Written for the Humanist News & Views, newsletter of the Humanist of Minnesota
(August 21, 2005. Revised September 25, 2007)
A Visit with Levi Fragell of the Norwegian Humanist Association
By Paul Heffron
I met with Levi Fragell on my recent trip to Norway. He is the soon-to-retire president of the Norwegian Humanist Association (NHA) and has also served as president of the International Humanist and Ethical Union. He was good enough to drive to the Humanist headquarters in Oslo from his summer home in Sweden to meet with me and my wife Peg. Since most of the staff were on holiday, there might not have been anyone there to welcome us. How very fortunate and grateful we were to meet with this world leader of Humanism.
The Humanist House in the heart of Oslo is a large, impressive building. It houses the offices of the NHA, which has about 70,000 members and is steadily growing. Members pay dues and also designate that their taxes for the state church will go instead to the NHA. They have 30 full-time staff persons at the Humanist House and another 20 professionals scattered throughout the regions of the country serving local groups and institutions. The building also has a large room for staff meetings and a much larger room that accommodates 100 people for special events.
The civil confirmations of the NHA are too big for that meeting room. This secular counterpart to state church’s rite of confirmation takes place at the large, modernist city hall. Providing civil confirmation, involving humanist classes taught by experts as well as the rite of passage, spurred the founding of the NHA in 1956. Now the NHA provides celebrations for all rites-of-passage and much more. They have a jazz orchestra and a chorus, which perform at the civil confirmations and other events. Levi gave me a CD of recordings by the chorus, with a rhythm section. Naturally they sing in Norwegian (except for a Beatles song), so I couldn’t understand the words, but it’s just magnificent. He also gave me a lapel pin with the international humanist symbol, designed by a humanist artist and individually hand made. Levi wears his wherever he goes, and I’m going to try to remember to wear mine.
The NHA has many functions. It publishes two monthly magazines and humanist books (fifty and counting). It provides education and counseling. It has a camping program and is seeking new ways to serve and engage the younger generation. It is providing financial aid and assistance to humanist and freethought groups abroad, such as the Atheist Center in India. Interestingly, the Norwegian humanists find that helping other groups strengthens their own organization.
The NHA also advocates for humanist interests in the political arena and recently had achieved a major victory. The state church had managed to get a law passed to put religious instruction back into the public school curriculum. The NHA took that to court and appealed all the way to the U.N. Commission on Human Rights and won. I asked Levi if the Norwegian people resented the humanists doing that, and he answered that on the contrary they felt embarrassed that they had been in violation of U.N. human rights standards. Later in 2007, the court of the European Union also ruled in favor of the NHA.
The humanists of Norway think of themselves also as freethinkers. They are atheists and agnostics, who operate together under a single banner. They strongly support the international unity of humanists and freethinkers. The website for the NHA is www.human.no and the e-mail address is human@human.no