🔗 Share this article

Set against red stage curtains at a leading Oslo LGBTQ+ venue, Norway's national church issued a formal apology for hurtful actions and exclusion caused by the church.

“The national church has brought LGBTQ+ people shame, great harm and pain,” the lead bishop, Olav Fykse Tveit, declared on Thursday. “This ought not to have occurred and that is why today I say sorry.”

The “discrimination, unequal treatment and harassment” resulted in certain individuals abandoning their faith, the bishop admitted. A religious service at the cathedral in Oslo was planned to come after the apology.

This formal apology was delivered at the London Pub establishment, one among two bars attacked during the 2022 shooting 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 at least 30 years behind bars for the murders.

In common with various worldwide religions, Norway's church – an evangelical Lutheran church that is Norway’s largest faith community – had long marginalised LGBTQ+ individuals, refusing to allow them to become pastors or from marrying in religious ceremonies. In the 1950s, the church’s bishops referred to homosexual individuals as a “social danger of global proportions”.

Yet, with Norwegian society turning more progressive, becoming the second in the world to permit registered partnerships for same-sex couples back in 1993 and by 2009 the first in Scandinavia to approve gay marriage, the church gradually changed.

Back in 2007, Norway's church commenced the ordination of homosexual ministers, and gay and lesbian couples could have church weddings since 2017. Last year, Tveit participated in the Pride march in Oslo in what was described as an unprecedented step for the church.

The apology on Thursday elicited varied responses. The director of a group for Christian lesbians in Norway, Pedersen-Eriksen, herself a gay pastor, referred to it as “an important reparation” and an occasion that “signaled the conclusion of a difficult period within the church's past”.

For Stephen Adom, the head of the Norwegian Association for Gender and Sexual Diversity, the apology represented “strong and important” but was delivered “not in time for those who lost their lives to AIDS … with hearts filled with anguish because the church considered the epidemic to be God’s punishment”.

Internationally, a few churches have tried to reconcile for historical treatment regarding LGBTQ+ individuals. In 2023, England's church apologised for what it referred to as “disgraceful” conduct, even as it continues to refuse to permit gay marriages in religious settings.

Likewise, the Methodist Church in Ireland in the past year issued an apology for “shortcomings in pastoral care and support” toward LGBTQ+ individuals and their families, but remained staunch in the view that marriage could only be a bond between male and female.

Several months ago, the United Church based in Canada issued an apology toward Two-Spirit and LGBTQIA+ individuals, labeling it a renewed commitment of the church's “dedication to welcoming all and full inclusion” throughout every area of church life.

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