Religion: The Bishop and the Quisling

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"To Fear We Need Not Yield." On Feb. 1, 1942, after two years in the background, Vidkun Quisling was reinstated as puppet dictator of Norway in a gaudy Wagnerian ceremony in Oslo's Akershus Castle. The people of Oslo stayed away from the ceremony. But in Trondheim Norwegians by the thousand gathered outside Nidaros Cathedral. Inside, preaching to a handful of quislingites, a puppet pastor was shouting the praises of his leader. The people in the street were waiting to hear Dean Arne Fjellbu. At 2 p.m., the hour scheduled for Fjellbu's afternoon service, police appeared with clubs to keep the crowd from entering. The huge throng stood patiently outside the Cathedral. Presently a single voice began the great Lutheran hymn, A Mighty Fortress Is Our God. Soon a multitude of voices were swelling the words the conquerors had learned to hate:

And were the world with devils filled

All watching to devour us,

Our souls to fear we need not yield,

They cannot overpower us.

Within the church Arne Fjellbu preached his last sermon to the few who had come in before the police arrived. His text: the words of Peter to Jesus, "We have forsaken all, and followed thee." For the churchmen of Norway, the words were prophetic.

Shortly after the service, the Dean was dismissed for anti-quisling activity. Three weeks later the seven bishops of Norway resigned their offices. On Easter Sunday all but 64 of the Church's 861 pastors mounted their pulpits to announce their own resignations. With this magnificent declaration of independence, the pastors at one stroke set their church free, cut off their state-provided livelihoods, left themselves facing concentration camp or death. (One of them, Arne Thu. vicar of Vestby and veteran Indian missionary, died in a concentration camp at Grini last June after being forced to crawl hundreds of yards with his hands behind his back and a latrine bucket in his teeth, for the amusement of his quisling guards.) But all made clear that they would continue to carry on their work accepting "no directions as to how God's Word should be preached. . . ."

The Peace of Heaven. On April 9, Führer Quisling ordered the arrest of Bishop Berggrav and four other leaders of the Christian Council. The five were thrown into Grini concentration camp. A week later Berggrav was removed to solitary confinement in his forest hut.

As other European countries have been liberated, tale after tale has been told of churchmen's heroic resistance, of the people's renewed faith. Still-unliberated Norway has its heroic tales still to tell, when it is safe for free men to speak. But it is known that Norway's patriotic pastors, denied the use of their churches, living precariously on their parishioners' contributions, have increased their congregations tenfold. From Oslo last week came reports of fresh waves of sabotage by spiritually unvanquished patriots. And the 50-odd quisling pastors are preaching to empty benches.

To her brother, fighting with the British, a Norwegian girl wrote: ". . . there is a saying among the people of Norway today, 'So that the many may live, I must be prepared to sacrifice . . . even life itself.' As our own country and our own home are unsafe, the peace of heaven comes remarkably close."

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