🔗 Share this article

Set against deep red curtains at one of Oslo’s most prominent LGBTQ+ spaces, the Church of Norway issued a formal apology for discrimination and harm caused by the church.

“The church in Norway has inflicted LGBTQ+ individuals shame, great harm and pain,” bishop Olav Fykse Tveit, Bishop Tveit, stated this Thursday. “This should never have happened and which is the reason I offer my apology now.”

“Harassment, discrimination and unfair treatment” had caused some to lose their faith, Tveit recognized. A worship service at Oslo Cathedral was planned to take place after his statement.

This formal apology was delivered at a venue called London Pub, one among two bars involved in the 2022 attack that killed two people and caused serious injuries to nine at Oslo's Pride event. A Norwegian of Iranian origin, who swore loyalty to Islamic State, was given a prison term to at least 30 years behind bars for the murders.

Like many religions around the world, the Norwegian Lutheran Church – an evangelical Lutheran church that is the biggest religious group in Norway – had long marginalised the LGBTQ+ community, refusing to allow them from serving as pastors or to marry in church. In the 1950s, the church’s bishops referred to homosexual individuals as “a worldwide social threat”.

But as Norwegian society became increasingly liberal, becoming the second in the world to allow same-sex registered partnerships back in 1993 and in 2009 the initial Nordic nation to approve gay marriage, the church slowly followed.

In 2007, the Norwegian Lutheran Church commenced the ordination of gay pastors, and gay and lesbian couples have been able to marry in church since 2017. During 2023, the bishop took part in Oslo’s Pride parade in what was noted as a historic moment for the religious institution.

Thursday’s apology received varied responses. The leader of an organization representing Norwegian Christian lesbians, Hanne Marie Pedersen-Eriksen, who is also a gay pastor, called it “an important reparation” and an occasion that “represented the closure of a dark chapter in the church’s history”.

For Stephen Adom, the head of the Association for Gender and Sexual Diversity in Norway, the apology represented “strong and important” but was delivered “not in time for those who passed away from AIDS … with hearts filled with anguish as the church regarded the epidemic to be God’s punishment”.

Worldwide, a few churches have tried to reconcile for their actions towards LGBTQ+ people. During 2023, the Anglican Church apologised for what it characterized as “disgraceful” conduct, even as it persists in refusing to authorize same-sex weddings in church.

In a similar vein, Ireland's Methodist Church the previous year expressed regret for “inadequate pastoral assistance and care” regarding the LGBTQ+ community and their relatives, but remained staunch in its conviction that marriage could only be a union between a man and a woman.

Several months ago, Canada's United Church issued an apology toward Two-Spirit and LGBTQIA+ individuals, describing it as a reaffirmation of its “pledge to complete acceptance and open hospitality” in all aspects of church life.

“We did not manage to celebrate and delight in all of your beautiful creation,” Michael Blair, the general secretary of the church, said. “We have wounded people in place of fostering completeness. We are sorry.”