On Religion
I officially opted out of the Norwegian church a couple of years ago, and I'm now thrilled to learn that we're finally separating state and church. We've had state religion in Norway for about 500 years, and next week that comes to an end. People will no longer be forced into Christianity at birth, Confirmation will no longer be an obligatory part of growing up, and the government is no longer responsible for appointing bishops or managing the Church's budget and other administrative duties. The ministers in the Norwegian council of state will no longer be required to be members of the state church.
The church will govern itself and will be viewed and treated like every other religion in Norway. It's about time. It will be interesting to see what kind of choices the church will make now that they are mostly free to govern themselves, they are aiming to be an open church available for the people, but we'll see.
We will apparently still observe all the traditional Christian public holidays (I'm not complaining about that, to be honest), but we won't add in any new ones either. Fair enough. Whatever works.
I don't know, I'm just having a big moment of "ungh, finally!", and I can't even really say why. I guess mostly because I find it fundamentally wrong to force a religion on people.
I can pinpoint the exact moment I started thinking about religion. I don't remember what year it was, and I can't really remember what grade I was in, but it was during primary school. The school bell had just rung, and it was time for class. I can't remember what our argument had been about, but a friend of mine ended it with "I believe in God, do you? Are you a Christian?", and I was just completely dumbfounded. I'd never really thought about it. We had a class in primary school called Christianity. We were taught all the major texts. I mostly remember all the drawing assignments we were given. But it was never anything I believed in. I knew people did, but it didn't connect with me. My grandmother in particular was quite religious and went to church as often as she could.
So when confronted with this very direct question I did the only thing a sensible, curious soul would do, I started reading the Bible. If not all of it, I read most of it. It became somewhat of an obsession, I think my parents were quite worried for a while. I'm not sure what I got out of it, but it didn't make me a believer. If anything it made me question the whole thing more. So the next time I had a chance to talk to the girl who instigated this whole thing, I had my answer for her. "No." "What are you then?" "I don't know."
Still, I went through the motions, I had a Christian confirmation when I was 13. Mostly because it was tradition and because it's what everyone else was doing. I would do a non-religious confirmation, but figured... what's the point in that? If this is about honouring tradition, then fuck it. Let's just do it the traditional way. So I went to church once a week for a couple of months (??) to memorise scriptures and prayers to recite during the Confirmation ceremony. I went to a Confirmation camp where we sang songs and had water balloon fights. The ceremony came and went, and that was it. My grandmother was very pleased.
I only really remember one thing from my Confirmation ceremony; that the priest who taught us the classes leading up to the ceremony still showed up even though his son had passed away just a couple of days prior. I remember I didn't know what to say to him, so I just gave him a hug. It really got to me, and I still think about it from time to time.
I felt really guilty afterwards because I realised that I'd presented myself as something I wasn't. I thought choosing a Christian Confirmation even though I didn't identify as Christian would be perfectly okay, but I felt like a complete impostor.
I guess I've just always treated Christianity as "just another religion". I may be projecting recent views onto my memories, but I think I've always had this sense of "some people believe in this, and that's okay" towards Christianity (and religions in general). It is rather strange, because though my parents are not religious, they have not opted out of the state church, and they never talked about religion (favourably or unfavourably) with me when I was a kid. I guess I just made up my own mind, which really is how things are supposed to work. This leads neatly back to my point of forcing religion on people. Starting next week, Norwegians will no longer be classified as Christians at birth. They'll have the freedom to learn about all religions equally and join a church of their own choosing later on (if they want to). No child is born Christian or Muslim or Hindu or Atheist (or ______), and I'm glad we're finally honouring that fact here.
Incidentally the Christianity class I took during primary school (it was a mandatory subject for all pupils, unless you had a written excuse from your parents, which then placed you in a "Lifestance" class - which ironically to my ears made it sound like those families were far more religious than any of us kids sitting through the Christianity classes, I've later come to realise that while we were stuck in class learning texts from the Bible and drawing pictures of Jacob's ladder, those other kids were taught things from all religions equally, as viewed from the outside. To be sampled and explored, and not as a pre-assumption that this is something you or your family believe in), has since been replaced with a Christianity, Religion, Lifestance class (or something similar), which is far closer to the original Lifestance classes than the original Christianity classes.
The church will govern itself and will be viewed and treated like every other religion in Norway. It's about time. It will be interesting to see what kind of choices the church will make now that they are mostly free to govern themselves, they are aiming to be an open church available for the people, but we'll see.
We will apparently still observe all the traditional Christian public holidays (I'm not complaining about that, to be honest), but we won't add in any new ones either. Fair enough. Whatever works.
I don't know, I'm just having a big moment of "ungh, finally!", and I can't even really say why. I guess mostly because I find it fundamentally wrong to force a religion on people.
I can pinpoint the exact moment I started thinking about religion. I don't remember what year it was, and I can't really remember what grade I was in, but it was during primary school. The school bell had just rung, and it was time for class. I can't remember what our argument had been about, but a friend of mine ended it with "I believe in God, do you? Are you a Christian?", and I was just completely dumbfounded. I'd never really thought about it. We had a class in primary school called Christianity. We were taught all the major texts. I mostly remember all the drawing assignments we were given. But it was never anything I believed in. I knew people did, but it didn't connect with me. My grandmother in particular was quite religious and went to church as often as she could.
So when confronted with this very direct question I did the only thing a sensible, curious soul would do, I started reading the Bible. If not all of it, I read most of it. It became somewhat of an obsession, I think my parents were quite worried for a while. I'm not sure what I got out of it, but it didn't make me a believer. If anything it made me question the whole thing more. So the next time I had a chance to talk to the girl who instigated this whole thing, I had my answer for her. "No." "What are you then?" "I don't know."
Still, I went through the motions, I had a Christian confirmation when I was 13. Mostly because it was tradition and because it's what everyone else was doing. I would do a non-religious confirmation, but figured... what's the point in that? If this is about honouring tradition, then fuck it. Let's just do it the traditional way. So I went to church once a week for a couple of months (??) to memorise scriptures and prayers to recite during the Confirmation ceremony. I went to a Confirmation camp where we sang songs and had water balloon fights. The ceremony came and went, and that was it. My grandmother was very pleased.
I only really remember one thing from my Confirmation ceremony; that the priest who taught us the classes leading up to the ceremony still showed up even though his son had passed away just a couple of days prior. I remember I didn't know what to say to him, so I just gave him a hug. It really got to me, and I still think about it from time to time.
I felt really guilty afterwards because I realised that I'd presented myself as something I wasn't. I thought choosing a Christian Confirmation even though I didn't identify as Christian would be perfectly okay, but I felt like a complete impostor.
I guess I've just always treated Christianity as "just another religion". I may be projecting recent views onto my memories, but I think I've always had this sense of "some people believe in this, and that's okay" towards Christianity (and religions in general). It is rather strange, because though my parents are not religious, they have not opted out of the state church, and they never talked about religion (favourably or unfavourably) with me when I was a kid. I guess I just made up my own mind, which really is how things are supposed to work. This leads neatly back to my point of forcing religion on people. Starting next week, Norwegians will no longer be classified as Christians at birth. They'll have the freedom to learn about all religions equally and join a church of their own choosing later on (if they want to). No child is born Christian or Muslim or Hindu or Atheist (or ______), and I'm glad we're finally honouring that fact here.
Incidentally the Christianity class I took during primary school (it was a mandatory subject for all pupils, unless you had a written excuse from your parents, which then placed you in a "Lifestance" class - which ironically to my ears made it sound like those families were far more religious than any of us kids sitting through the Christianity classes, I've later come to realise that while we were stuck in class learning texts from the Bible and drawing pictures of Jacob's ladder, those other kids were taught things from all religions equally, as viewed from the outside. To be sampled and explored, and not as a pre-assumption that this is something you or your family believe in), has since been replaced with a Christianity, Religion, Lifestance class (or something similar), which is far closer to the original Lifestance classes than the original Christianity classes.