🔗 Share this article

Set against crimson theater drapes at a leading Oslo LGBTQ+ venue, Norway's national church expressed regret for hurtful actions and exclusion it had inflicted.

“The church in Norway has brought LGBTQ+ individuals shame, great harm and pain,” bishop Olav Fykse Tveit, the church leader, announced during a Thursday event. “It was wrong for this to take place and which is the reason today I say sorry.”

“Unequal treatment, harassment and discrimination” had caused certain individuals abandoning their faith, Tveit acknowledged. A worship service at the cathedral in Oslo was arranged to come after the apology.

The apology took place at a venue called London Pub, one of two bars attacked during the 2022 attack that took two lives and injured nine people severely during Oslo’s Pride celebrations. A Norwegian of Iranian origin, who swore loyalty to Islamic State, was given a prison term to a minimum of three decades in prison for the killings.

In common with various worldwide religions, the Church of Norway – a Protestant Lutheran denomination that is Norway’s largest faith community – had long marginalised LGBTQ+ individuals, preventing them to become pastors or to have church weddings. Back in the 1950s, bishops of the church referred to homosexual individuals as “a worldwide social threat”.

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

In 2007, the Church of Norway commenced the ordination of gay pastors, and LGBTQ+ partners could have church weddings from 2017 onward. During 2023, Tveit joined in the Pride march in Oslo in what was called a historic moment for the religious institution.

Thursday’s apology was met with varied responses. The director of a group for Christian lesbians in Norway, Pedersen-Eriksen, a lesbian minister herself, called it “a crucial act of amends” and a point in time that “finally marked the end of a difficult period in the history of the church”.

According to Stephen Adom, the head of the Association for Gender and Sexual Diversity in Norway, the statement was “strong and important” but arrived “too late for those who lost their lives to AIDS … carrying heavy hearts since the church viewed the crisis as divine punishment”.

Globally, several faith-based organizations have sought to reconcile for their past behavior regarding LGBTQ+ individuals. In 2023, England's church expressed regret for what it described as “disgraceful” conduct, although it still declines to authorize same-sex weddings in religious settings.

Similarly, the Methodist Church in Ireland last year issued an apology for “shortcomings in pastoral care and support” toward LGBTQ+ individuals and their families, but remained staunch in the view that matrimony must only constitute a union between a man and a woman.

Earlier this year, the United Church of Canada issued an apology to Two-Spirit and LGBTQIA+ groups, labeling it 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 the beauty of all creation,” Michael Blair, the general secretary of the church, said. “We caused pain to people instead of seeking wholeness. We express our regret.”