Gustav Wasa had carried through the Protestantism. He died in 1560. He had three sons Erik, Johan and Karl. They had different opinions of how the church should be. Johan was the more Catholic and wanted a “mixture” of Protestantism and Catholicism. His wife, Katarina Jagellonica was from Poland, a Catholic country, and that had an influence on him. Karl was very Protestant. He didn´t like the Catholicism. He was more influenced by the Northern German Lutherans.
The result of the Reformation was among other things that the sermons were in Swedish, the priests could marry and the Bible, not the tradition was the norm for Swedish religion.
During the 17th century the church was very orthodox, much because of the struggle to keep it clean and without influence from the Catholic Church.
Something that surprised the Swedes a lot was queen Kristina´s decision to abdicate and go to Rome to live there. She didn´t like the rigid atmosphere in the orthodoxy.
The church got more and more a national church. The believe that the king was Gods representative on earth came at the end of the century and formed the autocracy.
During the 17th century and the early 18th century different religious revival movements came to Sweden. The most well known is the pietism. It stressed the importance of the laymen. They meant it had been too intellectual during the time of the Protestantism.
People gathered without priest to study the Bible at home. In order to counteract these thoughts the religious estate forced through Konventikelplakatet (The law forbid religious meetings without priest) in 1726.
Other movements came and free churches were founded. The first was the Baptist Church and the first congregation was founded in 1848. In 1858 the Konventikelplakatet was abolished and it was allowed to leave the Swedish church if you became member of another communion (1860).
After this came Methodists and Pentecostalists, and the orthodoxy had to draw back, step by step. The participation of the priests in the state was also diminished with the reform of the Parliament in 1866.
Instead of a parliament with four estates we got one with two chambers.