor of gay marriage, against racism and inequality and so on, they would not only alienate quite a large portion of their members, but according to what we know about their opinions, most of their staff. Similarly, for the church to come down even more firmly on the right of the culture war would be a complete disaster for them in terms of not only popular support but potentially even their official position as a state church. So it's not at all clear that they can actually do any better.

The final dilemma for the church may be that there just isn't any real demand for a national mainline Lutheran denomination. When both the liberal and fundamentalist believers are minorities in a large church, they can coexist. It's the middle between them that's falling out of the church, and if this keeps up, it'll be just the extremes left. Who, at that point, is the former state church for?

Anyway this is all premised on current trends continuing, so if something new and unexpected happens, all bets are off.

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So this is the kind of thing that happens when I'm working and in the middle of a record-breaking heatwave where it's impossible to do anything except lie down in front of a powerful fan. I hope you've enjoyed these random thoughts on the Finnish state church and their membership problems.

Pandemic diary: August

Last time I did one of these was in April, when we were coming down off the totally unnecessary March peak. We've since been suffering through an absolutely tortuous summer, with new heat records and everything, and also the second summer in a row where we pretend the pandemic is over.

At least we're learning something about stuff that went on earlier in the pandemic. There was a really good Twitter thread on masks that I thought really nailed some of the initial confusion on them. We also had so-called experts in this country suggesting that mask mandates could even be dangerous, and the thread I linked goes into this failure of thinking very well.

The Finnish Safety Investigation Authority found that the mixed messaging on masks confused people and delayed the adoption of facemasks, which you can argue led to people dying. It's really worth remembering how much of a shitshow our pandemic response was at times; the mask confusion was preceded by some of our chief health officials telling us the pandemic wouldn't affect us at all, which then led to people flipping out and buying all the toilet paper when they realized the truth.

**

Speaking of shitshows, here's the pandemic situation from last Friday.

On July 20th, our health authority guys figured that this is effectively a fourth wave, so, y'know, yay. As you can see, we were well on our way to actually suppressing the damn disease - until some of our countrymen decided that they absolutely have to travel to Russia to see the Finnish men's football team play. You know, Russia, where the delta variant was running totally out of control at the time because they were taking basically no safety measures.

Once these idiots had seen their football game, the Kymenlaakso health authority decided it would be too much of a hassle to actually test all of them when they returned to the country, so they just let them all in. No testing, no quarantines, nothing at all. For some reason we have refused to implement any kind of quarantine measures for people traveling abroad, and now we're facing the consequences.

As a result of these, shall we say, decisions, we are now experiencing a fourth wave of the coronavirus pandemic. As cases exploded, the authorities banned most cultural and hobby activities, but, of course, the bars stayed open. Right now, it looks like the wave may have peaked, but schools have barely started, and hospitalizations (blue line below) are ticking upward.

What this amounts to is a colossal human experiment: if we let thousands of young people catch the virus, how long will the epidemic continue, and what will the long-term effect be? It's salutary to remember that we still don't know a whole lot about long Covid in young people. Well, we're going to. Also, I guess if you can't get the vaccine, or are at high risk even if vaccinated, then the current policy is apparently that it sucks to be you.

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As far as I know, adult education will be resuming with masks and distancing, like we did last fall until the situation got way too bad, so we'll be trying to finally deliver our heavy metal lectures this September. We'll see what happens. Personally, I'm quite concerned; it's not just that we have a lot of people acting like the pandemic is over, but also the authorities are asleep at the wheel, or have decided that we're just going to let this go and hope that the vaccines are enough to keep everyone safe.

I'm very much afraid this won't be my last pandemic diary.

Warhammer 40,000: Questor Mechanicus

Earlier, I made some Machine Cult robots. It was fun, so it got me thinking about making more robots. Bigger robots.

 - Divine Metaphysics

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Ages ago, when I taught my first proper lecture course at the Helsinki Adult Education Center, I wanted to use part of my salary to buy something really stupid to remember the occasion by. That something was the Imperial Knights: Renegade second edition box, which comes with two Knights and a big old terrain piece. Because building Knights is something of an undertaking, the box sat on my shelf for quite a while. But lately I've enjoyed building detachments of fairly elite Imperial forces, like the Adeptus Custodes and the Deathwatch. Elite troops are few in number, so they're vulnerable to enemy fire, and the Deathwatch especially suffer from a lack of anti-tank firepower. So they could really use an ally that will attract a lot of fire, and that can wreck enemy armor.

Like, say, a Knight.

Oddly, what gave me the spark to start building my first Knight was a Nuka-Cola machine. I ordered some to use in my new terrain project, and they're great little resin models.

Ordinarily, I don't like putting a lot of scenery on bases; I build wargaming models, not moving dioramas. Knight bases are so big, though, that they're going to be a bit boring if I don't put anything on them. So it occurred to me to put a Nuka-Cola machine on my Mechanicus Knight's base. That seemed like fun, so I sawed one in half. But in order to figure out exactly where to put it, I needed to assemble the Knight's legs. So before I knew it, I had half a Knight; I added some Perry Miniatures casualties, a Victoria Miniatures Bren gun and some Imperial Guard equipment to create a little diorama I call "archeotech secured".

I went with Carmine Red and Ivory for the Nuka-Cola machine, and it seemed to work all right.

Usually, I assemble my models and then paint them as a whole. The Knight is obviously big enough to be an exception; it would make no sense to stick on the leg armor plates, for instance, and then try to paint behind them. So I was painting the armor plates separately, with a base color of Burnt Cadmium Red to match my machine cultists. Since I happened to be working on them on the Transgender Day of Visibility, and I was a little bit inspired by Belzébée, I decided that my Mechanicus Knight says trans rights.

Since this is my first Knight, this is also my first attempt at magnetizing weapons. The carapace weapons seem very magnet-friendly: both the Icarus autocannon and the rocket pod have handy spaces inside where you can superglue a magnet, and it was very easy to fit one on the inside of the carapace as well. I secured it in place with a piece of sprue.

I used a pair of 1/8" × 1/16" magnets from Primal Horizons, and the Icarus autocannon is a bit wobbly but stays fast, and so does the missile pod.

I obviously also wanted to magnetize the arm weapons, and I kept it simple: I sawed off the projecting bit on the bottom of the arm, and stuck on a 1/4" × 1/16" magnet from Primal Horizon.

Meanwhile, the body was coming along nicely. I wanted to continue the hazard stripe motif onto the carapace as it feels nostalgically Oldhammer to me, so I decided to also paint the other side of the carapace in the trans colors, and I'm delighted by the result.

I also finished the base.

And painted up the shoulder pads.

So with that, I'm calling this done except for the weapons!

Since the idea of this Knight is to blow up tanks and other very armored things, obviously it needs a thermal cannon. As I've read many rhapsodies to twin thermal cannons on Chaos Knights, I wanted to make mine potentially fit both a loyalist and traitor Knight, so I painted the shield with hazard stripes.

The other job of the Knight will be to draw fire, so it needs to be going at the enemy rather than hanging back and shooting: to combine both these roles, I feel that the Thunderstrike Gauntlet is strongly indicated.

So here it is: my first Knight! By far the biggest model I've ever made, and just a lot of fun to work on.

I need to get more chonky boys!

What is the point of the UK Carrier Strike Group?

We have recently been told that the United (for now) Kingdom's newest aircraft carrier, the HMS Queen Elizabeth, will be sailing to the South China Sea at the head of her carrier strike group. There she will engage in what the Americans call freedom of navigation operations, or to put it in terms that might have been used by former UK defence secretary and tarantula enthusiast Gavin Williamson, telling China to shut up and go away.

This will be the first big foreign outing of the new UK carrier, the largest ship ever built in the British Isles. The ship alone cost some £3 billion, not including the staggeringly expensive and troubled F-35 aircraft it operates. But what are they getting for their money? Does the carrier strike group represent a meaningful power projection capability for Britain, and if not, what is the point of the whole thing?

I used to get money for writing this kind of thing, but these days all I have is this blog and the occasional desire to indulge myself. So here goes.

Picture: Wikimedia Commons

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If you think about carrier air operations, you'll probably think of the US Navy. The USN has commanded the oceans of the world pretty much since the battle of Midway, and a single United States carrier strike group has more surface combat power than most navies, and operates an air wing bigger than most national air forces. No other country can deploy fighting power like this, but then again, many nations with air forces smaller than a US carrier air wing can provide their citizens with education and basic health care, so obviously there are some tradeoffs.

When the Royal Navy started the Queen Elizabeth -class project in the 1990s, the goal was obviously not to replicate their former colony's task forces. But an independent carrier strike capacity would hardly have seemed like an impossible pipe dream, since the Falklands War was barely a decade old.

In 1982, Britain responded to the Argentinian invasion of the Falklands by sending a naval task force to retake the islands. Built around the STOVL carriers HMS Hermes and Invincible, the task force consisted of two LPDs, eight destroyers and fifteen frigates, as well as submarines, support ships and auxiliaries, totalling 127 ships, including 62 merchant ships taken into service. In terms of surface combatants, the entire Royal Navy of 2021 is smaller than the Falklands task force, with a total strength of six destroyers and thirteen frigates.

In the South Atlantic, the UK task force faced a navy that never attempted any serious operations against it, and a decrepit air force equipped almost entirely with 1950s aircraft and lacking any meaningful aerial refueling capacity to facilitate long-range attacks on the Royal Navy. With the enemy navy effectively absent, the task force could optimize its defenses against anti-ship missiles and air attacks with cannon and unguided bombs; the highly capable Sea Harrier force operating from the carriers was a huge asset.

Despite these severe drawbacks, the Argentinian air force fought their antiquated equipment with exceptional skill and élan, and inflicted considerable casualties on the UK force. Two destroyers, HMS Sheffield and Coventry, were sunk, and HMS Glasgow was disabled by a bomb that failed to explode. Two County-class destroyers, HMS Antrim and Glamorgan, were also heavily damaged by air attack. So against an obsolete air force and no surface or submarine threat, the task force lost three out of eight destroyers, and two frigates were also sunk. Transposed to today's Royal Navy, these would be crippling losses. Even at the time, they threatened the success of the whole operation.

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Carrier Strike Group 21, as it is called, sailed for China led by, obviously, HMS Queen Elizabeth, accompanied by two Type 45 air-defence destroyers and two Type 23 anti-submarine frigates. They are joined by a destroyer and frigate from NATO allies, because sending three UK destroyers would have meant dispatching fully half of the Royal Navy's destroyers to Asia, so two destroyers and two, perhaps three, frigates are pretty much the maximum for an operation like this.

This is not a force that has any real staying power on independent operations. No doubt, the Sea Viper SAM system on the Type 45s is very capable, although there are always risks involved in relying on a single system; in the Falklands, the Sea Wolf point-defence missile system twice crashed under attack, leading to the loss of HMS Coventry. In the case of the Carrier Strike Group, one fluke incident like this would easily be enough to damage, even disable, one of the carrier escorts. 

And that's just the air threat. When we think about the rumored abilities of Swedish diesel-electric submarines to sink a US supercarrier, and the expectation that the technology will continue to spread around the world, how sanguine can anyone be about the anti-submarine capabilities of the carrier group? Again, the group is so tiny that a single torpedo hit can do huge damage. Or indeed one anti-ship missile getting through. Then consider this tiny force facing several simultaneous threats, or an asymmetric attack like the kamikaze speedboat that disabled the USS Cole. 

If even one escort is severely damaged, can the carrier group continue to operate? Let alone if one of them is sunk. Two destroyers and two frigates means no redundancy, and even in the case of a damaged ship, would it be sent off on its own to seek repairs, or would the entire force have to withdraw? And yet the Royal Navy can't realistically field a larger force. The Falklands experience should have driven home that naval operations against an enemy with severe deficiencies, able to present only a limited, one-dimensional threat, will result in casualties. And yet the Royal Navy is fielding a carrier strike group that can't sustain any.

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Frankly, the idea that the new fleet carriers provide the UK with an independent global striking capacity is ludicrous. The Royal Navy doesn't have the ships to deploy a carrier group that can face any real opposition without neglecting not only its duties to NATO, but also the defence of the British isles. For that defence, the carriers are next to useless. Without a capable escort, the UK carrier group is as vulnerable in the Far East as the previous HMS Prince of Wales, sunk by Japanese air attack in 1941, was.

For operations other than war, like humanitarian assistance or evacuations and suchlike, an amphibious assault ship or a light carrier like the retired Invincible class would be far more capable than a fleet carrier. Such ships could also have operated the Sea Harrier, a very capable combat aircraft that proved itself beyond doubt in the Falklands and was since modernized to carry the AIM-120 AMRAAM missile for a full BVR air combat capability; much better value for money than the F-35. I have a vague memory that the Finnish air force at one time evaluated the Harrier, but apparently they didn't appreciate its qualities since it never made it onto their fighter short-list. I don't know why that was.

So what can the carriers actually do? Literally the only thing they are good for is participating in the US's Forever War. Both of the Queen Elizabeths can take the place of a US fleet carrier in their rotation of supercarriers; with US sea and air control, the minimal escort the Royal Navy can provide will be more than sufficient, and even though the UK carriers have considerably less striking power, they can take some of the strain off the already chronically overstretched US Navy. The point of the much-heralded Asian cruise is purely to demonstrate that Britain would be a loyal ally in any US-led confrontation with China.

The carriers even compare unfavorably with Trident. The UK has an independent submarine-based nuclear deterrent; although they rely on the US for servicing the missiles, the operation of the weapons is completely in British hands. Whether the nuclear deterrent provided by Trident is worth having, especially at considerable cost, is a question for the British tax-payer. But you can make a case for Trident providing the UK with an actual independent capability - especially if you remember what it's actually for. The carriers, on the other hand, produce nothing even as useful as Trident.

One argument that's been put forward for Trident is that being a nuclear power guarantees Britain "a seat at the top table" in international politics. Whether that's worth the massive expense is a whole other question, but in essence, this is also what the carriers are for: they provide a capacity for Britain to contribute to US power projection. Presumably this will come with the same advantages that accrued to the United Kingdom from their participation in the US forever wars in Iraq and Afghanistan - whatever those advantages are. This need to appease the USians is, of course, made all the more urgent by Brexit.

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So what is the point of the UK Carrier Strike Group, then? There isn't one. It's a colossally expensive, pointless exercise in flag-waving and playing at being a world power. If the UK actually wanted a credible independent power projection capability, it would require heavy investment in a much larger navy and naval air force. Instead they play at being Americans.

The UK fleet carriers represent a shameless waste of money in pursuit of an appearance of world power. A naval Brexit, really.

Here I Stand by email: Turn 4 (1532-1535) - Perfidious Albion

Welcome to Turn 4 of our megalomaniac game of Here I Stand by email! After two dramatic opening turns, Turn 3 was a bit of a breather; reculer pour mieux sauter. The Habsburg leap to 18 VP in the New World phase got everyone's attention, especially with Schmalkalden just around the corner!

At the end of Turn 4, we begin checking for a Domination Victory (23.3): if any player has 5 VP more than anyone else, they win! The normal victory conditions all still apply: 25 VP, controlling enough keys or converting 50 spaces to Protestantism. As things stand, there's an outside chance of the Habsburgs winning outright at the end of this turn, if Schmalkalden and the New World go their way. I can't help thinking it would be a bit anticlimactic for the game to end in the New World phase.

Here's the situation at the end of Turn 3.

Diplomatic situation:

France is allied with Scotland

The Hapsburgs are allied with Hungary-Bohemia

Victory points:

Protestants 6

England 11

France 15

Papacy 17

Hapsburgs 18

Ottomans 18

Protestant spaces: 22

(victory points Papacy 9 - Protestants 6)

Protestant English home spaces: 1 (0 VP)

Cards removed from the game:

Luther's 95 Theses
Peasants' War
Barbary Pirates
Defender of the Faith
Clement VII

Paul III

Marburg Colloquy

Explorers removed: Narváez (-1)

**

This turn, a third reformer enters play: none other than Jean Calvin of Geneva, taking the number of Protestant spaces to 23. The Protestants also receive the services of all four French-language debaters: Calvin, Guillaume Farel, Nicolas Cop and Pierre Olivétan. There's also eleven new cards to add to the deck, but since the English Reformation isn't underway yet, that's all the new stuff for this turn.

In the New World Riches phase, we figure out what happens to New World conquests and colonies. The French result for their colony is Galleon, which means no card, but the colony survives. The Habsburgs get a result of Depleted 1 for the Incas, and NE for their Aztec conquests; so the Habsburgs get one bonus card, but the Inca conquest is moved to the VP box on their player card, and will provide no more extra cards.

So this is how many cards everyone starts the turn with:

Ottomans: dealt 5, kept 2, total 8

Hapsburgs: 6, 2, 9

English: 4, 1, 6

French: 4, 1, 6

Papacy: 4, 1, 7

Protestants: 4, 1, 6

**

With the cards dealt, we head into the Diplomacy Phase. Speaking of the English, the Henry's Marital Status marker is currently on the Ask for Divorce space. This means that Henry VIII can try to persuade the Pope to grant them a divorce in this Diplomacy phase (9.1, p. 11). If they're succesful, Henry's Marital Status advances to Ann Boleyn, allowing the English player their first roll on the Pregnancy Chart.

The Ottomans got the announcements started with an alliance to France; the Habsburgs announce no deals. England announces a divorce for Henry VIII, at the cost of a card draw to the Papacy, and an alliance with France. France confirms these alliances, and the Holy See confirms the divorce and card draw. This means the English Reformation starts next turn, the Habsburgs get a 2 CP discount on their next declaration of war against the English, and we get to roll on the Henry's Wives Pregnancy Chart. Alas for Henry, the result is a 1, meaning his marriage with Anne Boleyn is never consummated.

Since there are no wars, prisoners or excommunications, we can skip straight to the war declaration phase, where the Ottomans declare war on Venice. At this point, I noticed we had made a mistake in setup: there were only two naval squadrons in Venice, when there should be three. So I added the third squadron. The Papacy responds by playing Venetian Alliance, activating Venice and placing one Venetian regular and one Venetian squadron in Ancona: the Ottomans and the Papacy are now at war, and the Ottomans get a -1 VP penalty for Phony War against Venice. This puts me at 17 VP and the Papacy in the lead with 19!

There are no other declarations of war, so I pay for mine with The Wartburg. France then plays Venetian Informant to look at the Hapsburgs' hand, and I deploy Suleiman and five regulars to Coron. Charles V deploys to Salzburg with five regulars of his own, and England sends Brandon to Calais with five mercenaries. France, in turn, dispatches Montmorency and five regulars to Grenoble, and the Papacy declines to deploy.

**

I start the action phase by playing Auld Alliance for command points. First, a naval move takes Barbarossa and the Algiers corsairs to the Barbary Coast, the fleets in Coron to the Ionian Sea and the two corsairs in Scutari to the Adriatic. The Venetian fleets at Venice and Ancona attempt interceptions, but fail. A second naval move takes the corsairs in the Adriatic into the Ionian, and Barbarossa's fleet into the Tyrrhenian. The Papal fleet at Rome succesfully intercepts into the Tyrrhenian Sea, and is destroyed for the loss of one corsair. Finally, a cavalry unit is recruited in Scutari.

The Habsburgs play Michael Servetus, taking them to 19 VP and forcing the Protestants to discard Ransom.

England advances on the marital front, playing Six Wives of Henry VIII for a roll on the pregnancy chart. Sadly, the result is another 1, making Anne Boleyn's bonus irrelevant since the end result becomes 2 anyway: the King remarries, but no child is born. The French play Andrea Doria, activating Genoa as their ally and moving to 17 VP; the Papacy plays Calvin Expelled, removing the reformer of Geneva from play for the rest of the turn. The Protestants retaliate with Augsburg Confession.

The Ottomans play Julia Gonzaga as an event: any piracy hits in the Tyrrhenian Sea this turn will net us 1 bonus VP. On the Habsburg impulse, Cloth Prices Fluctuate, this time to their advantage, netting the Habsburgs and the English a card draw. The English play Macchiavelli: The Prince and declare war on the Habsburgs!

An English army of one regular and two mercenaries marches on Brussels from Calais, and the Habsburg garrison withdraws into the fortifications with a very strongly worded letter of protest. Brandon then leads four mercenaries and a regular from Calais to Antwerp, where the defenders similarly withdraw.

The French play their home card and roll on the château table, netting a victory point and a card. The Papacy plays Leipzig Debate, sending Eck to challenge the uncommitted Protestants in Germany. Eck draws Luther as his opponent and fails miserably, scoring only one hit to Luther's three. The Protestants flip Münster and Strasbourg, moving up to 7 VP and dropping the Papacy to 18. They then play Arquebusiers and commit Tyndale to translate more of the New Testament into English.

For my part, I play Diplomatic Overture for command points. We start by engaging in piracy against the Habsburgs in the Tyrrhenian Sea. The Habsburg fleet in Naples rolls against our corsairs but fails to score a hit. Barbarossa and his corsairs succeed spectacularly, scoring three hits and claiming the Julia Gonzaga VP for us as well, putting us in the shared lead with the Habsburgs with 19 VP, destroying the Naples fleet and getting us a card from the Habsburg hand! With the rest of the command points, we transport Suleiman and five regulars from Coron to Corfu, and Barbarossa and his corsairs sail to the Barbary Coast. The Venetian regular at Corfu retreats into the fortifications.

The Habsburgs play Holy Roman Emperor for command points, clearing the unrest in Innsbrück, sending an explorer to the New World and founding a colony in Cuba. The English play Printing Press, and use the first command point for an assault on Antwerp, which falls with no English casualties: the English are at 13 VP while the Habsburgs drop to 18. They then move all their fleets out to sea, recruit a mercenary in Calais and send out an explorer. France uses Professional Rowers to take control of Modena and recruit a mercenary in St. Dizier, and the Papacy invests the command points from Mercenaries Bribed into building St. Peter's, going back up to 19 VP.

The Protestants play A Mighty Fortress, but with Luther committed, they're forced to play it for command points, and they call a debate in German. Bucer and Contarini face off, but the Protestants play Here I Stand to substitute Luther and draw a card. Luther and Contarini both score two hits, sending the debate to a second round. Luther tags in Bullinger and Campeggio represents the Papacy; the Protestants win by one hit, but Campeggio's special ability nullifies the debate result. The remaining command point is used to translate more of the New Testament into English.

I play Shipbuilding for two command points, starting with an assault on Corfu: we take the fortress, but lose two regulars as casualties. That gets rid of my phony war penalty, putting the Ottomans in the lead with 20 VP. With the other command point, I move Barbarossa and his corsairs to the Ionian Sea.

In further naval affairs, the Habsburgs play Akinji Raiders as command points, building a fleet in Corunna and moving their ships from Seville into the Atlantic Ocean, Barcelona into the Gulf of Lion and the newly built ships into the Bay of Biscay. The English decline to intercept, and play Michelangelo to recruit a regular in Calais and two mercenaries in London. France launches a voyage of exploration with Gout, and the Pope uses Gabelle Revolt to build St. Peter's. The Protestants skip, and I play Potosi Silver Mines to build a fleet in Coron and a cavalry unit in Istanbul. The Habsburgs use Pirate Haven to build a regular in Taranto, and Charles marches his army to Linz. England plays Imperial Coronation, but as Charles isn't in Italy, the only result is the construction of an English fleet in Bristol. The French play Unpaid Mercenaries and remove the four Habsburg mercenaries in Navarre from play.

The Pope deploys a Papal Bull as command points, burning books in Germany with the lot and using Cajetan's debater bonus for an additional attempt. The Catholics strike out in the inevitable Leipzig, Regensburg and Strasbourg, losing the last two because of the Augsburg Confession penalty. However, they succeed in Salzburg and the electorate of Trier, dropping the Protestants to 6 VP and raising the Papacy to a joint lead of 20 with the Ottomans! The Protestants counterattack by playing Anabaptists to start a debate in German. Carlstadt faces off against Tetzel, and both score one hit for another tie. The last uncommitted papal debater is Aleander, who squares off against Oekolampedius and wins by two hits. With Aleander's special ability, that means the papacy gets to flip three spaces, and selects Regensburg, Hamburg and Bremen. I conclude my action phase by playing Janissaries and deploying four regulars to Istanbul.

The Habsburgs play Galleons as an event, placing the Galleon marker next to their (future) colonies on the board, and England and France skip. The Papacy presses their advantage, and plays Mercenaries Demand Pay to burn books in Germany, but they strike out in both Münster and Brunswick. The Protestants and Ottomans skip, and the Habsburgs play Plantations to further enhance their future colony. After this, everyone else skips, and the action phase is done!

**

Next up is the winter phase, where our troops return to their fortifications and our fleets into harbor. When playing by email, we've done this in impulse order, so I start by returning Suleiman and two regulars from Corfu to Istanbul, and recalling Ibrahim from Buda. Barbarossa and his fleets winter in Corfu. The Habsburg fleet in the Bay of Biscay returns to Corunna, while the Atlantic fleet sails to Gibraltar and the ships in the Gulf of Lion head for Palma; Charles marches back to Vienna, and the regulars in Taranto return to Naples. The English fleets in the Channel return to Calais, and the others to London and Bristol; the troops campaigning in the Habsburg Netherlands regroup in London, Antwerp and Calais. The French move one mercenary unit to Metz, making a stack of four, and everyone else in the field winters in Paris, as well as one mercenary from Rouen. Finally, the Venetian regular in Ancona returns to Rome.

The mandatory events for this turn are Schmalkaldic League and Paul III; Alessandro Farnese already ascended to the Papacy in Turn 3, but we've seen no sign of Schmalkalden whatsoever in the entire game. Well, now that it's the Winter Phase of Turn 4, it's time.

The Protestants now gain control of those home spaces they've managed to convert, get their military leaders, and are now a faction just like all the others, at permanent war with the Pope and the Habsburgs.

From now on, the Protestants get 2 VP for each electorate that's under their political and religious control, whereas the Habsburgs gain 1 VP for each that they control. So Trier stays Catholic and therefore under Habsburg rule, bumping them up to 19 VP, and the remaining five electorates add up to a Protestant total of 16 VP.

Finally, it's time for the New World phase. We place the Habsburg colony of Cuba in the appropriate spot, and start working out the voyages of exploration for each power. The Habsburg explorer is de Vaca (exploration rating 0), the English have sent Chancellor (1), and the French explorer is Cartier (3). Cartier's voyage is resolved first, and the modified roll is a 10: he can choose to attempt the circumnavigation, but opts to discover the Amazon river instead, taking the French to a shared lead of 20 VP. Both Chancellor and de Vaca return empty-handed.

Since no-one has enough victory points to end the game, it's on to Turn 5!

**

We got this turn started on December 27th 2020, and the diplomacy phase wrapped up on January 31st. The action phase started on Valentine's Day 2021, and lasted until May 11th, so it took just about three months. We resolved the New World phase on May 14th, so the whole turn clocked in at something like five and a half months.

**

Here, then, is where we stand at the end of Turn 4.

Diplomatic situation:

The Ottomans are at war with the Papacy

The Habsburgs are at war with England

The Habsburgs are at war with the Protestants

The Papacy is at war with the Protestants

The Hapsburgs are allied with Hungary-Bohemia

France is allied with Genoa

France is allied with Scotland

The Papacy is allied with Venice

Victory points:

England 13

Protestants 16

Hapsburgs 19

France 20

Ottomans 20

Papacy 20

Protestant spaces: 20

(victory points papacy 9 - protestants 6)

Electorates: 5 Protestant, 1 Catholic

Protestant English home spaces: 1 (0 VP)

Cards removed from the game:

Luther's 95 Theses

Peasants' War

Barbary Pirates

Defender of the Faith

Clement VII

Paul III

Marburg Colloquy

Michael Servetus

Calvin Expelled

Augsburg Confession

Julia Gonzaga

Schmalkaldic League

Explorers removed: Narváez (-1)

Rogue Trader: The Blasphemy of Kanesh

Sister Andromache was born in the depths of a hive city on Augereau, in the Acheron sector. As a child, she began laboring in the hive's massive factories, and had fate not intervened, that would have been where she spent the rest of her life. But when the call went out for volunteers to fight in one of the Imperium's endless wars, she lied about her age and was accepted into an Imperial Guard regiment, and hurriedly shipped to combat.

As a young soldier, she distinguished herself in combat, but it was what she did out of combat that proved more enduring. On the long warp voyage to the front, a preacher had taught her and several other soldiers to read, and she spent countless hours poring over the Imperial Infantryman's Uplifting Primer. Impressed by her honest piety, her fellow soldiers asked her to lead them in prayer, and by the time the regiment left the frontline, she had been inducted into the missionary order of St. Electra the Light-bringer as Sister Andromache.

When the war was over, Sister Andromache stayed with the Order of St. Electra as a missionary, spreading the word of the Emperor in the Aradec Confederation and beyond. After a long career, she retired to one of the Order's convents on the shrine world of Termina Anastasiae. She spent many tranquil years at the convent, teaching young missionaries and immersing herself in the monastic life. She developed a strong interest in early Imperial theology, and became a recognized authority on some of the more obscure writings of Malcador the Sigilite.

This is where Sister Andromache's official biography ends. It was subsequently purged from all Imperial records, but can still be read in the Apocrypha of Krast. No-one knows what happened at the convent, but judging from what Andromache wrote, her studies in systematic theology drove her mad. She wrote a tome titled Metaphysica Divina, which was so blasphemously heretical that the first censor who read it went mad and committed suicide, hurling herself over a cliff next to the monastery. Sister Andromache was found in her cell, patiently awaiting her inevitable judgement. In recognition of her long service, she was granted the mercy of being executed before being burned with her book.

The book, however, would not die. Although no copies could possibly have been made before its destruction, on the day after Sister Andromache's pyre, eleven volumes of Metaphysica Divina were inexplicably discovered in the convent's library. Sisters at the convent testified to haunting dreams of Andromache and the dead censor; novices who could not have had access to the book mumbled passages from it in their sleep. Eventually the entire convent was purged, but the abbess in charge had delayed making a full report to her superiors, and some sisters had been able to leave the convent. Although they were subsequently tracked down and executed by the Ordo Hereticus, Sister Andromache's heresy had been allowed to spread. Persistent rumours on Termina Anastasia insist that some sisters of the convent escaped the Inquisition's attentions altogether.

Since then, the Metaphysica Divina has made inexplicable appearances in Imperial libraries. All knowledge of it was once thought to have been suppressed, until an Imperial expedition encountered a volume on the faraway world of Kanesh, leading to the work now being more commonly known as the Blasphemy of Kanesh. Possession of a copy is punishable by death.

**

Fragments from

Metaphysica Divina

or

The Blasphemy of Kanesh

by Sister Andromache the Doomed

**

By setting this quill to parchment, I commit suicide. I forsake my faith, my life and my soul. Yet the clamor in my head will not still, and I fear - I know - that even in death I will not find rest until I unburden my mind. I must write though it is my death.

**

It is not commonly known that the Emperor did not want humanity to worship him as a god. Even though this is an unthinkable blasphemy in our time, and many of the early documents have been redacted, a careful reading of the Theban Debates makes it clear this is what was discussed. Malcador opposed the Cult, but later changed his mind.

**

Why does he not strike me down? Where is the knock at the door? The Emperor must know I am writing this! Why does he permit it?

**

Though we must teach all humanity to abhor the Daemon, we know that we cannot think too deeply on the nature of the Enemy. To collect our thoughts is to invite damnation. Bitterly do I know this now.

Euphrosyne of Galatea teaches us that a Chaos God is a primal emotion, a being of the Immaterium brought to life by our mental energies. This is why we must teach the novices the Balance, but we cannot even hint at the Galatean Euphemisms for the reason why. Because the Enemy comes from us. It is our energies, and our souls, that power them.

**

In one of the tablets of the Euphratian Apocalypse, it is told that Malcador the Sigilite decided to support the Imperial Cult once he realized it would nourish the Emperor. Look at the exact words of the tablet, set it beside certain passages in the Liber Achelieus, and you will never again know a night of restful sleep.

No, I cannot write it.

I am tormented by a dream where the Emperor dances in a deep cave on Terra, building a tower of gold and brass that will make him a god.

My soul is forfeit.

**

In the Tome of St. Patricia, we learn of the death of St. Celestine, and her resurrection. She dies on Forrax - yet she does not die, and walks again. And she is only one of the Living Saints, revered immortal champions of the Emperor.

What does the Book of Proscriptions tell us the ultimate temptation, the greatest boon offered by the Ruinous Powers is? Immortality.

For most of those who turn to Chaos, this prize remains forever out of reach. They die in the service of the daemons, and their deaths are more power to their foul gods.

What of us, who are trained to diligently look for the least spark of the curse of the witch in our charges, and to deliver the cursed to the Black Ships? Do we not likewise feed our god with our faith, and with their deaths? Their sacrifice?

Do we not nourish him?

**

The Immaterium - the Warp - is a hell to us, full of daemons that would rip us to pieces and consume our very souls if they could.

What are we to them?

**

What is the Emperor?

WHAT IS THE EMPEROR?

What do we serve?

[fragments end]

Warhammer 40,000: Ooarai Girls Academy

"We're lucky the school's on a carrier ship."
- Girls und Panzer 1

Vincent van Gogh: Still life (Vase with twelve sunflowers), 1888

**

As my opponents seemed to quite like the idea of tanks, the obvious thing to add to our Imperial army was a Leman Russ battle tank. I wanted to do something a little bit different for the model, though, and this is what I ended up with:

The model is a Panzer IV ausf. D from Warlord Games, and it's excellent; admittedly there were a couple of unsightly lumps of resin, but they were fairly easy to remove, and maybe I don't entirely know what to do with almost any of the metal doohickeys, but I think overall the model is very good and definitely worth its price.

Accompanying the tank is in the image above is a Gestapo officer from Warlord's delightful Guarding the Chateau set, i.e. Herr Flick of the Ordo Hereticus.

I'll admit that the reason I chose a Pz.IV for our Leman Russ was Girls und Panzer. Seeing as how I've done my master's thesis on tanks, I was vaguely aware that it existed, and I encountered the full absurdity of the manga when buying a goon a tank-related present. So when browsing 1/56 scale tanks online, I ended up buying the Pz.IV ausf. D that the protagonists use in their tankery exercises in the first manga.

Of course, one thing leads to another. I originally intended to have just a single Leman Russ named Ooarai Girls Academy. However, because it would be advantageous from a rules standpoint to field an entire spearhead detachment of tanks, it seems like it might be a decent idea to collect three more Ooarai tanks, one of them an HQ tank. So I googled for a female tank commander miniature - only to find that something called Company B sells not only Ooarai decals but also anime tank commanders. So obviously I ordered some.

Here's the Ooarai Girls Academy Panzer IV, then, with proper markings and everything:

The running gear was painted Vallejo Gunmetal Grey, and given a wash of Smoke and Black Glaze. The hull color is German Grey.

**

One of the most delightful and senseless absurdities of Girls und Panzer is that for some reason that completely escapes me, all of the tankery high schools are based on aircraft carriers. With Japanese entertainment, I find one just has to accept some things. This does, however, make a Warhammer 40,000 conversion remarkably easy from a fluff standpoint. Clearly the 40k Ooarai Girls Academy is an arm of the Schola Progenium that trains orphan girls into Imperial Guard tank crews on a giant starship. It makes as much sense as anything else.

Because the Ooarai tanks will eventually form their own detachment, they'll benefit from a regimental doctrine. Clearly the best doctrine for a detachment of Leman Russes is Tallarn. So if anyone finds 28mm models of Japanese schoolgirls dressed like they're in the Afrika Korps, let me know!

Char B1 bis

This Warlord Char B1 bis represents the Public Morals Committee tank. As it's the obvious candidate to be a Commissar Tank if someone wants to field one at some point, it needed a commander from Company B; I assembled this as a French tank in all other respects, but accommodating the commander in the turret required the German hatch as opposed to the original French cupola.

Here's the finished article with a Commissar tank stripe.

Pz.38(t) ausf. B

Next up: the student council tank, a Pz.38(t) from Warlord. For 40k purposes, I want this to be the HQ tank. Because a Tank Commander has a BS of 3+, it seems compulsory to take sponson weapons here, but they really interfere with the Girls und Panzer aesthetic. The solution? Magnets.

Those are plasma cannons from the Sentinel kit; they look a little big on an actual 28mm vehicle, but then everything smaller would just look like a plasma gun.

Here's the unpainted tank without plasma cannons:

And here with.

I think it painted up all right.

And the plasma guns are delightfully easy to attach and detach.

This is such a cute little tank!

M3 Lee

Finally, the volleyball team. Compared to the other tanks, the M3 is the size of a house.

**

I had also ordered a Renault FT 17 from Warlord ages ago, and as part of this project, I painted it up in Ooarai colors as well.

Finally, since we were buying World War II vehicles, how could we resist a Salamander Recon Tank from the Imperial Armor index, represented by a Warlord Games Sd.kfz 222, i.e. Lieutenant Grüber's little tank from 'Allo 'Allo.

**

I've said this before, but I'll say it again: I really like Warlord vehicles! These little tanks were a lot of fun to paint.