Christianity is the largest religion in Norway and Norway has historically been called a Christian country. A majority of the population are members of the Church of Norway with 64.9% of the population officially belonging to the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Norway in 2021.[1] At numerous times in history, Norway sent more missionaries per capita than any other country. This changed considerably from the 1960s. In 2004, only 12% of the population attended church services each month.[2] The Church of Norway receives a fixed sum from the Government not based on membership numbers. Other religious organisations receive approximately the same amount per member.[3][4]
In 1993, there were 4,981 churches and chapels in Norway.[5]
The conversion of Norway to Christianity began well before 1000 AD. The raids on Ireland, Britain and the Frankish kingdoms had brought the Vikings in touch with Christianity.[6]Haakon the Good of Norway who had grown up in England tried to introduce Christianity in the tenth century, but had met resistance from pagan leaders and soon abandoned the idea.[7][8]
Anglo-Saxon missionaries from England and Germany engaged in converting Norwegians to Christianity, but with limited success. However, they succeeded in converting Olaf I of Norway to Christianity.[8][7]Olaf II of Norway (later Saint Olaf) had more success in his efforts to convert the population, and he is credited with Christianising Norway.[9]
The Christians in Norway often established churches or other holy sites at places that had previously been sacred under the Norse religion.[10] The spread of conversion can be measured by burial sites as Pagans were buried with grave goods while Christians were not.[10] Christianity had become well established in Norway by the middle of the 11th century and had become dominant by the middle of the 12th century. Stave churches were built of wood without the use of nails in the 13th century.
The above numbers reflect the percentage of the population that are members of a church, typically from being baptized as infants. According to study collected on a sample of 706 Less than half of these define themselves as Christian.[13]
Compared with other countries
Church attendance
As of the early 21st century, Norway has one of the lowest church attendance rates in the world. Below is a table that compares Norway with other governmental divisions in regular church attendance for the early 21st century (2004–2006). In contrast to 250,000 regular churchgoers in the whole of Norway in 2004, 43,500 attend Lakewood Church in the United States each week, and 23,000 attend Hillsong Church in Australia each week.
The U.S. state of Alabama has a population roughly equal to that of Norway, but church attendance in Alabama is as much as 11 times higher than in Norway.
Most Norwegian villages have their own church like this.A service in Stavanger Cathedral.
The constitutional head of the Church is the King of Norway, who is obliged to profess the Lutheran faith. The Church of Norway is subject to legislation, including its budgets, passed by the Norwegian parliament, the Storting, and its central administrative functions are carried out by the Royal Ministry of Culture and Church Affairs.
The Church has a congregational and episcopal structure, with 1,284 parishes, 106 deaneries and 11 dioceses, namely:
Participation in worship services, Sundays and holidays
5,069,341
Baptism
42,599
Confirmation
41,655
Consecration
10,536
Funeral
38,832
The following membership numbers are from Statistics Norway's data from 2016 to 2020:[26]
Evangelical Lutheran Free Church of Norway
The Evangelical Lutheran Free Church of Norway (Den Evangelisk Lutherske frikyrkja i Noreg in Norwegian) or the Free Church as it is commonly known, is a nationwide Lutheranfree church in Norway consisting of 81 congregations with 19,313 members in 2020, up from 18,908 in 2016.[27] It was founded in 1877 in Moss. It should not be confused with the Church of Norway, though both churches are members of the Lutheran World Federation. The Free Church is financially independent.
The Catholic Church in Norway is part of the worldwide Catholic Church, under the spiritual leadership of the Pope and the Curia in Rome. Per 1 January 2020 the church had 165,254 registered members.[26] The number has more than doubled since 2010 from approximately 67,000 members, mainly due to high immigration.[28] There may be approximately 170,000–200,000 people of Catholic background in the country, most of them immigrants.[29][needs update]
The country is divided into three Church districts – the Diocese of Oslo and the prelatures of Trondheim and Tromsø and 32 parishes. The Bishop of Oslo participates in the Scandinavian Bishops Conference. The Catholic Church in Norway is as old as the kingdom itself, dating from approximately 900 A.D., with the first Christian monarchs, Haakon I from 934.
At first, the bulk of Catholic immigrants came from Germany, the Netherlands, and France. Immigration from Chile, the Philippines, and from a wide range of other countries began in the 1970s. This development has further increased in the last few years with economic immigrants from Poland and Lithuania. Ethnic Norwegian Catholics are now greatly outnumbered by the immigrants, although the former tend to be far more observant and conservative, being a self-selected group largely of ex-Lutheran converts.[citation needed]
Jehovah's Witnesses is the largest nontrinitarian religious organization in Norway, with a membership of 12,661 in 2020, up from 12,413 in 2016.[26] A branch office is located in Ytre Enebakk. In 2022, the group lost its legal status as a religion over their exclusionary policies, although they are not banned within Norway.[30]
Bagge, Sverre; Nordeide, Sæbjørg Walaker (2007). "The kingdom of Norway". In Berend, Nora (ed.). Christianization and the Rise of Christian Monarchy: Scandinavia, Central Europe and Rus', c.900-1200. Cambridge University Press. pp. 121–166. ISBN978-0-521-87616-2.
Sawyer, Birgit; Sawyer, Peter (2010). Medieval Scandinavia: From Conversion to Reformation, circa 800–1500. University of Minnesota Press. ISBN978-0-8166-1739-5.
Winroth, Anders (2012). The Conversion of Scandinavia: Vikings, Merchants, and Missionaries in the Remaking of Northern Europe. Yale University Press. ISBN978-0-300-17026-9.
