The Bible in Norwegian Politics: Scripture in the Parliamentarians’ Discourse

Abstract

Unlike the United States, in Norway candidates for political office generally do not highlight the Bible’s influence on their political thinking. Similarly, during their campaigns, journals typically do not ask candidates to identify their favourite verse in the Bible. Searches undertaken within the digitized parliamentary proceedings on the web indicate that the Bible is a marginal entity in the public discussions of the Norwegian parliament, with some notable exceptions. After the 1930s,the Bible hardly ever influenced decision making within political debates. Elsewhere, I have documented and analysed the absence of the Bible in the historical speech of Norway’s Prime Minister at the memorial service two days after the terror attack in Oslo on July 22, 2011. Although the service was orchestrated within a Protestant cathedral, the country’s major political leader construed his discourse with a notable lack of religious or biblical language in what was a crucial moment for the creation of national unity in the context of mass grief. When scholars write the history of the Bible in Norway, the political role of the Bible is typically not thematised. Nonetheless,the Bible has not been entirely absent from the public discourse produced by Norwegian parliamentarians during the last two decades. This chapter will explore the political roles of the Bible in Norway by focusing on its use in the discourse of parliamentarians during the 2000s.