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Title: Ut av statskirken en oversikt 1865 til 1980 [Leaving the State Church. An overview 1865 to 1980]
Citation Type: Journal Article
Publication Year: 2014
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Abstract: Given today's extensive religious pluralism it is hardly surprising to find many buildings with ties outside the Norwegian Church, especially in the urban religious landscape. Many of these originate from religious non-conformism during the period when 96% or more of the population belonged to the State Church and after the ordinance ban on competing faiths was abolished in the 1840s. Our population censuses provide one of the worlds longest source series about the distribution of alternative beliefs from 1865 to 1980. The slow growth is attributable to Norway as an anti-pluralistic society, where the largely voluntary activity among dissenters had difficulty competing with the professional organization of the State Church. Locally, however, groups of dissenters could still be strong, with up to one-third of the population as followers, for instance in Vegrdshei parish, half way between Oslo and Kristiansand. Dissenters had solid bastions, especially in parts of the northern Troms and Nordland provinces, an area in stfold province and along the coast of Rogaland province, including a surprisingly strong position for Lutheran congregations in parts of Vestfold, a province associated more with capitalist than with religious values. Relatively speaking, dissenters were stronger in cities than in the countryside, which among other things was related to the predominance of women among the many migrants to urban areas, and that in-migrants were easier to influence. A link between ruralurban migration and not belonging to any religious society was even easier to prove for the many men in this group analogous to theories of radicalization of the labour movement. Key words: Dissenters, religiosity, non-conformism, censuses.
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Authors: Thorvaldsen, Gunnar
Periodical (Full): The Journal of the British Association for the Study of Religions
Issue: 2
Volume: 16
Pages: 5-21
Data Collections: IPUMS International
Topics: Migration and Immigration, Other, Race and Ethnicity
Countries: Norway