Prohibicja w Norwegii: norweskie wolne kościoły i ruchy religijne w walce z alkoholem i pijaństwem w XIX i na początku wieku XX

In the first half of the nineteenth century the whole Protestant Scandinavia was swept by a people’s preaching movement. It was a response to and a secular alternative of the state Church and interpretations of the faith imposed by the state. In Scandinavia it is known under the name of Revivalism, originating from Pietism, an important movement of the Lutheran Church revival. Pietism was born in the second half of the seventeenth century as the revival movement that regarded the faith as a totally subjective experience: the true Christian faith was not to repeat some religious texts; it had to be a true individual experience. The revival, that is a conscious inner transformation, was recognised as more important than the baptism, which could have been wasted by a person who did not live a virtuous life. What was characteristic of Pietism was that it categorically rejected the world with its entertainments. The revival in the nineteenth century of Pietism and its varieties, such as the Moravian Church, resulted in mass social movements of peasant character. In Norway a special place among revival associations was occupied by the fight against a life of sin in the broad sense of the term, and first of all, the initiative which originated in the 1830s to establish religious organisations for promoting sobriety, on the model of British associations, abstinence and struggle with alcohol abuse. In sermons, the overuse of alcohol was regarded as one of the most deadly sins, besides prostitution. The increasingly strong position of the Revivalism movement and related organisations for promoting sobriety which in the early twentieth century associated ca. 10 percent of Norwegians made it possible for the movement to influence Norwegian legislation from the mid-nineteenth century on. First bans on home distillation of vodka were imposed in 1845, in the 1890s individual communities and towns were given the right to organise a referendum on permitting or banning the sale of strong alcohol. The apogee of the struggle fought by abstinence organisation fell on the First World War. In 1919, after a referendum in Norway was conducted, the prohibition on alcohol was imposed. The ban was introduced on the sale of vodka and strong wines (port and sherry), and the sale of other alcohols (wine and beer) had to meet rigorous rules. Consequences of the prohibition turned out to be socially harmful, including the sharp rise of criminal activity associated with the illegal production and sale of alcohol, serious health problem of people (including those caused by drinking of methyl alcohol) and the phenomena thus far unknown in Norway, i.e. the mass disregard for the law and avoidance of it. As a result, in 1926 a second referendum was conducted and the prohibition was lifted, although the state monopoly on the sale of alcohol was introduced.