We have explored the timing and tempo of educational development and religious change in Norwegian society between about 1740 and 1891, when these reciprocal processes were shaped by some regional contrasts in systems of social stratification. The most fundamental conceptual device in terms of which this descriptive task has been organized is what I label “historical role analysis.” This entailed a rather single-minded focus upon the changing role relationships of state-church pastors, parish school teachers, and lay preachers with each other as well as with their parishioners, pupils, parents, and lay-activist audiences. I have been more interested in the course and possible consequences of changes in the social organization of literacy production than in demonstrating the fact of literacy itself. In like fashion, only the most superficial attention has been given to the intellectual/ideological content of the several Lutheran theologies, from Orthodoxy through Pietism and Rationalism to Johnsonian Neo-Orthodoxy. These and other such intellectual historical labels were useful points of reference in discussing organizational indicators of diversification in styles of lay and clerical religiosity.

Three major interacting types were distinguished: clerical generations or factions; laicization of religious initiative as organized within the Hauge, Inner-and Outer-Mission movements; and clear-cut sectarian breaks with the established order in contrast to the separations within the church characteristic of the second type. The process of secularization was seen to be intimately related to but distinguishable from these modes of religious diversification in Norwegian society during the period under review.