Law Professor meets Presiding Bishop of Norway

This June, Professor Norman Doe, Director of the Centre for Law and Religion had a private meeting with The Most Revd Helga Haugland Byfuglien, Presiding Bishop of the Bishops' Conference of the Church of Norway.

The Evangelical Lutheran Church of Norway is the national established or folk church of Norway. Its Presiding Bishop is equivalent to the Archbishop of Canterbury of the Church of England. Professor Doe and Bishop Byfuglien discussed the Statement of Principles of Christian Law (Rome 2016), suggested and initially drafted by Professor Doe on the basis of his book Christian Law: Contemporary Principles (Cambridge University Press, 2013), issued by an ecumenical panel drawn from ten Christian traditions worldwide, and being fed into the work of the World Council of Churches and its Faith and Order Commission.

Bishop Byfuglien explained how she welcomed the Statement in fostering collaboration between divided Christians worldwide. The meeting was arranged by Andreas Henriksen Aarflot, Adviser in the Legal Section of the National Council of the Church of Norway and Vice-Chairman of the Norwegian Society of Church Law and Adviser. Following the meeting, Professor Doe provided the keynote address at a meeting of the Norwegian Society of Church Law on the nature of the establishment of the Church of England and its disestablishment in Wales in 1920.

On 7 June, Professor Doe addressed a meeting on the Statement co-hosted by the Church of Norway Council on Ecumenical and International Relations and the Church of Norway’s Bishops’ Conference which was followed by a meeting with the Legal Section of the Church when the Statement was used to discuss current developments in church-state relations in Norway.