The Danish country districts are experiencing a falling population, termination of public institutions and a decrease in jobs. The church, however, is still present in many small towns throughout the countryside, where it, to some degree, plays a role in local clubs and associations. The purpose of this paper is to uncover the interaction between the church and the local societies, in the Danish country districts; hereunder, whether or not this interaction contributes to the sustainability of these districts.
This paper builds upon a pilot study with Malt Provsti as a case. The analysis is done partly through questionnaires and partly through interviews. The paper is divided into four main parts. The first part describes the church in a historical context, with focus on demographic development, local politics, etc. The collected questionnaire data is analysed in the following part, with the purpose of uncovering the role of the church in small towns and country districts. The interview part follows where priests and church council members elaborate on the questionnaires. This is done to uncover whether differences between work areas and differences in the need for cooperation across regions exist. The last part discusses alternatives to the current role of the church in the light of new research and the questionnaire and interview results presented in this paper.
The conclusion to this article is that the church still plays an important role in the local communities. There is a clear interest in cooperation between church and local associations, making the church a vital participant in keeping small societies together. The church is especially important when it comes to large recurrent local festivities such as Christmas, and local parties. There are, however, differences between local societies in the need for the church, with the trend leaning towards a more important role in the smallest sample societies.