page_title: Baptist Union of Norway
section_title: First congregations
hierarchical_section_title: Baptist Union of Norway / History / First congregations
caption_attribution_description: English: Oslo First Baptist Church (Norw. Oslo 1. baptistkirke), Hausmanns stret 22, Hausmannsområdet neighbourhood, Oslo. Built 1898, ca. 120 seats.
context_page_description: The Baptist Union of Norway is a Baptist Christian denomination in Norway. It is affiliated with the Baptist World Alliance. The headquarters is in Stabekk.
context_section_description: The first Baptist in Norway was Enok Richard Haftorsen Svee. Grown up in a Haugianer family in Orkanger, he moved to Copenhagen in 1837 to attend missionary training. There he came into contact with a group of unorganized Baptists and participated in the founding of Denmark's first Baptist congregation the following year. This was illegal at the time. Svee returned to Orkanger in 1842 and died a year later, never establishing a congregation in Norway.
  The Parliament of Norway passed the Dissenter Act on 16 July 1845, allowing Christian congregations outside the Church of Norway to be established. The Swedish Baptist Fredrik Olaus Nilsson visited Norway several times from 1851, but his preaching was futile. Instead the Danish preacher Fredrik L. Rymker from Odense was successful at establishing a congregation. The Danish community dispatched him to Norway to preach. He arrived in Skien on 21 September 1857 and started preaching in the various free churches there. He also travel around to neighboring towns. Carl Gundersen Kongerød became the first Baptist baptized in Norway, on 25 December 1858. By 22 April 1860 there were nine Baptists in the area and the Baptist Congregation in Porsgrunn and Solum was founded.
  Rymker continued to travel and preach until 1862, funded through grants from congregations in the United States. He helped establish Larvik Baptist Congregation on 14 November 1860 and Kragerø Baptist Congregation on 31 August 1862. A congregation of baptists in Levanger was founded in 1862. New preachers arrived in Norway and the cause spread throughout the 1860s. Eidsvoll Baptist Congregation was founded on 29 August 1864 and in Melum on 25 December 1865. Additional congregations were founded in Arendal presumably on 14 August 1867, followed by Bergen, Tromsø and Tvedestrand in 1870. Two years later congregations were established in the towns of Langesund, Risør and Trondheim.
  Focus shifted to the capital Kristiania (today Oslo). The Swedish pastor Sven Svensson visited the city, funded by the Baptist Missionary Society (BMS) and helped incorporate a congregation in 1874. It became the subject to personal conflicts and part of the congregation split in favor of the Adventist Church, and the organization was disestablished in 1880. It was reestablished in 1884 and within a decade had become the largest Baptist congregation in the country.
  All the congregations were established as independent denominations under the protection that the Dissenter Act provided, even if they could have as few as six members. Following a movement inspired by the United States, there was a trend towards weak congregationalism. This established a common understanding of the legal and organizational independence of each congregation, while retaining the need for a national administrative and theological coordination. By the early 1870s the congregations in Skien, Bergen, Trondheim and Tromsø had largely taken on regional responsibilities and covered areas far exceeding the city limits.
caption: Oslo First Baptist Church
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