🔗 Share this article

Set against crimson theater drapes at a well-known Oslo location for LGBTQ+ gatherings, the Church of Norway issued a formal apology for harm and unequal treatment perpetrated over the years.

“Norway's church has brought the LGBTQ+ community harm, suffering and humiliation,” bishop Olav Fykse Tveit, Olav Fykse Tveit, announced during a Thursday event. “This ought not to have occurred and that is why today I say sorry.”

“Harassment, discrimination and unfair treatment” resulted in some to lose their faith, Tveit recognized. A religious service at Oslo's main cathedral was planned to come after the apology.

The apology occurred at a venue called London Pub, one among two bars targeted in the 2022 attack that killed two people and left nine seriously injured at Oslo's Pride event. An individual of Iranian descent living in Norway, who had pledged allegiance to Islamic State, was sentenced to a minimum of three decades behind bars for the killings.

In common with various worldwide religions, the Church of Norway – a Lutheran evangelical community that is Norway’s largest faith community – for years sidelined LGBTQ+ individuals, refusing to allow them from joining the clergy or from marrying in religious ceremonies. During the 1950s, church leaders described gay people as a “social danger of global proportions”.

However, as Norway's society grew more liberal, becoming the second in the world to legalize same-sex partnerships in 1993 and by 2009 the first Scandinavian country to approve gay marriage, the church gradually changed.

Back in 2007, the Norwegian Lutheran Church began ordaining gay pastors, and gay and lesbian couples have been able to have church weddings from 2017 onward. During 2023, the bishop took part in Oslo’s Pride parade in what was described as a first for the church.

Thursday’s apology was met with differing opinions. The head of a network for Christian lesbians in Norway, Hanne Marie, herself a gay pastor, referred to it as “a significant step toward healing” and a moment that “represented the closure of a painful era in the history of the church”.

As stated by Stephen Adom, the director of the Association for Gender and Sexual Diversity in Norway, the apology represented “powerful and significant” but arrived “not in time for those who lost their lives to AIDS … with deep sorrow in their hearts because the church considered the disease to be God’s punishment”.

Worldwide, a handful of religious institutions have tried to offer apologies for their actions towards LGBTQ+ people. In 2023, the Anglican Church expressed regret for what it characterized as its “shameful” treatment, although it persists in refusing to authorize same-sex weddings in religious settings.

Similarly, the Methodist Church located in Ireland last year expressed regret for “shortcomings in pastoral care and support” to LGBTQ+ people and family members, but held fast in its conviction that matrimony must only constitute a bond between male and female.

Earlier this year, Canada's United Church delivered a statement of regret to two spirit and LGBTQIA+ communities, characterizing it as a reaffirmation of the church's “dedication to welcoming all and full inclusion” in every part of the church's activities.

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