No

[twissie]

I stumbled across an article during lunch today that made me rage so hard I couldn't focus on work for the rest of the day. I had a very physical reaction to the article, and it sickens me that there are people in power with these attitudes in Norway

Comments

[twissie]

If you're interested, you can read my posts from when all of that happened. 1, 2, 3, 4.

The oil rig accident was back in 1980, so while I might have heard about it growing up, I can't say I know much about it at all.

We actually have state religion in Norway - so no separation between church and state. But this means that the church can't enforce crazy shit, since it's overseen by the state.

[twissie]

What state religion means is that the church is administered through a government department. That doesn't mean that the government is religious (or that members of government can't belong to other religious groups). The church is controlled by the government, not the other way around.

Another factor is that everyone is registered with the Norwegian church at birth (unless both parents are registered as something else, though even then the system tends to screw up and just put them down as members anyway). It doesn't mean people are practicing Christians. Norway has been described as one of the most secular countries in the world. I guess most people are just too lazy to resign as members (it is a rather bothersome process). I resigned my membership a couple of years ago.

[twissie]

Yeah, well we do have the Christian Democratic Party. They're not as conservative as you'd think, though. They're placed in the centrum of our political spectrum (though they have fractions splitting off in every direction, some extremely conservative and some extremely liberal). Their main thing is that they are ~Christian~ and ~for the people~. They got 5.5% of the votes in our last parliamentary election (back in 2009). They mainly won votes from people who oppose our marriage law that gives gay people the right to marry. They also oppose abortion (which is legal in Norway). I'm sure they also wish we still had a subject called Christianity in school (it was a subject I had to take during primary school - it's been replaced with a subject that teaches kids about all religions (with a slight emphasis on Christianity)).