🔗 Share this article

Against red stage curtains at a leading Oslo LGBTQ+ venue, the Church of Norway issued a formal apology for harm and unequal treatment it had inflicted.

“The church in Norway has brought the LGBTQ+ community shame, great harm and pain,” the presiding bishop, Bishop Tveit, declared this Thursday. “This should never have happened and which is the reason today I say sorry.”

“Harassment, discrimination and unfair treatment” had caused a loss of faith for some, the bishop admitted. A religious service at Oslo Cathedral was scheduled to come after the apology.

This formal apology took place at a venue called London Pub, a bar that was one of two targeted in the 2022 violent incident that took two lives and left nine seriously injured throughout the Oslo Pride festivities. A Norwegian citizen originally from Iran, who swore loyalty to Islamic State, received a sentence to at least 30 years in incarceration for carrying out the attacks.

Like many religions around the world, the Norwegian Lutheran Church – a Protestant Lutheran denomination that is the most extensive faith community in the country – for years sidelined LGBTQ+ people, refusing to allow them from serving as pastors or from marrying in religious ceremonies. Back in the 1950s, bishops of the church described gay people as “a global-scale societal hazard”.

Yet, with Norwegian society turning more progressive, emerging as the world's second to permit registered partnerships for same-sex couples back in 1993 and in 2009 the first in Scandinavia to allow same-sex marriage, the church slowly followed.

In 2007, the Church of Norway began ordaining homosexual ministers, and LGBTQ+ partners have been able to have church weddings from 2017 onward. In 2023, Tveit joined in the Pride march in Oslo in what was called an unprecedented step for the church.

The apology on Thursday received differing opinions. The director of a group of Christian lesbians in Norway, Pedersen-Eriksen, who is also a gay pastor, called it “an important reparation” and a point in time that “signaled the conclusion of a painful era in the history of the church”.

As stated by Stephen Adom, the head of Norway’s Association for Gender and Sexual Diversity, the apology was “meaningful and vital” but had come “too late for those who lost their lives to AIDS … with deep sorrow in their hearts because the church considered the crisis as divine punishment”.

Worldwide, a handful of religious institutions have sought to make amends for their actions concerning the LGBTQ+ community. During 2023, England's church said sorry for what it referred to as “disgraceful” conduct, although it continues to refuse to permit gay marriages in church.

In a similar vein, the Methodist Church in Ireland in the past year expressed regret for its “failures in pastoral support and care” to LGBTQ+ people and family members, but stayed firm in its belief that marriage should only represent a union between a man and a woman.

In the early part of this year, Canada's United Church delivered a statement of regret to Two-Spirit and LGBTQIA+ groups, labeling it a reaffirmation of the church's “dedication to welcoming all and full inclusion” in all aspects of church life.

“We have failed to celebrate and delight in all of your beautiful creation,” Rev Michael Blair, the general secretary of the church, stated. “We caused pain to people rather than pursuing healing. We express our regret.”