The church election

It's election season here. Norway has two types of elections -- national and local -- and each type of election is held every four years. I'll have a good bit to say about those elections later, but what I want to write about now is the election to the Bishop's Council and Congregational Council of the Church of Norway, which has been the source of a good bit of controversy lately.

First of all, yes, this is the official state church which gets its budget from the federal government, the thought of which is very weird to me as an American. Inki and I are assigned to the diocese of Årstad church just up the hill, just like the kids in my neighborhood were assigned to the closest elementary school. In the interests of fairness other faiths (and the Humanist Ethical Association) also receive funds in proportion to their membership. Officially over 80% of Norwegians are members of the Church of Norway, although only a fraction of these attend church on a regular basis.

The church is having its elections alongside this year's national elections and sent out ballots to its entire membership list. Now, officially, only those baptized into the Church are members, but instead of compiling all the local registers to create the national membership list, the Church used the national registry of persons as the basis for this list back in 1998. That is to say, everybody's on that list until they opt out whether they were ever baptized or not, and until this election, no one knew whether or not they were on the list since the church didn't mail ballots to all of its members but just counted the votes of those who showed up to vote at their diocese on election day.

So this time a fair number of unbaptized adults whose parents were nonbelievers and who have never been to a church service were surprised to get a ballot, as were people who had taken the active step of officially resigning from the Church only to find that the Church kept them on its rolls anyway. Surprised, and in some cases, well, pretty pissed off. There have been a number of incidents of members showing up at their local diocese and launching into angry, profane tirades at whatever poor person they could find to yell at. Some had tried to resign more than once without effect, a problem the Church blames on a computer problem.

The election itself doesn't seem particularly well-managed either. Inki went to the Church's election website to find out about the various candidates, but the only information available was the name, age and profession of each candidate (e.g. Kari Nordmann, 42, homemaker), which she didn't find particularly helpful. Is Kari for or against, for instance, gay marriage?

Imagine making a decision based solely on the following 2008 US presidential ballot:

- Barack Obama, 47, community organizer
- John McCain, 72, retired naval aviator

Do you go with the community organizer, or are you more of a Navy type?

Hard to say, no?