🔗 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.

“The church in Norway has caused LGBTQ+ individuals pain, shame and significant harm,” the lead bishop, Olav Fykse Tveit, stated during a Thursday event. “It was wrong for this to take place and this is why I offer my apology now.”

“Unequal treatment, harassment and discrimination” resulted in certain individuals abandoning their faith, the bishop admitted. A church service at Oslo's main cathedral was planned to follow his apology.

This formal apology took place at the London Pub, a bar that was one of two targeted in the 2022 attack that killed two people and injured nine people severely during Oslo’s Pride celebrations. A Norwegian citizen originally from Iran, who expressed support for ISIS, was sentenced to a minimum of three decades in incarceration for the killings.

Like many religions around the world, the Norwegian Lutheran Church – an evangelical Lutheran church that is Norway’s largest faith community – for years sidelined LGBTQ+ individuals, refusing to allow them to become pastors or to have church weddings. In the 1950s, the church’s bishops referred to homosexual individuals as “a worldwide social threat”.

Yet, with Norwegian society turning more progressive, ranking as the second globally to permit registered partnerships for same-sex couples during 1993 and in 2009 the initial Nordic nation to legalize same-sex marriage, the church gradually changed.

During 2007, Norway's church began ordaining LGBTQ+ clergy, and LGBTQ+ partners could marry in church starting in 2017. In 2023, the bishop took part in the Pride march in Oslo in what was called a historic moment for the religious institution.

Thursday’s apology received a mixed reaction. The leader of an organization for Christian lesbians in Norway, Hanne Marie Pedersen-Eriksen, who is also a gay pastor, called it “a crucial act of amends” and a moment that “finally marked the end of a dark chapter in the history of the church”.

For Stephen Adom, the director of the Association for Gender and Sexual Diversity in Norway, the apology represented “powerful and significant” but was delivered “too late for those who lost their lives to AIDS … carrying heavy hearts because the church considered the epidemic as divine punishment”.

Internationally, a handful of religious institutions have attempted to offer apologies for historical treatment concerning the LGBTQ+ community. During 2023, the Church of England expressed regret for what it described as “shameful” actions, even as it continues to refuse to permit gay marriages within the church.

Similarly, the Methodist Church in Ireland in the past year expressed regret for “shortcomings in pastoral care and support” regarding the LGBTQ+ community and their relatives, but stayed firm in its belief that marriage should only represent a union between a man and a woman.

Several months ago, Canada's United Church delivered a statement of regret toward Two-Spirit and LGBTQIA+ individuals, labeling it a renewed commitment of the church’s “commitment to radical hospitality and full inclusion” in every part of the church's activities.

“We have not succeeded to celebrate and delight in the wonderful diversity of creation,” Reverend Blair, the top administrative leader of the church, said. “We have hurt individuals in place of fostering completeness. We are sorry.”