Exploring Whiteness and Religious Identity in the Norwegian Church Abroad: A Study of Ethnicity, Nationality, and Race.

This paper investigates the ethnic boundary work that takes place in the Norwegian Church Abroad (NCA). The data are from interviews and participant observation in six NCA churches in the USA and analyzed using concepts drawn from Andreas Wimmer’s framework of ethnic boundary-making. The study shows that ritual language distinguishes Norwegians abroad from Americans with a Norwegian heritage. Default expectations of whiteness is identified as a marker of Norwegianness. This remains the case even though the staff hold antiracist views. Wimmer’s dimension of stability provides a useful analytical tool to understand the role of ritual language and whiteness in working on the boundaries of Norwegianness. Most Norwegians understood themselves as cosmopolitan and non-racist, and they distanced themselves from what they saw as old-fashioned and racialized ideas of Norwegianness among some Norwegian Americans. This may be the result of different racial histories. Norwegian Americans have historically placed themselves in an explicitly racial ethnic system. Norwegians understand themselves through homogenized and color-blind understandings of Norwegianness that enable a white liberal position that remembers the “liberal” and forgets the “white”. This fits well with previous research on Nordic exceptionalism.