"Sjukdomar härja, mötesförbud utfärdas": Pingstvänners reaktion på pandemin "spanska sjukan" 1918–1920

This article explores how Swedish Pentecostals reacted to the pandemic known as the Spanish Flu 1918-1920, looking at the Pentecostal periodicals Evangelii Härold and Brudgummens röst. As local authorities banned social gatherings in various degrees, Pentecostals had the choice to either submit and cancel their services, or rebel and continue with them secretly. The article also looks at whether Pentecostals expressed a complementary or competing relationship between prayer for healing and health care.
It turns out that Pentecostals chose mainly to be submissive in cancelling their meetings, with just one recorded exception. When the pandemic reached its peak in late 1918, the complementary perspective on health care strengthened. However, the competing perspective seems to have risen in popularity during 1919 and 1920. Whether this had to do with the fact that the Spanish Flu was incurable by physicians is hard to know, as no such motivation is explicitly given.
The material is characterized by optimism, as both healing reports and announcements of people’s passing are framed as victories. But the pandemic also produced rare cases of pessimism and a solemn tone in the Pentecostal periodicals as huge amounts of deaths were witnessed. More research is needed to discover what role experiences from the Spanish Flu played in eventually changing the Pentecostal relationship to health care.