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180 Chapter 13 The Autonomous Church From Resistance to Opposition This chapter is about the formation of an autonomous church organization to serve its members with “Word and sacrament”; the next chapter is the story of the NS’s attempt to rebuild the state church. Both chapters are also about each side’s strategy to contain the other, to deny the other legitimacy. At first glance, building an organization may seem peripheral to the story of the church’s resistance to Nazism, a diversion from the important issues, but that is not so. The clergy’s mass resignation on Easter 1942 made it central. Deprived of the economic and institutional support of the state, and in order to fulfill its stated mission of serving the people with Word and sacrament, the church had to create an alternative institutional structure. Doing so was necessary to maintain its interpretation of Christianity , but it was also necessary in order to contest the legitimacy of the NS church and, indirectly, the NS state.1 The Guidelines of Non-Cooperation The Church of Norway was so entangled with the state that the PCL’s first order of business was developing policies for its disentanglement. In its first message to clergy, parish councils, and congregations, the PCL issued specific guidelines, which were supplemented over time and became known as “the ten commandments.”2 The underlying principles The Autonomous Church · 181 were continuation of ministry and systematic non-cooperation with the state along clearly defined lines. The purpose was to delegitimize the NS church and, indirectly, the state that supported it. The clergy were thus directed to continue their ministry without regard for the Church Department’s dismissals or appointments. This meant dealing solely with legitimate bishops, deans, and parish councils; continuing to live in parsonages; using parish churches and their facilities ; and, with modifications, maintaining birth, baptism, marriage, and other records. Clergy were to have no dealings whatever with the Church Department, the NS bishops, deans, clergy, or parish councils. Salary checks and correspondence were to be returned unopened, and the same applied to income due from local governments. Similarly, councils were to communicate to parishioners that they remained the legitimate councils and to cooperate solely with “pastors” who had resigned from their state offices. Only these were to be recognized as legitimate pastors of the parish, to have automatic membership on the parish councils, and to have use of the church, its facilities, and manse. When a parish pastorate became vacant, councils were to request replacements from their rightly appointed bishops. The elected parish councils were to decline nomination to appointed NS councils, refuse to prepare budgets for municipalities, and assert their right to oversee church property and determine its use. If an NS clergyman was appointed to the parish, they were not to inform him about meetings or to deliberate with him. A parish council dismissed by the NS Church Department was to continue as if it had not been dismissed, precisely as the clergy were doing. Overall, pastors and councils were to ignore, shun, and boycott the “Nazi Church,” ignore state and local government authorities, and resist both if they interfered with their legitimate duties.3 Administration For practical reasons, PCL members were full-time clergy who lived in Oslo. Erling Thomle related that the group usually met on Mondays, unless circumstances required greater frequency. Meetings would begin with prayer, a news update, and then discussions that often lasted from 11 a.m. to 3 or 4 p.m., because decisions were made by consensus. Initially, they met at an office on St. Olavs Street until a police raid on 9 November 182 · Contesting NS Legitimacy 1942 forced them to move to the sacristy of the Church for the Deaf and, later, a small room in Oslo’s Frogner Church. The Frogner room had poor ventilation, which, Thomle noted, was hard on non-smokers because “the smoke was often thick and the tobacco not of the best.” Thereafter, they would also meet occasionally in the apartment of Lilly Schübeler, a sister of one of the PCL members, Ludwig Schübeler. They stored records in specially built cupboards and hiding places in the Frogner Church, in a suitcase Thomle buried in his back yard, or in boxes hidden at the homes of Lilly Schübeler, Johannes Dietrichson, or Thomle.4 PCL members were surprised they were not caught, and they had reason to be. The group was in constant contact with the bishops...

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