Norway's Lutheran Church and the state of Norway are to "divorce" on January 1 after nearly 500 years together.The moment marks a formal separation of Church and state following a parliamentary vote eight years ago. It means the Church's 1,250 priests and bishops will no longer be government officials and the Church will cease to be an agency of the state.
The head of the Church's National Council, Jens-Petter Johnsen, told Norway's Dagsavisen newspaper: "We are facing the biggest organisational change of the Church since the Reformation."
The change recreates the Church as an independent legal entity. However, some argue that it does not go far enough. The previous description of the Church as "the state's public religion" has been ditched, but the new formulation says that ""the Church of Norway, an Evangelical-Lutheran Church, will remain Norway's national Church and will be supported as ...
