Norway's Church Issues Apology to LGBTQ+ Individuals for ‘Pain, Shame and Significant Harm’

Set against crimson theater drapes at one of Oslo’s most prominent LGBTQ+ spaces, Norway's national church offered an apology for hurtful actions and exclusion caused by the church.

“Norway's church has caused LGBTQ+ individuals shame, great harm and pain,” bishop Olav Fykse Tveit, Bishop Tveit, stated this Thursday. “This ought not to have occurred and which is the reason I apologise today.”

“Unequal treatment, harassment and discrimination” had caused some to lose their faith, the bishop admitted. A religious service at Oslo Cathedral was arranged to come after the apology.

The apology occurred at a venue called London Pub, a bar that was one of two involved in the 2022 shooting that took two lives and injured nine people severely throughout the Oslo Pride festivities. An individual of Iranian descent living in Norway, who expressed support for ISIS, was given a prison term to at least 30 years in incarceration for the killings.

Like many religions around the world, the Church of Norway – a Lutheran evangelical community that is Norway’s largest faith community – for years sidelined LGBTQ+ people, denying them the opportunity from serving as pastors or to have church weddings. During the 1950s, bishops of the church described gay people as “a worldwide social threat”.

However, as Norway's society grew more liberal, ranking as the second globally to legalize same-sex partnerships back in 1993 and in 2009 the first in Scandinavia to approve gay marriage, the church slowly followed.

In 2007, Norway's church began ordaining LGBTQ+ clergy, and gay and lesbian couples could marry in church starting in 2017. In 2023, Tveit participated in the Pride march in Oslo in what was called a first for the church.

The Thursday statement of regret elicited varied responses. The head of a network for Christian lesbians in Norway, Pedersen-Eriksen, a lesbian minister herself, referred to it as “a crucial act of amends” and a point in time that “finally marked the end of a painful era within the church's past”.

According to Stephen Adom, the director of the Association for Gender and Sexual Diversity in Norway, the apology was “powerful and significant” but arrived “overdue for individuals who lost their lives to AIDS … carrying heavy hearts since the church viewed the crisis as divine punishment”.

Internationally, a handful of religious institutions have attempted to offer apologies for their past behavior concerning the LGBTQ+ community. In 2023, the Anglican Church apologised for what it characterized as its “shameful” treatment, although it still declines to permit gay marriages within the church.

In a similar vein, Ireland's Methodist Church in the past year issued an apology for “inadequate pastoral assistance and care” regarding the LGBTQ+ community and family members, but remained staunch in the view that marriage should only represent a bond between male and female.

Several months ago, the United Church of Canada delivered a statement of regret toward Two-Spirit and LGBTQIA+ individuals, describing it as a reaffirmation of the church's “dedication to welcoming all and full inclusion” throughout every area of church life.

“We have failed to honor and appreciate the beauty of all creation,” Rev Michael Blair, the general secretary of the church, remarked. “We have wounded people instead of seeking wholeness. We express our regret.”