Religion
The Lutheran Church of Norway is the state church and the vast majority remain at least nominal members. Other religions do, however, enjoy religious freedom and have prospered with immigration in recent years, particularly Islam and Roman Catholicism. Saint Olaf is the patron saint of Norway. He is regarded by some as the eternal king and has a reputation and place in history unchallenged by any other Norwegian King for the last 1000 years.
| Religion | Members | Percent | As of 2011 |
|---|---|---|---|
| Christianity | 4,115,675 | 83.6% | |
| Lutheranism | 3,911,622 | 79.4% | |
| Roman Catholicism | 83,018 | 1.6% | |
| Pentecostalism | 39,599 | 0.8% | |
| Jehovah's Witnesses | 11,739 | 0.2% | |
| Methodism | 11,055 | 0.2% | |
| Baptists | 9,922 | 0.2% | |
| Orthodox Christianity | 9,894 | 0.2% | |
| Seventh-day Adventist Church | 5,066 | 0.1% | |
| Other Christianity | 33,760 | 0.6% | |
| Non-Christian religions | 133,219 | 2.7% | |
| Islam | 106,735 | 2.1% | |
| Buddhism | 14,580 | 0.2% | |
| Hinduism | 5,858 | 0.1% | |
| Sikhism | 2,975 | 0.06% | |
| Bahá'í Faith | 1,064 | 0.02% | |
| Judaism | 819 | 0.01% | |
| Other religions | 1,188 | 0.02% | |
| Non-religious and unknown | 671,411 | 13.6% | |
| Humanism | 84,481 | 1.7% | |
| Total | 4,920,305 | 100.0% |
Read more about this topic: Demographics Of Norway
Famous quotes containing the word religion:
“Is there any religion but this, to know, that, wherever in the wide desert of being, the holy sentiment we cherish has opened into a flower, it blooms for me? If none sees it, I see it; I am aware, if I alone, of the greatness of the fact. Whilst it blooms, I will keep sabbath or holy time, and suspend my gloom, and my folly and jokes.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“Whenever a taboo is broken, something good happens, something vitalizing.... Taboos after all are only hangovers, the product of diseased minds, you might say, of fearsome people who hadn’t the courage to live and who under the guise of morality and religion have imposed these things upon us.”
—Henry Miller (1891–1980)
“There is not a greater paradox in nature,—than that so good a religion [as Christianity] should be no better recommended by its professors.”
—Laurence Sterne (1713–1768)