After years of decline, the largely state-funded Church of Norway is attracting record numbers of new members. Most are young adults, many who’ve had their first child, and researchers think they’re attracted more by the church’s emphasis on fellowship, not just worship.
The Lutheran-based Norwegian state church has undergone major reform aimed at loosening its state ties, becoming more open and working collectively for peace and reconciliation, to fight poverty and defend human dignity. The church also “cares about families, not how they were formed,” Renate Egeberg-Jensen, deacon at Hasle Church in Oslo, told newspaper Klassekampen during the Easter holidays.
She was referring to how infants at a recent “baby-song” gathering of new parents can often have two mothers or two fathers as parents. The songs that often captivate both the babies and the parents with them are meant to create feelings of safety and security, a feeling of belonging and fellowship, and that all are welcome.
Only the last song at the gathering had any religious content, the Norwegian children’s song Kjære Gud, jeg har det godt (roughly translated, “Dear God, I’m doing well”). “Just the one song, with God in it, was just right,” one of the young fathers in attendance told Klassekampen. He’d grown up in the state church but was passive and rarely attended church services. Now he enjoys attending baby-song sessions and appreciates the church as a gathering place more than just a place of worship.
Sven Thore Kloster, leader of Norway’s Institute for Church, Religion and Worldview Research (KIFO), told Klassekampen that programs such as baby-song and those supporting human rights and other social issues have helped bring a new generation back to the church. Around 3.4 million Norwegians are members of what’s now officially called Den norske kirke (DNK), equivalent to around 61 percent of the country’s population. That’s down, however, from around 80 percent in the early 2000s and as much as 90 percent or more before that, when nearly everyone born in Norway was baptized and automatically became a member. Baptismal certificates in Norway were long used as birth certificates.
Now Norway has a much more diverse population and a much wider range of faiths, and all religious organizations are eligible for state support. The largest increases recently have been within Catholic and Orthodox churches in Norway, because of immigration from Catholic countries and the tens of thousands of refugees from Ukraine who are now living in Norway.
The Church of Norway has been attracting new members too, with around 27,000 baptized and 4,000 joining as registered members during the past two years. Kloster told Klassekampen that 2023 was a record year with 4,000 new members doubling a trend of around just 2,000 a year before that. Last year attracted just as many, and 1,530 youth were baptized in 2024.
“There’s been a myth that this is part of a conservative wave, especially among young men,” Kloster said, “but we haven’t found any evidence of that.” Those joining have more often cited the “high doors, wide gates and low threshold” upon entry to the Church of Norway, its liberal and non-judgmental views and the efforts to nurture fellowship.
“The Norwegian church has simply become quite nice,” another young father at baby-song, Tommy Vad Funderud, told Klassekampen. He grew up in a strict and fundamentalist Frikirke that he broke out of it as an adult. Kloster confirmed research that has shown Norwegians “going from the frikirker to Den norske kirke, not the other way around.”
The church at Hasle in Oslo also offers special gatherings for local retirees, neighbourhood dinner meetings, a children’s choir and concerts. Such activities seem to be more popular than Sunday church services, which continue to experience low attendance except during the Christmas and Easter holidays. The membership growth remains encouraging to church officials, though, with Kloster attributing it also to the adoption in 2016 of a new marriage liturgy for those of the same gender. Others simply feel comfortable in the Church of Norway’s more liberal atmosphere and acceptance.
“It’s difficult to beat the church when it comes to creating local fellowship,” Funderud said. “It would have to be football.”
NewsinEnglish.no/Nina Berglund