Norway Doubles Back Over Plans To Remove Crosses From Churches To Please Migrants After Backlash

The Norwegian government has dropped requirements for religious buildings housing migrants to remove crosses after a national backlash.

 

The requirement by the Norwegian Directorate of Immigration (UDI) had been directed at Churches hoping to house asylum seekers, to ensure the buildings were “religion neutral” before they received the foreigners into their care. This meant removing crosses, images of Jesus and other religious symbols, reports TheLocal.no.

 

Now the government has admitted they decided to enact the policy without even receiving a single complaint from migrants about obviously religious buildings being used to house them, and in light of popular resistance to the move they have cancelled the requirement. Despite the retreat, other rules still remain for would-be Christian hosts.

 

Overnight accommodation must still have a “religion neutral” room with no Christian symbols for migrants to pray in, and despite having displayed Christian charity towards migrants groups have been banned from also sharing the faith. Told “no preaching”, the official guidelines still state: “It is very important that there is no active service of any kind in refugee centres”.

 

Although this may be seen as a small victory for Christian groups who campaigned against the rule, the change of direction didn’t come before several churches rushed to sign up to the scheme and comply with the rules. A spokesman for the Norwegian Missionary Society said of the rule: “I don’t think that Muslims care if there is a cross, but it is fine. We will remove it. I’m proud that we can accept refugees. We want to help. We are Christians and we will warmly welcome them.”

 

But not all have been so readily accepting. Leading the campaign against the rule, the editor of Norwegian Christian newspaper Dagen wrote: “Asylum seekers and migrants have no reservations in passing the Norwegian border despite the cross in our flag being one of the first things they see. They surely wouldn’t be hurt by crosses in Christian centres either”.

 

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