🔗 Share this article

Set against deep red curtains at a leading Oslo LGBTQ+ venue, the Church of Norway offered an apology for harm and unequal treatment perpetrated over the years.

“Norway's church has inflicted LGBTQ+ individuals harm, suffering and humiliation,” bishop Olav Fykse Tveit, Bishop Tveit, declared during a Thursday event. “This ought not to have occurred and which is the reason I apologise today.”

“Harassment, discrimination and unfair treatment” led to certain individuals abandoning their faith, Tveit recognized. A religious service at Oslo's main cathedral was arranged to take place after his statement.

This formal apology took place at the London Pub establishment, one of two bars attacked during the 2022 violent incident that killed two people and caused serious injuries to nine throughout the Oslo Pride festivities. An individual of Iranian descent living in Norway, who had pledged allegiance to Islamic State, was given a prison term to at least 30 years behind bars for the murders.

Similar to numerous global faiths, the Church of Norway – a Protestant Lutheran denomination that is Norway’s largest faith community – had long marginalised the LGBTQ+ community, refusing to allow them from serving as pastors or from marrying in religious ceremonies. Back in the 1950s, church leaders characterized LGBTQ+ persons as a “social danger of global proportions”.

But as Norwegian society became increasingly liberal, becoming the second in the world to allow same-sex registered partnerships in 1993 and during 2009 the first Scandinavian country to approve gay marriage, the church slowly followed.

During 2007, the Norwegian Lutheran Church started appointing homosexual ministers, and same-sex couples have been able to get married in religious ceremonies starting in 2017. During 2023, the bishop took part in the Pride march in Oslo in what was described as an unprecedented step for the church.

Thursday’s apology elicited differing opinions. The head of a network representing Norwegian Christian lesbians, Pedersen-Eriksen, a lesbian minister herself, described it as “a crucial act of amends” and a moment that “signaled the conclusion of a painful era in the history of the church”.

For Stephen Adom, the director of the Association for Gender and Sexual Diversity in Norway, the apology was “meaningful and vital” but was delivered “too late for those who lost their lives to AIDS … with deep sorrow in their hearts since the church viewed the epidemic to be God’s punishment”.

Worldwide, several faith-based organizations have tried to offer apologies for their actions concerning the LGBTQ+ community. Last year, the Anglican Church expressed regret for what it characterized as “disgraceful” conduct, although it still declines to authorize same-sex weddings in church.

Similarly, Ireland's Methodist Church the previous year apologised for “shortcomings in pastoral care and support” toward LGBTQ+ individuals and family members, but remained staunch in the view that marriage should only represent a bond between male and female.

In the early part of this year, the United Church based in Canada offered an apology toward Two-Spirit and LGBTQIA+ individuals, characterizing it as a reaffirmation of its “pledge to complete acceptance and open hospitality” in all aspects of church life.

“We have not succeeded to honor and appreciate all of your beautiful creation,” Rev Michael Blair, the top administrative leader of the church, said. “We have wounded people rather than pursuing healing. We are sorry.”