Bo Giertz

The Right Reverend Bo Giertz
Bishop of Gothenburg
Bishop Giertz in early 1950s
Church	Church of Sweden
Diocese	Diocese of Gothenburg
In office	1949–1970
Predecessor	Carl Block
Successor	Bertil Gärtner
Orders
Ordination	28 December 1934
Consecration	22 May 1949 by Erling Eidem
Personal details
Born	Bo Harald Giertz (1905-08-31)August 31, 1905 Räpplinge, Öland, Sweden
Died	July 12, 1998(1998-07-12) (aged 92) Djursholm, Uppland, Sweden
Buried	Torpa, Östergötland, Sweden
Nationality	Swedish
Denomination	Lutheran
Parents	Knut Harald Giertz and Anna Ericsson
Spouse	(1) Ingrid Andrén (2) Elisabeth Heurlin (3) Karin Lindén
Children	Lars, Birgitta, Ingrid, Martin
Occupation	theologian, writer
Profession	clergy
Education	Ba.Th.
Alma mater	Uppsala University
Motto	Verbum crucis Dei virtus
Coat of arms

Bo Harald Giertz (Swedish: [ˈbuː ˈjæʈːʂ]; 31 August 1905 – 12 July 1998) was a Swedish Lutheran theologian, novelist and bishop of the Gothenburg Lutheran Diocese from 1949 to 1970. By the time he became bishop, he was already quite well known in Sweden and elsewhere both as an author and as a priest. He worked hard to promote western Swedish Pietism, an outlook that strongly resembled Neo-Lutheranism. Mostly it was a piety that took Scripture seriously, though not in a fundamentalist, literalist sense, and that centered Christian life on sacraments and prayer. Giertz's combination of pietist pastoral care with High Church Lutheran theology, which can also be noticed in his novels, gained for him a wide readership and made his novels as well as non-fiction books about Christian faith popular in Scandinavia. Giertz wrote more than 600 works but is known in the English-speaking world mostly for his book The Hammer of God.