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Norwegian same-sex rite

Photo of the Vote in Norway for the Same-Sex Rite

Photo from article “Historic Decision on Church Weddings for Same-sex Couples

The road was paved with compromises leading to the overwhelming majority decision for same-sex marriage liturgy at the General Synod of Church of Norway January 30.  A year ago the preliminary decision was made, and now the new liturgy was accepted. The new liturgy became legal on February 1 and the first homosexual couple was married minutes after midnight on that same date.

What is the decision, and why would the bishops who were against same-sex marriages vote for it and agree to enforce it in every single congregation in Church of Norway?

The new liturgy is a non-gender specific liturgy to allow the marriage of people independent of gender. It is meant to be used for same-sex couples and heterosexual couples. The liturgy contains no reference to the biblical texts of marriage being between one man and one woman. The two are to say yes to their “spouse”, not to a “husband”/”man” or “wife/woman”. There are Scriptural passages that are optional readings, and among them are some relating to the marriage of man and woman.

The majority at the General Synod first insisted on only allowing this new liturgy and take the old one out of use. It became, however, a part of the compromise to allow the old liturgy with clear language of marriage between man and woman to still be allowed to be used — for the time being. This way the more conservative bishops hoped to create space for the group of pastors that have a classical understanding of marriage. There should be continued room for them even after the new same-sex, gender-irrelevant liturgy had been introduced.
But to achieve this compromise, the more conservative bishops agreed that all congregations in Norway must offer same-sex marriages. The local pastor can refuse to perform the same-sex marriage, but then another pastor will come in and perform the wedding. The compromise was agreed upon to avoid a split in the Church of Norway.

What can explain this rapid change in the Church of Norway where both Lutheranism and Pietism have experienced such a long and strong history? The Lutheran School of Theology (MF) was established in 1907 in reaction to the liberal theology of The School of Theology at the University. The pastors from this new Lutheran School of Theology became organized into the Fellowship for Bible and Confession (FBB in Norwegian). The irony is that today the vast majority of clergy in the Church of Norway are educated at MF, and all the bishops are educated at MF, and many of today’s liberals once were members of the FBB, some of them even were board members and chairmen.
The theological change is obviously from within the church, but the speed of change is due to external pressure. The Church of Norway is as of January 1, 2017 separate from the State. But the politicians did not allow the Church of Norway to receive independence without some system to secure liberal development in the church.
One change is the request for high voter attendance when electing delegates to the General Synod. Formerly the elections, in effect, allowed those worshiping to have more influence since they were present at the worship services where the elections were held. Now the elections happened together with the national political elections.
At the same time, a group of ultra-liberals organized themselves, designed a program with the intention to take control of the church and did lobbied to get state funds to finance their operation. Other groups with different agendas did not receive money when they applied.

The public campaign from the ultra-liberals was strong. The aim was to convince the 73% of Norwegians who had voting rights at political elections and also were members of the Church of Norway to vote for one of the liberal candidates for the General Synod. It changed the game. Now you could vote without going to church. Now you no longer have to be among the 2 percent of church members who attend the Sunday worship service in order to vote. Remember, there is no requirement for a delegate to the General Synod to adhere to the Lutheran confessions of the church. You don’t even have to believe in God, and don’t have to ever attend church.

The result of the election was overwhelming. A total majority at the General Synod implied a full control of the Church of Norway. The majority at General Synod implies that one decides the liturgy of the church and elects the National Church board. The ultra-liberal majority of the Synod put the ultra-liberals in complete majority control of the National Church board that elects the bishops.

When the decision on same-sex rite was decided at the General Synod about 1300 people resigned from membership in Church of Norway using the electronic on line service you can use both to resign and to become member. The people resigning were some of the core people in local congregations in Church of Norway, including some pastors.
Torkild Masvie

Provisional bishop
The Lutheran Church in Norway

 

Church of Norway 2017 — Not A State Church Any More?

Royal Palace in Oslo, Norway

Church of Norway 2017 — not a state church any more, or…?

By Torkild Masvie, Provisional Bishop Lutheran Church of Norway
ILC News

As of January 1, 2017 Church of Norway is no longer a state church. The Church of Norway has been a state church since the Reformation in Denmark/Norway in 1536. She split with the Danish church in 1814 when Norway was handed over from Denmark to Sweden as a compensation of war.  While her Danish sister church continues as a state church, Church of Norway followed the path of Church of Sweden.

Until 2016 all pastors in Church of Norway were public workers, but as the 2017 New Year rockets lit the skies, the workers became employed by a completely new legal entity: “Church of Norway” which is responsible for salaries and pension. Before the funding of Church of Norway was paid through the government budget, with church buildings being the responsibility of each local municipality.

Some changes will now take place, but something continues. The local municipalities will continue to have responsibility to provide worship facilities for Church of Norway, and the government will continue to provide a lump sum of money to Church of Norway, equivalent to what they have previously paid in salaries etc. This agreement enables Church of Norway to continue to serve the entire population nationally. In spite of the split, Church of Norway is still considered “The” Church of Norway, or a civic religion. The king is required to be a Lutheran — implying membership in Church of Norway. Her pastors will continue to be involved in follow-up in communities after disasters. Many local congregations will host school Christmas worship services prior to Christmas break. Although the church will receive the same amount of money as before, it is considered insufficient by the church leadership to cover the transition expenses, as well to meet the growing pension expenses over the coming years. A large percent of pastors are expected to retire over the next 10-15 years.

New work agreements between the church and pastors union have reduced work hours, including Sunday work days. The consequence is more frequent Sundays without worship services, thus the cuts will continue to close more churches on Sundays.

A significant drop in the number of baptisms is observed. Take one example: In Vågan, Lofoten where there are currently only gay and lesbian pastors, from 2010 to 2015 there has been a drop in the number of baptisms from 92% to 68% of children born. At the same time many of the younger believers are leaving Church of Norway due to the liberal theology. There are very few young worshipers left, while many of the “free” churches have a high percent of young participants.

As a part of the modernization, Church of Norway has simplified how to become a member and how to resign as a member in Church of Norway. Before you had to show up at the local parish office to become a new member or to resign as a member. (One could also resign by letter.). As of 2016, the process can be completed on line on the web. As a result Church of Norway in 2016 lost 41,000 members, and gained 3,200 new members who registered membership on the web. So Church of Norway are losing both the more confessional Lutheran members, as well as many, many who are now realizing that they don’t share the Christian faith at all.

This decrease of membership in Church of Norway is becoming an expensive problem for the authorities. They provide the same amount of money to Church of Norway regardless of the number of members. So the monetary support per member in Church of Norway increases per capita as the membership drops. At the same time, for the sake of equality and nondiscrimination, the government as a rule has supported all other religious groups with the same amount per member as to Church of Norway: Catholics, Muslims and even the anti-religious “The Norwegian Humanist Association”. With significant drop in membership in Church of Norway, the government support per members to all the other groups now has to go up.

It is therefore beginning to be an issue among politicians to see if there are ways to change this financial distribution system. As Church of Norway request more funds from the authorities, she is told to handle it herself through the huge church fund build up over the last hundred years of sale of the parsonages, former pastors’ farms etc.  Another problem for Church of Norway are the church buildings they close down in the biggest cities as worship attendance goes down, partly due to people leaving the church and partly because of the big immigrant groups in the cities. Those churches are often old expensive buildings to maintain and to heat. So far the solution has been to rent them out since the number of immigrant churches and new city churches of various denominations requesting to rent churches is higher than the supply of vacant church properties.

Opposition as Church of Norway approves same-sex marriage

church-of-norway-samesex-marriage
NORWAY – On April 11, 2016, the Bishops’ Conference of the Church of Norway (CN) moved to approve the marriage of same-sex couples, creating a liturgy to allow such weddings to take place in the church. The decision came in a 88-32 vote, but there are still many expressing their objection to the change in the church’s teaching on marriage.

Earlier votes on the subject of same-sex marriage had been rejected, most recently in 2014. The Church of Norway is the state church of Norway, and is a member of the Lutheran World Federation. It has allowed the ordination of practicing homosexuals since 2007, further straining relations in the church.

Rev. Dag Øivind Østereng

Rev. Dag Øivind Østereng

“[The newly-adopted teaching on marriage] is contrary to the Bible and gathered ecclesiastical and ecumenical tradition,” wrote Rev. Dag Øivind Østereng following the vote. “To abolish man/woman as the basic unit in marriage is contrary to God’s revealed will and natural law that can be discerned in creation itself. The Church has bowed herself before a gender ideology which is in direct violation of the Bible’s word and to what I as a pastor am committed.” Rev. Østereng is a prominent figure in the CN’s confessional wing, having been a member of the group Carissimi.

The vote to approve a same-sex wedding liturgy included allowance for priests and other church workers to refuse to participate in gay marriages. But this is not enough, Rev. Østereng says. “The Norwegian Church as a community has now changed her understanding of utterly fundamental aspects of the Word of God,” he explained. “These are not merely points with which I personally disagree; I cannot belong to a church that teaches in this way.”

“It is with great sadness and deep anguish, and at the same with the peace that conviction gives, that I must announced that within the next few weeks I will submit my resignation,” he continued, “and after the resignation-notice period withdraw from service as a priest in the Church of Norway and as a member of the Church of Norway.”

It is unclear how many Norwegian clergy and laypeople may follow Rev. Østereng’s example. Just before the vote, 200 priests released a Declaration on the Ecclesial Situation expressing doubt about their continued participation in the Church of Norway if same-sex marriage were to be approved. An online poll taken by Norwegian news site Dagen revealed that 44% of respondents intended to leave the Church of Norway over the issue, and that an additional 34% are uncertain whether to continue their membership. As the poll was conducted online, it is unclear how accurately it represents the sentiments of Norwegians overall.

While the Church of Norway is the nation’s largest church, there are other Lutherans options in the country. The Lutheran Church in Norway (Den Lutherske Kirke i Norge – LKN), for example, is a small church body affiliated with the International Lutheran Council (ILC) since 2015. The LKN traces its origins to 2005, and its pastors are all former ministers of the Church of Norway. While small, the LKN has begun to receive greater media attention as more Norwegians seek alternatives to the Church of Norway.

Norway is also home to the Evangelical Lutheran Diocese of Norway (Det evangelisk-lutherske stift i Norge), which officially separated from the Church of Norway in 2013. It entered into communion with the Evangelical Lutheran Diocese of Finland and the Mission Province in Sweden in 2015, forming the Communion of Nordic Diocese. All three churches have recently met with the International Lutheran Council to begin discussions on becoming members of the ILC.

The International Lutheran Council is a global association of confessional Lutheran churches.

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