Forsheda kyrka

The earliest place of worship here was a simple wooden chapel, later replaced in the early 1300s by a stone church. Over the centuries this medieval building was eventually judged too small and structurally unsound for the growing parish. It was recorded that a seventeenth-century vicar, referred to as Torpensis, had earlier arranged repairs, including a bell tower, but by the mid-1800s a full rebuilding was deemed necessary.

The present church, built in an Empire style, dates from 1866, to designs by Ludvig Hedin, and was consecrated in 1869. Sources differ slightly on the consecrating bishop's name, but the building itself is well documented: a stone structure with a nave, a rounded chancel to the east, a sacristy attached to the chancel's north side, and a west tower topped with a lantern. Local tradition holds that the church's foundations occupy the site of an ancient assembly place, or tingsplats, and that its construction drew on a national church collection and considerable unpaid labour from parishioners.

Inside, the altarpiece dates from 1687 and was moved here from the old church; it depicts Christ on the cross, framed with carved acanthus scrollwork, flanking apostle figures, and topped by an angel's head and a lamb bearing a banner. The rounded pulpit, decorated with baluster figures and a decorative canopy, was made by Eric Nyman of Reftele parish; an older pulpit from 1640 and a font from around 1250, somewhat damaged, are preserved in the tower chamber. Many furnishings, including candlesticks and angel figures by the hymn number boards, were donated by local people over the years.//The church bells in use today date from 1959.

The church has had a series of organs, beginning with a small instrument built in 1738, followed by a larger one in 1876 whose façade survives in the current instrument, built in 1959 and later modified.

One notable figure connected with Forsheda is Marie Cederschiöld, a vicar's daughter from the parish who moved to Stockholm and became involved in charitable church work among the poor and sick. After training at a deaconess motherhouse in Kaiserswerth, Germany, she returned to become head of the Ersta institution in Stockholm, and is remembered as one of Sweden's pioneering deaconesses.