Levi Fragell

Who is Levi Fragell?

Levi Fragell is a Norwegian humanist. He has been chairman and secretary of the Norwegian Humanist Association, and was President of the International Humanist and Ethical Union between 1987-1990 and, in his own right, between 1998-2003.

His father was a Pentecostalist preacher, and in his teens Fragell also began working full-time as a preacher, before his studies in philosophy and comparative religion led him to leave the church. He took a university degree in the sociology of religion and then worked for a year as a school teacher in northern Norway, before becoming a journalist, and later working in marketing. He also became press secretary to several cabinet ministers in Norway.

In 1976, he became leader of the Norwegian Humanist Association at a time when it had 1500 members; its membership later grew to over 75,000 making it, as a proportion of national population, the largest such organisation in the world. He joined the board of the IHEU in the 1980s, becoming its co-president in 1987 and sole president between 1998 and 2003. In 2003 he was one of the signers of the Humanist Manifesto.