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How to Humanist asks life’s questions big and small with the help of brilliant humans along the way.
FISH: I'm Fish Stark, Executive Director of the American Humanist Association.
AMITAI: And I'm Amitai Heller, Legal Director of the AHA's Legal Center.
FISH: Right now, religious freedoms are under attack, and that includes the ability to not believe. And when those rights are violated, we're here to fight for you. Your boss says the only way to get promoted is by joining his Bible study group? Well, we'll walk into his office with a 10-foot Constitution and slam it down on his desk. We don't actually have a giant Constitution, but yeah, that is probably a violation of your rights. Or your kid's coach says, no pray, no play? We will show up in matching tracksuits and we will coach the team ourselves. We don't do that. What we do is we defend the rights of students in court. And if a judge tells you to read the Bible as part of your sentence, we will storm into that courtroom with a choir singing We Will Rock You. Still no choir, but yeah, that's probably unconstitutional, and that is exactly why we're here.
AMITAI: None of those are real numbers. Please just go to americanhumanist.org/legal and submit your case. We're here to protect your rights.
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SHAY: Welcome to How to Humanist. I hope you're having a wonderful start to your week. I am Shay Leonia, your host and work-in-progress human being. I have gone through all of the highs and lows of the human experience this week, which we do all the time.
I was walking into a Wawa the other day. I don't know if they have Wawas where you live, but I was walking into one, and this older gentleman was leaving with some takeout food from another store. And as I passed him by, I observed another woman walk into the place that he was leaving. He's carrying his food, and he makes eye contact with her and just wanted — you could tell, looking at him, he wanted to give her a neighborly hello type of look, you know, one of those just acknowledgment looks. But she looked at him not with a hi, how are you doing, not with one of those nice little interactions that we love so much that makes the world go round. Instead she kind of just was like, ugh. And it broke my heart because I saw the look in his eyes, just the light just go down.
So instead, I said to him, I was like, hello sir, how are you? And he lit back up again, and he goes, hi, I'm doing good, how are you? And that was all it took, and he probably felt so good, and it made me feel so good.
And then later on that afternoon, I had a meeting and I was trying to get my headphones to work, and they just would not work, and I had to be out and about. I was at a coffee shop. It was loud. I decided to take my laptop outside so that I wouldn't disturb anybody. Unfortunately, I had to have my headphones out, and some lady didn't have the chutzpah to say it to my face, but as she walks down the steps and around the corner, she goes, what? You don't have any headphones? And so I said, they're broken. And, you know, in my reading between the lines, I went — I'm sure you can think of the words that I wanted to call her. But, you know, that's work in progress. We are a work in progress, and I am a humanist in progress.
And that's why — do you like that segue or what? — that's why I am so happy that on this episode I was able to bring in a longtime humanist, a friend of the organization's, Christian Lomsdalen. Christian is the president and former vice president, so he's been in the royal ranks of this organization for a long time, of the Norwegian Humanist Association. Elected as president in 2021, and before that he was the vice president. I hope you enjoy this conversation with Christian.
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SHAY: It's pretty cool — do we have a similar piercing? Do we both have this?
CHRISTIAN: We might have.
SHAY: I love it. Oh, do you have tattoos also?
CHRISTIAN: Yes.
SHAY: I would say a lot, but that is not true. It's just —
CHRISTIAN: Just some.
SHAY: Just some. Are you working on getting more? Cause I definitely am.
CHRISTIAN: Yes. I started getting to decorate with more gods on my back.
SHAY: Ah. Wait, that's interesting. So a humanist is getting gods done on his back?
CHRISTIAN: Yes. I used to have just two, and then I got a third one.
SHAY: Oh, that's so cool.
CHRISTIAN: I'm really glad that I'm getting to talk to you today.
SHAY: Thank you. I'm very pleased to be able to do that. What time is it where you are?
CHRISTIAN: It's 5:00 in the afternoon. What about you?
SHAY: Oh, not too bad. It's 11:00 AM for me.
CHRISTIAN: Yeah, so you are on the East Coast.
SHAY: Yeah. And where in Norway are you?
CHRISTIAN: I'm on the West Coast, so I'm in Bergen. I do not live in the capital city.
SHAY: And remind me what the capital city of Norway is.
CHRISTIAN: The capital city is Oslo, and that is on the east coast.
SHAY: Yes. Okay. So you're in Bergen on the West Coast. Oslo is — okay. The reason why I was so excited to talk to you is because I'm sure you're aware, but in the US, no one seems to know about humanism. It's so few and far between. I was literally at a meeting with my executive director Fish in Philadelphia, and some guy in the corner just pipes up and said, you guys just need to call yourselves atheists, cause I don't know what humanism is and that makes no sense, yada yada. But when you look at Norway, it's mainstream, and I'm just so fascinated about where the potential is between the US and what you all have accomplished in Norway.
CHRISTIAN: Yes, and here it's a lot of historical reasons for why it is as it is in Norway. First of all, I would like to paint a little picture of the situation as it is today. Because in reality, we are quite a small organization. The Norwegian Humanist Association is about 3% of the population.
SHAY: Really?
CHRISTIAN: And of course, 3% of the population would be a rather large organization. That would be about 10 million people in the US. So 3% is not a big — our main competitor, the Norwegian State Church, has about 60% of the population as members.
SHAY: Mm-hmm.
CHRISTIAN: But at the same time, when we look at population studies, when we ask people what their lifestyles are and what they identify as, we find that about 7% of the population thinks they are members of us.
SHAY: Oh.
CHRISTIAN: And that is because they have done their confirmations, they have done weddings, they had naming ceremonies, and they think that because they did that, they are members. That is what we think, because it's difficult to figure out how this confusion started. But about 10% of the population identify with us. And when we ask people what is the life stance that is closest to yours, about half the population will say that a humanistic life stance without any belief in God is the life stance that is closest to them. So population-wise, we are too bad at organizing humanists.
SHAY: Wow. Okay, so you mentioned that 7% think that they're —
CHRISTIAN: Are members of the Norwegian Humanist Association.
SHAY: Oh, they're members. Okay, got it. But 10% identify —
CHRISTIAN: Identify with us. Yeah.
SHAY: Interesting. But do you find that out and about in Norway, people are generally going to know what a humanist is?
CHRISTIAN: We are covered in the curriculum in the religious education topic in the school system. So it is mandatory to learn about humanism. That can be other kinds of humanism than just our kind, but if you look in most of the books that are providing the curriculum, we are the curriculum for humanism.
SHAY: So are you talking about college level, or are you talking about like kids as well?
CHRISTIAN: I'm talking about K through 12.
SHAY: K through 12 are learning about humanism?
CHRISTIAN: Yes. Or at least they are supposed to.
SHAY: Wow. Oh my gosh. Continue. This is — wow.
CHRISTIAN: And that means that at least people have some sort of understanding of what humanism is, or at least they have some preconceived notions about what it is. And of course, I think that if you would ask a random Christian person in the US about what is the humanist or the atheist doing, they would say that you are a quarreling bunch of people that disagree with the rest of society.
SHAY: Well, they would say, I don't know what a humanist is, but I can tell you what the atheists are.
CHRISTIAN: But we get that one a lot as well, because people think that we are a bit combative when we are fighting for equal rights, equal treatment, position in the school subjects, and so on and so forth.
SHAY: Huh.
CHRISTIAN: So a lot of people know about us. Some of them have this notion that we are quite combative, but I think it is changing. But if I could start with telling you, the main reason I think that we have become such a big organization is our part of the tradition of the confirmation ceremonies. Because in Norway from 1736 until 1912, it was obligatory to go to the Norwegian State Church and get confirmation in the State Church. And this meant that it was quite normal. Everybody did this. You had to do it because otherwise you could not get married. You were not considered a grown-up, all of these things. It was mandatory. And in the 1950s, in 1951 — it's 75 years this year, so we are having a bit of a celebration about that — we started providing non-religious or humanist confirmation ceremonies.
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[SHAY interjects: Okay, if you are moved and shaken, don't worry about it, but just be aware that in the show notes I have included links that Christian sent me for you to be able to get a visual of what these confirmation ceremonies look like. Because for the duration of this conversation up until the very end when he actually sends me the links, I could not picture what the ceremonies look like. But after seeing it, it really truly is like the equivalent of what we in the United States have as like a kid's bar mitzvah party. It's like a big quinceañera type event. It's massive. What I can't imagine is the idea of having the amount of freedom to be able to be like, mom, dad, I'm a humanist, and getting to have this awesome celebration that starts in this theater with a big class, and then all of a sudden the party continues around family and loved ones, and it's just this massive event. Can you imagine? But yeah, anyways, continue listening because this is just fascinating.]
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CHRISTIAN: So we provided a course. We were teaching them about human rights, critical thinking. In the beginning it was a lot of law and philosophy and economy and stuff like that as well, but it has changed over the years. So we provide a course for the teenagers. They are fourteen, fifteen years old, and we are providing this course to them. About twenty, twenty-two percent of all fourteen and fifteen year olds are participating in this. And this means that almost all the population know someone who has gone through these confirmation teachings. And a lot of them have gone through the teachings themselves or had family members that were part of the confirmations. So this means that we are part of the normal life of Norwegians as part of this tradition of the confirmation ceremonies.
SHAY: Wow. So to this day, are you still the only alternative to getting confirmed by the State Church?
CHRISTIAN: No, and this is really fun for me because I work — my day job. I have two day jobs. One of them is teaching high school, and one of them is being a religious study scientist at the University of Bergen.
SHAY: Oh my goodness.
CHRISTIAN: And this is really fun because in Norway, 75% of all the teenagers get confirmed now. The numbers now are 20-25% with us, 49% with the State Church, and 5% others. But if we look at Sweden, for example, the tradition of confirmations has almost died out. So it's just 20% State Church, very small humanist alternative. They did not provide the reason for the tradition to stay on. But we provided an alternative for those who needed it. So you can say it's normalized to go through confirmations. You just choose if you go to this one or this one. But in Norway we have also seen a lot of different Christian alternatives as well. So we have the Catholics, different churches outside of the State Church, different Christian groups. But you also have academic confirmations, philosophical confirmations, holistic confirmations, shamanistic confirmations, and one I'm going to attend tomorrow — as one of the only places in the world — Buddhist confirmations.
SHAY: Really?
CHRISTIAN: And it's really fun to see how what is normal in this context makes changes theologically and practically and ceremonially for groups that come from other contexts into this context. And I find it really interesting. So tomorrow, the first Buddhist confirmation in the western part of Norway will happen, and I'm invited because I'm really interested.
SHAY: Oh, it's the first ever?
CHRISTIAN: The first ever on the west coast. They have had it five times before on the east coast.
SHAY: That is so cool. I guess I'm having trouble figuring out, like, if this was the law back before the 1950s, what did whoever do in order to introduce humanism as an alternative, saying like, hey, you have to let us offer an alternative to the State Church confirmation?
CHRISTIAN: Luckily, the mandatory confirmations ended in 1912.
SHAY: Oh, okay.
CHRISTIAN: And then it began as an alternative in the 1950s, and this was because a quite stubborn man wanted an alternative for his daughter, and he said that if nobody has started an alternative until you are going to get your confirmations, I'm going to.
SHAY: Love that.
CHRISTIAN: Do we know his name?
SHAY: Do we know his name by any chance?
CHRISTIAN: Yes. Christian Horn. So I share the same first name.
SHAY: Oh, Christian Horn.
CHRISTIAN: Horn. Yeah.
SHAY: Oh, Horn. Okay. Got it.
CHRISTIAN: He was a biologist at the University of Oslo, and he was also the first president of the Norwegian Humanist Association, and had a part in the Humanist International for a couple of years as well.
SHAY: Wow. So how do you describe humanism to people?
CHRISTIAN: I try to do it quite simply. When I try to communicate my form of humanism, I would say that it's about caring for other people. Whether it's for short-term relationships, long-term, if it's long distance, other side of the world, future generations, animals — it's about caring for other people. But of course, that is too simplistic. It's a non-religious worldview that has its basis in human rights, that listens to what science tells us, and that tries to provide arenas for people to have community.
SHAY: Oh, that was very good. I like that. I'm probably gonna borrow that going forward when I describe what humanism is. So you said that's your humanism. What other alternatives of humanism are there around you all?
CHRISTIAN: We have a long tradition of talking about Christian humanism, which has been a very long-standing tradition in Norway and Denmark, and that is a variety of Christianity with a larger emphasis on people, putting people in the center. Of course, we have a different kind of humanism, so I would say that because we have a non-religious humanism, which also means that some Christian humanists in Norway feel that we are stealing their name. That is — of course. I am a humanist too. We are not trying to steal this from you.
SHAY: I've been learning a lot lately from a lot of the guests that come on this podcast about arguments that just aren't helpful, and I think that tends to be one of those arguments that just isn't helpful. It doesn't get us anywhere. I don't know if you feel similarly.
CHRISTIAN: No, I do agree. I find it very little helpful to argue with the Christian humanist or a Jewish religious humanist or Muslim religious humanist about whose humanism is the right one. I usually preface every talk I give outside of humanist circles with, this is our kind of humanism. This is a non-religious form of humanism. If I'm just saying humanism in the rest of this lecture, it's about our humanism. We do not own the humanism term. You can also be a humanist, I don't care. But this is my form of humanism. And if I was going to say life stance humanism or secular humanism every time I said humanism, it would be very long sentences. I find it really non-helpful to argue about whose humanism is the right one. It's about as fruitful as arguing about whose Christianity is the right one.
SHAY: Yeah, yeah, or does God exist, and all that kind of stuff. It just —
CHRISTIAN: Oh, that is really fun. Do you like arguing about that?
SHAY: Yeah, I get asked to participate in events where it's mostly apologists discussing, and they invite me because they want a different perspective. Arguing about if God exists or not — I can do that for two hours. It's okay, it's fine. But it's not helpful at all. It doesn't move the world forward at all. But I can do it for two hours with apologists.
SHAY: Oh my goodness. I'm grappling with trying to imagine my state being able to understand what humanism is. Cause you all have — am I mistaken — you have a university for humanism also?
CHRISTIAN: Unfortunately, we do not. But I work in a regular university working on things that I could have done in other ways. My topic of research is quite humanistically oriented. But I was hired to do the same project also in another Christian university — the College of Missionary Studies.
SHAY: That's what it's called? The College of Missionary Studies?
CHRISTIAN: Yeah, they used to be called that. Yeah.
SHAY: Are you allowed to share what the topic of study is? I'm so curious.
CHRISTIAN: Yeah. I study the right to be exempted on religious or lifestyle grounds from activities in education.
SHAY: And you did that also in a Christian university?
CHRISTIAN: They hired me to do it, and then the state university that I'm now employed by said, we also want to have this project. And it was a better deal, so I went for that one.
SHAY: So there you went. Yes, we can hire the next president of the Norwegian Humanists to study religious exemptions at the College of Missionaries.
CHRISTIAN: Yes.
SHAY: Oh, I love that. That is so cool. When — so in the US, I'm sure you're aware, a lot of the work that we do is very forward with the policy and legal departments because we're currently playing whack-a-mole, especially with this current administration, for all of the violations of separation of church and state. What is humanism able to lead with in Norway? Is it still similar?
CHRISTIAN: First I must say that I'm really impressed by the work that the American Humanists, and for that matter the other secular groups in the US, are doing, both legally and community-wise, because I'm really not envying you the political situation that you're in.
SHAY: Thank you.
CHRISTIAN: So that must be said. For our part, the main thing that we are working with is doing, for example, the confirmations. That takes up a whole lot of resources, together with community building. So community building, having events all around the country, big and small. We are a small country — five times the population of North Dakota, something like that. So we're not that many people, but having 546 different events all around the country last year.
SHAY: 500 to 600?
CHRISTIAN: Yeah, 546. But these are big things, small things. These are people meeting up discussing philosophy, or they're knitting, or they're talking about death, or they're talking about Trump or whatever —
SHAY: Is it all different ages or —
CHRISTIAN: We are trying to improve our work with youth and young adults. That needs improvement. But from about my age, about 40, it's quite diverse. But we're working on getting better with the youth and the young adults too, so we're trying.
SHAY: Oh, that's so interesting to hear. We're having the same concern over here, because our humanism is typically represented by older white males, and we're trying to get more diverse as well.
CHRISTIAN: We actually had our national board last year — because we have also had a lot of people with gray hair as part of our movement. Last time around, before this year's election, in the election in the fall, the oldest person on the board was 50.
SHAY: Wow.
CHRISTIAN: So the election committees that prepare the first list of candidates for the board have been working on getting a more diverse, more age-diverse, and otherwise diverse board for the national organization. So that has been fruitful.
SHAY: Wow. I'm so interested in these events. Are these funded by the Norwegian Humanist Association, or are they independently — I don't know. What am I saying? Are they independent events that are popping up and just happen to be humanist? Like, what is happening? I'm so intrigued.
CHRISTIAN: All those events that I told you about, some of them might be in cooperation with other organizations, but most of them are our own events. And one of the reasons why we are able to do a lot of activities and have a big organization is because the Norwegian Humanists are funded by the Norwegian state. Because the Norwegian State Church receives funding from the Norwegian state, they have to provide an equal amount of money per member to all other registered life stance communities.
SHAY: Wow.
CHRISTIAN: Which means that I am worth about $150 from the state.
SHAY: Wow.
CHRISTIAN: And that is pretty far from the regulation that you have in the United States, and I know this can be quite difficult for Americans —
SHAY: To grasp. And yeah. I'm trying to grasp it right now. If only. Wow.
CHRISTIAN: But this is only because the politicians are seeking to provide the Norwegian State Church with sufficient funds. They get about $500 million a year.
SHAY: The politicians or the State Church?
CHRISTIAN: No, the State Church gets that kind of money from the parliament.
SHAY: Oh. Got it.
CHRISTIAN: And that means that when we have 180,000 members, as we do have now, being the second-largest lifestyle community in the country, we have money to provide for activities that are being held around the country for our members by our members, but also normally open for the general public. But this means also that we are not the best at getting funds from other kinds of sources. That is not something that we have had to work on that much. But at the same time, the parents and other people that use our ceremonies provide for about 20% of our funds every year.
SHAY: Wow. Okay, so you're saying that the confirmation ceremonies take up a huge chunk of resources. What does the confirmation ceremony entail that it's so hefty on resources?
CHRISTIAN: It's a course. They go to classes for several months, normally once a week, or they can do it intensively during one week or spread over a couple of weekends. This depends because the country is quite diverse when it comes to traveling distances. So where I live, it's quite easy to provide courses every week or have different courses different days. But we have parts of the country where you have to travel several hours to get to the nearest place to have the course.
SHAY: Oh, so these have to be in person?
CHRISTIAN: Yes, they are normally in person. We have an alternative because we have Norwegian expats living in other countries, or if you have a social anxiety disorder, you can get a not-in-person variety. But normally they are in person.
SHAY: Wait, do they respect people with social anxiety over there?
CHRISTIAN: We try. I'm not saying we are good enough, but at least we try.
SHAY: In the United States, if you have social anxiety, they're like, so what? Get over it. It's not really even considered. That's so interesting.
CHRISTIAN: And then we try to give them a course. We provide them with different topics. We have discussions, trying not to have all the answers ourselves. And of course, we need to pay at least a little bit to the volunteers that are doing these courses. And then we have a big ceremony. The ceremony is huge.
SHAY: Really?
CHRISTIAN: Yeah. And it's really fun to do the ceremonies in the different places and making a big festivity for these 15-year-olds.
SHAY: Are the ceremonies for each individual or are they like a group, whoever was in that class gets a ceremony?
CHRISTIAN: Some places in the country we have to have them for individuals because they are the only one in their community having the ceremony. They are just the only one. But most of the time they are in a group where they can be 20 at the ceremony, 50, up to 100. But these ceremonies, we try to make them a big festivity, and that is really important because this is their day. This is the day where they are, at least being in their family, being the one being celebrated. So most of the time they are being a part of the celebration. We are giving them a speech. There's music, dancing, poems, and so on. And then when they get home, a lot of people have a party with their family, with more speeches and more food and yeah.
SHAY: Wow. This is sounding like a wedding.
CHRISTIAN: In many ways it's kind of a wedding.
SHAY: Is there something I can look up to see what this looks like?
CHRISTIAN: Yes, there is. I'm going to send you a link. Okay, since I didn't check this beforehand, so I couldn't share a picture with you. Fritanka.
SHAY: I love this. This is so cool. Wow. Okay. For anyone listening, I'm looking at a picture of a massive, what looks like a massive theater, and every seat is filled. And that could be for one person?
CHRISTIAN: No, that one is for a big class. That one is for 105, I think. That is the one where I live.
SHAY: Wow. Oh, okay.
CHRISTIAN: But we do 12 of those in my city.
SHAY: Could you say this for me the correct way? Humanistisk konfirmasjon?
CHRISTIAN: Konfirmasjon.
SHAY: Konfirmasjon. This is so cool. Oh my gosh. All right. I will be sure to provide this link in the show notes so that anybody else can see what we're looking at. This is so cool. Oh, there's another one. Oh my goodness. Okay.
CHRISTIAN: The one I sent you now is from the capital city. This is the municipal hall, which was traditionally the place that we had the humanistic confirmations. Of course, when we spread outside of Oslo, we needed to find other places as well. But this is the biggest, most traditional place to have the confirmations.
SHAY: Oh, I'm going to have to find an alternative cause it's making me log in. Okay. This is so cool. Christian, thank you for sharing that, because it was so hard to picture before. That's wild. No wonder it's taking up so many resources. But probably gladly.
CHRISTIAN: Yeah, yeah. This is one of the most important things that we do, to be part of this tradition and providing this way to do it for our members, all the teenagers in the country and so on and so forth.
SHAY: So has it gotten to the point where if a teenager is like, I'm so excited, my confirmation's coming up, that somebody will be like, oh, which confirmation are you getting? And then they'll be like, I'm doing a humanist confirmation. Is it kind of like that?
CHRISTIAN: Yes, that is quite — earlier, it was so that I'm getting confirmed, of course you're going to the Christian one.
SHAY: Ah.
CHRISTIAN: And then you had some strange kids that chose the humanist one. But now in most places it seems to be, oh, you're getting confirmed? What have you chosen?
SHAY: I love that.
CHRISTIAN: But of course, we have stories about grandmothers, aunts, parents that are saying, okay, if you want the non-church one, you don't get any presents or you don't get the party.
SHAY: Oh, don't like that.
CHRISTIAN: Yeah. But I think it's waning. I think it's more normalized in more places. And my favorite feedback is when we hear from these conservative old grandparents that, this was such a lovely ceremony.
SHAY: Aw.
CHRISTIAN: I had never thought about that.
SHAY: Wow. Is Norway generally still pretty conservative, or is it far more progressive?
CHRISTIAN: All the American political parties are to the right of our rightmost political party.
SHAY: Huh.
CHRISTIAN: Uh, so yes. Or that is an overly simplified way to say it. But politically speaking, even the Democratic Party is considered a party on the right here in Norway.
SHAY: Really? I mean, in some places here it's also considered that. I mean, Democratic versus Republican doesn't necessarily signify these days anymore whether or not you're progressive or conservative.
CHRISTIAN: No. So similar here. But if we look at different parts of the Norwegian religious spectrum, there are quite a bit of conservative people, especially here on the west coast or in the north of Norway. So where I live, it's a more conservative religious crowd. But most of the Norwegian religious community are non-skeptical to trans people. They are in favor of same-sex marriages. They are —
SHAY: Wait, that's the conservative people?
CHRISTIAN: No, that's the normal religious people.
SHAY: Oh, oh, oh. Okay.
CHRISTIAN: Yeah. So it's not very conservative, but of course everything is relative, so what I think about a conservative person, I'm not sure you would think the same.
SHAY: Huh. Oh, that's interesting. Because I grew up in the '90s, and when I was growing up in the '90s, you were able to be in community with your neighbors, and if they were conservative, of course what they're voting for is going to impact you, but in your everyday conversation it didn't really prevent you from still having a relationship with this person. Nowadays, if you find out that somebody is anti-trans, anti-abortion rights, all of these things, you don't wanna deal with them anymore. It's gotten to the point where we have to have like a litmus test before we talk to our neighbor to make sure that they're safe to talk to, and that's for very real reasons, and also it's just the times that we're in now. It's just gotten so extreme.
CHRISTIAN: Yeah. And we are talking about polarization here as well. I'm not sure it has come to anything close to what you are experiencing. And it sounds very both terrifying and exhausting to live through what I'm hearing from the United States. But I can go to services. I can cooperate with the religious conservatives. I can normally speak to all my neighbors. I have some that probably won't speak to me, but I'm not sure I like them from before, and I'm not sure if the religion-only-conservative is the problem. But no, we're not seeing quite as much of that here.
SHAY: Wow.
CHRISTIAN: But a bit more polarization, especially in the media.
SHAY: Yeah. So if you had endless resources right now, what would humanists be wanting to do in Norway? What would they be wanting to accomplish?
CHRISTIAN: If we had endless resources, I would probably start to provide more student humanists or chaplains, more existential care, providing more people working as humanist chaplains in the army, prisons, hospitals. We are now just in the starting phase of doing that, so we have one hospital humanist in the entire country.
SHAY: Really?
CHRISTIAN: And we have two in the military and five student humanists in different institutions around the country. And I would like to provide a lot more chaplaincy around the country. And I would also like to provide more — we do not have as many offices or places to have events. We have them in cooperation with others. We borrow from the local library or from the volunteer community building or different kinds of buildings in different places. And I would like to have a humanist house in many more places around the country.
SHAY: A humanist house?
CHRISTIAN: Yeah. In Tønsberg, which is one of the oldest cities in Norway — it's from about 950 or something — we have a building that is called a humanist house, and it is a ceremony room. It's where we have our confirmation trainings. We have offices. It's really pretty. It's very good for ceremonies. You can have your naming ceremony there. You can be married there. You can have your confirmation there, and you can have your funeral from there.
SHAY: And this is a house from 950?
CHRISTIAN: No, no, no. The city is from 950. The building is quite new.
SHAY: Oh, okay. I was about to —
CHRISTIAN: I hope they've updated it.
SHAY: No, the building is quite new. Okay.
CHRISTIAN: But it's our first truly designed humanist house. So when we refurbished it, it covers a lot of what our needs in society are. I would like to have a lot more of those around the country to provide community for humanists and others all around the country. But sometimes I think it's really good that we need to share locales with other people, because I think it's more scary for people that do not agree with us to come to our events if they are in our building than if we are having an important discussion in the public library. So I actually think that sometimes it's good that we do not have buildings everywhere. But if I had unlimited resources, I would have almost unlimited locales around the country.
SHAY: I love that. Wow. Is there anything that you can share with anyone that's listening that's not familiar with Norwegian culture, just in general, even beyond humanism?
CHRISTIAN: I think the confirmation thing is probably the most different thing that we have. Well, apart from getting funding from the state, that is probably also quite different for Americans. But in the Norwegian school system, almost all of the students — it's just a couple of percent that do not attend public schools. Which means that a lot of the polarization that you see when people do not share education together does not happen. And it also means that people mostly do not choose to go to private schooling even if they have a lot of money, because they participate in the school system. And I think that is an important way to combat polarization and not knowing your neighbors. And that is one of the reasons why I find it quite infuriating when people in the US are trying to find ways to set up private schooling that is outside of the norms.
SHAY: You and me both. Yep, yep. Wow. All right. What's your favorite Norwegian meal?
CHRISTIAN: That is quite a difficult question because how do you consider something to be Norwegian? I would probably say tacos or pasta, and then not much more.
SHAY: I love that.
CHRISTIAN: But if I'm going to say my favorite Norwegian meal, it will probably be smoked and salted sheep ribs that are served for Christmas.
SHAY: What the —
CHRISTIAN: And dry aged —
SHAY: Served for Christmas?
CHRISTIAN: Yeah. A dry aged — oh my gosh. I actually had them for Easter as well, so.
SHAY: That's so funny. I was moments away from asking you, oh, are humanists typically vegan over there? I guess not.
CHRISTIAN: We have some, but no, not typically.
SHAY: Okay, got it. But I'm guessing that you're vegan then.
SHAY: I am vegan. But I can still appreciate a good — what was it? Dry aged sheep something.
CHRISTIAN: Smoked — it's very, very not vegan. Christmas here is quite a bigger trouble if you're vegan.
SHAY: The antithesis of vegan. That's so funny. Wow. But I love that you said tacos — cause I'm, in my ignorant American mind, I'm not picturing that I'll be walking down the street in Norway and be like, oh, let's go grab tacos.
CHRISTIAN: Actually, we have Los Tacos just around the corner.
SHAY: Wow.
CHRISTIAN: But we have a lot of American or Mexican or other, especially Italian. The restaurant scene is not that different in many ways.
SHAY: Really? Okay. Well, at some point I would love to go to Norway and visit you in person, and it's good to know that I'll still have plenty of options.
CHRISTIAN: You're very welcome. We have some vegan restaurants too, but I think you actually have better options in the US when it comes to vegan restaurants.
SHAY: I know. Yeah. I'm such a foodie though. I would love to try what you guys have over there. Just not the sheep ribs, please.
CHRISTIAN: Well —
SHAY: Christian, thank you so much for talking with me. This has been so enlightening. In my wildest dreams, we can even succeed with a fraction of what you've accomplished in Norway, and I'm just so excited to continue maintaining this relationship and keeping in touch.
We should — you know what we should have? Hey, Fish Stark, if you're listening, Executive Director, we should start pen pals internationally.
CHRISTIAN: Yeah, that would be so cool. Imagine all the stickers we could exchange.
SHAY: I love a good sticker. Do you love a good sticker, Christian?
CHRISTIAN: I would probably give them away to my kids. I'm not a sticker person, but I'm sure you have a lot of them.
SHAY: All right, fine. I'll send you like little fake tattoo stamps.
CHRISTIAN: Those I love. Those I love.
SHAY: Okay, good, good, good. Thank you so much, Christian. Thank you so much. Seriously.
CHRISTIAN: Thank you so much for having me.