No More Official Religion for Norway

[spidergoat]

Norway is distancing itself from its Christian past. The Storting -- the country's Parliament -- will amend the constitution so that the state no longer has an official religion, ending the 1,000-year tradition of the Church of Norway.

[Balerion]

Bravo, Norway!

I wonder what the fallout will be like.

[kx000]

Congratulations Norway

[Billy T]

I don´t understand the following from the OP link:

""The state will no longer engage in religious activities, but support the Norwegian church, national church and other religious and belief communities in line with it," reports NRK.

Can anyone clarify the meaning of this?

The Church of Norway is evangelical Lutheran and says on its website around 86% of the population are baptized members. ..."
------------------

My observations from 6 or 8 visits there with Norwegian wife, were that most went to church mainly to add some ceremony to their marriage. I was married in a 700 year old Norwegian church (at least the alter was, but there had been several serious fires and much restoration).

If you don´t want to be a member of the State Church, you must actively opt out. You automatically become a member with birth in Norway. I think few take formal religion serious, but few are atheist.

A division of the Church, The Norwegian Seaman´s Church, does a lot of good work. In Baltimore it was barely functional economically - shared a large Black Christian congregation´s church and often had no formally trained pastor. I went nearly every Sunday one summer as my 13 year old daughter was the organist – It was painful to hear, but she was all they had. The mainly older ladies of the small congregations were all very kind – thanking her and giving some cookies, etc. She was fluent in Norwegian - after spending many summers there and later, immediately after US high school, a year is special international school (only half of the students were Norwegians) and held summer jobs in hotels.

I think my friend, Schell a practical social worker, was the only person paid by Norway. The minister, I think was "time shared" with the church in Philadelphia and Richmond but we were lucky if he got to Baltimore even one Sunday per month. Usually Schell filled in and the sermons were quite short. - Good for me as my Norwegian was poor at best.

Schell´s job was to be useful to the Norwegians living in Baltimore, but his main job was to get seamen out of the Baltimore jail on the day their ship was to leave port. They typically had too much to drink and perhaps a few women soon after it arrived in the harbor with a bar fight or two later sending them to jail, with little of their pay still left unspent.

It was a very practical arrangement, that probably saved Baltimore money with the release of the seamen into Schell´s custody until placed back on their ship - not sure of the legalities. Perhaps the seaman was still officially in jail and the sheriff was collecting his food allowance until his release date?

I packed about a yard long stack of Journal article Xeroxs and all the books I could into a big and very heavy trunk, which Schell put onto a boat after I had left for Brazil. Five or six months later Schell´s equivalent in the Port of Santos, Brazil called me. Next day wife and I drove down and gave him very nice bottle of scotch with request that if Captain of ship that delivered my trunk was still in port, to give him a few drinks from it too (or next time he was back). We could not lift the trunk so unpacked it into the car and gave the sea trunk to the Church to use any way it wanted to. (Schell had several he stored things in and/or got shipments of special foods, etc. from Norway in for church sponsored festivals.)

If you can speak Norwegian and get yourself to any large port in the world, you can get help if you need it. I sure hope the very useful, and economically efficient Norwegian Seaman´s Church is not cut off from the modest support Norway gives (or gave? years ago) to many.

[spidergoat]

Good question, I don't know what that line means. Perhaps that they will continue to support a variety of churches monetarily?

[CptBork]

They're going too far. They should be very proud of their true heritage, it's earned them loads of cash in this lifetime and an eternity in Valhalla thereafter.

[arauca]

They're going too far. They should be very proud of their true heritage, it's earned them loads of cash in this lifetime and an eternity in Valhalla thereafter.

This is a stupid picture.

The as..... hole could not hold his head if that were a metal helmet, the claws of bear skin would definitively his skin .

[Saturnine Pariah]

Bravo Norway

[GeoffP]

This is a stupid picture.

The as..... hole could not hold his head if that were a metal helmet, the claws of bear skin would definitively his skin .

Excuse me. That's Thor. And why would you think he couldn't hold up his head? Lots bigger helmets than that have been used.

[superstring01]

Norway is distancing itself from its Christian past. The Storting -- the country's Parliament -- will amend the constitution so that the state no longer has an official religion, ending the 1,000-year tradition of the Church of Norway.

Wonder when we're gonna catch up here in the USA and never again have a religious debate in politics.

~String

[arauca]

Excuse me. That's Thor. And why would you think he couldn't hold up his head? Lots bigger helmets than that have been used.

These wings seams to me pretty solid,

[arauca]

Wonder when we're gonna catch up here in the USA and never again have a religious debate in politics.

~String

At that time it would be pretty boring , look in this forum most debated and discussion are about religion and philosophy. science discussion are negligible. Unless you want to discuss about Hollywood , which is optimum sh...t

[superstring01]

At that time it would be pretty boring , look in this forum most debated and discussion are about religion and philosophy. science discussion are negligible. Unless you want to discuss about Hollywood , which is optimum sh...t

Thats facile. The point if politics isn't to entertain. I would prefer boring and functional to interesting and caustic.

~String

[Billy T]

Wonder when we're gonna catch up here in the USA and never again have a religious debate in politics. ~String

what people talk about in political discussion quite often regardless of the law does have a religious or moral component:

For example at what stage in a pregnancy can the fetus be destroyed?
OR:
Is it their right, and under what conditions if it is, for person to end their own life and if they lack the strength to do so, can a loved one assist them?

Etc, Etc. ....

I think you have if backwards:
I.e. Norway has finally caught up to the US´s long existing idea that there should not be any state sponsored religion, but a complete separation or neutrality between the state and various religious groups.

In many important social and public areas Norway was more than 100 years ahead of the US.

For example letting women vote OR provided high quality free schooling for all the citizens with federal funds, instead of allowing terribly low quality schools to exist in poor communities (US´s local funding of schools) OR essentially free and high quality medical service for ALL
OR nearly corruption free government that efficiently provides these and other values to the entire population for the high taxes it collects.

I think the main reason why Norway was late in separating religion from state, as based on at least 6 visit there and having a Norwegian wife, is that few took formal religion seriously. I.e. fact that there was a State Church was of little or no importance to most*, one way or the other. I did not remember ever even seeing a church in Oslo, so just learned, with Google search, there are 6 at these location:
It it is possible that there were more "stave churchs" once but they are now preserved as historical sites, not used as churches.
"Oslo's population hits 600000. January 19, 2011. The population of Norway's capital has officially risen to 600,000, following the birth over the weekend of a baby ..." from: http://www.google.com/webhp?hl=en#hl...w=1262&bih=639

Note that is only one church for every hundred thousand people! there are at least 10 times as many libraries, and probably more "sex shops"
Also, as I discussed in post 4, it is quite possible more than half of the Norwegian State Churches are not even in Norway! Again I express my hope that Norway continues to support them as they do so much good work, with exceptional efficiency.

*If you were a Jew and born in Norway and cared about fact you were automatically a member of the state church also (registered at birth by the hospital staff), then you could, with minor paper work, get that membership terminated, but as it really did not have any real effect, most did not bother. - Probably many Jews born in Norway did not even know they were members of the state church too. It is my not well established observation than 90% or more Norwegian only went to Church to get married with a little more ceremony than at the court house but I could be wrong as that observation was based only on my Norwegian´s wife´s family and friends.

I am sure that both Norway and the the US have thousands of laws that no one cares about as they have no real effect now. The state church law was one, now removed.