Even Gran of the Norwegian Humanist Association explains that Norway’s system of funding faith and lifestance groups has become unsustainable. As Church of Norway membership declines but its state allowance remains high, per-member subsidies for all other groups—tied to the Church’s funding—have risen sharply. An expert report suggests cutting costs by classifying parts of the Church’s funding as cultural spending, which would exempt it from equal compensation. The Humanist Association argues instead for equal per-member support for all groups, with only limited funds reserved for heritage preservation.
All Norwegian faith and lifestance organizations outside the Church of Norway (incl. HEF) receive state grants per member equal to the allowance to the Church of Norway per member.
The formula is like this:
The core legal justification for this, is the Constitution article 16:
“(…) The Church of Norway, an Evangelical-Lutheran church, will remain the Established Church of Norway and will as such be supported by the State. (…) All religious and belief communities should be supported on equal terms.”
In the last decades, Church of Norway membership has declined (in the last decade from 72,7% in 2015 to 61,7% of the population in 2024, see source) while membership in other faith and lifestance organizations has grown (see souce). At the same time the parliament has not reduced, but rather increased, their allowance to the Church of Norway.
The result of this is that state allowance per church member has gone up, causing the per member allowance to the other faith and lifestance organizations also to rise.
In sum, this leads to increased expenses for the state – expenses that are only likely to increase further given the current membership trends, making the support system economically unsustainable.
What can be done about this?
There are two main solutions to this, given current legislation:
The first option is an easy fix, but has this far been unacceptable for the majority of Norwegian politicians, because of the status of the Church, it’s importance for Norwegian culture, national identity etc. The Church of Norway was a constitutional state church until 2012 and still enjoys privileges and special treatment from the state on a large scale (the official English translation of the constitution says it’s the “established church”, while the term used in the Norwegian version literally translates to “Norway’s people’s church”)
What’s happening?
In August, a government appointed team of experts delivered a report after having been mandated to suggest ways to make the state support system more economically sustainable. One highly skilled representative from The Norwegian Humanist Association, Bente Sandvig, was represented on the team.
Nevertheless, the report is is dominated by different suggestions in line with measure 2 above – how to grant money to the church without having to compensate the others.
The main argument for this, is that a lot of the money endowed to the church is for things all taxpayers in Norway should be expected to pay for, typically old church buildings being part of the cultural heritage. Thankfully, the team of experts maintains the equal treatment principle too, and underlines that all the money the Church of Norway receives as a faith institution should be compensated to the others, in line with the constitution.
So the challenge – and political battle – is obviously where the line should be drawn. How much of the church money benefits all citizens regardless of faith and lifestance, and how much does the church get specifically as a faith organization, benefitting its members only?
What does The Norwegian Humanist Association think?
The Norwegian Humanist Association (Human-Etisk Forbund) welcomes the report and is currently (end of October 2025) preparing its formal reply to the report.
In general, The Norwegian Humanist Association believes the better, and possibly only, solution to this conundrum is to make also the Church of Norway allowance dependent on their membership.
The Norwegian Humanist Association has not formally decided on its feedback, but in general strongly upholds equal treatment, and believes there should be no special treatment of the Church of Norway in line with the secular principle of separation of state and church. One solution in line with this, is that all faith and lifestance organizations, including the Church of Norway, get the same amount of state support per member.
The Norwegian Humanist Association accepts in principle that part of today’s church allowance may be given without compensation, due to every citizen’s interest in preserving common cultural heritage like medieval churches.
However, a lot of church expenditure is already being excluded for this reason.
The Norwegian Humanist Association is highly skeptical to the report’s main line of thinking; to expand the scope of church expenditure that is being excluded from compensation. HEF believes this will harm the principle of equal treatment.
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