Bodin church

During my stay in Norway I got to visit many Norwegian churches. Be it a church in Bergen, another in Alesund, Bodø Domkirke, the ice cathedral in Tromø, the famous Nidaros cathedral in Trondheim or one of the rare stave churches in the Stavanger region. This week it was time to see Bodin church, which I only spotted several times before, but never had the chance to catch a glimpse inside.

Built around 1240 in the quarter called “Bodøsjøen”, this catholic church plays a crucial role in the life of any catholic Bodø-inhabitant. Until 1886, the founding year of Saltstraumen church, every catholic had to take the risk of travelling to Bodin church in order to get baptised. People even crossed the fjords, and several died. The local parson told us everything about the fountain built of marble from Fauske, the ancient worth of a candle, the altar with its four-dimensional evening meal, the german church painter Gottfried Ezechiel and the hanging church. I listened very carefully and gave my best not to forget any detail, but there was something which occupied my mind: Is there any difference between “the” church in Norway and “the” church in Germany? And, if there is, do I evaluate it as a reasonable difference?

Regardless of my own faith, I got the subjective impression that Norwegian churches have a greater impact on the Norwegian youth than it is the case in Germany. In contrary to Germany, Norwegian churches offer evening meals with a local rock band or realise guided tours to famous churches with employees who have tattoos and wear black bracelets from a music festival they just participated in.

I don’t know about the relationship between state and church in Norway, but those two value-creating keystones try to kept separated in Germany. I myself admit to have critical and reflective thoughts about the churches’ goals, religious cults within peer-groups, about current church-debates (be it the new open-minded Pope in Rome or the german bishop Franz-Peter Tebartz-van Elst, who misappropriated church-funds on a big scale), but even on atheism. To be a social worker in Germany means to choose your future employer whose institution will be part of the church in 50% of all cases, whether you like it or not. Is it a form of discrimination if you are automatically excluded from all job candidates because of your personal belief? Is “faith” considered to be something you can act out within your own inner privacy, without feeling the urge to defend your beliefs in public? As those church-institutions search for qualified employees, is it, in the same way, condemnable for a social institution offering pregnancy counselling to look for a female candidate for the team, because women are considered to be more empathic in the whole thematic and might identify with the institution’s values in a different way than a man could do? Or is it a vital right nobody should take away from them?

This should be discussed from now on. Maybe I should have asked the local parson about his opinion. Or I will write a letter to the church of the flying spaghetti monster…