More members in religious and philosophical communities outside the Church of Norway

There was a total of 330,300 members in religious and philosophical communities outside the Church of Norway as per 1 January of this year. This is an increase of 12,000, or nearly 4 percent since last year.

The registered religious communities had 233,300 members, the unregistered religious communities had 27,100 members, and the philosophical community, the Human and Ethical Union, had 69,900 members. For most of the religious communities outside the Church of Norway the number of members was stable. The steady growth in members of the Roman Catholic church in recent years continued, increasing by just over 1,300, or 4 percent, compared with 1997.

The Pentecostalists were the biggest religious community outside the Church of Norway with 43,800 members. In addition, there were 1,200 members in unregistered Pentecostal congregations. Islam was the second largest of the registered religious communities with 40,800 members. There were also 5,900 members in unregistered Moslem religious communities. This means that Islam was the biggest single community among the unregistered religious communities.

The data indicates a decline of nearly 6,000 members in the Moslem religious communities from 1997 to 1998. This decrease is not completely real, because many of the Moslem religious communities that were included in the statistics in 1997 have not applied for state grants in 1998 and are therefore not included in the statistics this year.

New Statistics

Cultural Statistics. The Church of Norway, 1997 and religious and philosophical communities outside the Church of Norway, as per 1 January 1998.08.05.
These statistics are published yearly in The Weekly Bulletin of Statistics. For more information and e-mail, contact:
vera.thrane@ssb.no, tel.: +47 62 88 52 57, or thorstein.ouren@ssb.no, tel.: +47 62 88 52 71.
Tables in the annex on pages: 6-9.

Weekly Bulletin issue no. 32, 1998