🔗 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 discrimination and harm perpetrated over the years.

“The church in Norway has inflicted the LGBTQ+ community shame, great harm and pain,” bishop Olav Fykse Tveit, the church leader, stated during a Thursday event. “This ought not to have occurred and which is the reason I offer my apology now.”

“Harassment, discrimination and unfair treatment” had caused a loss of faith for some, Tveit acknowledged. A worship service at Oslo's main cathedral was planned to come after the apology.

This formal apology occurred at a venue called London Pub, a bar that was one of two attacked during the 2022 attack that killed two people and caused serious injuries to nine throughout the Oslo Pride festivities. A Norwegian of Iranian origin, who had pledged allegiance to Islamic State, was sentenced to at least 30 years in prison for the killings.

Similar to numerous global faiths, Norway's church – a Lutheran evangelical community that is the most extensive faith community in the country – had long marginalised LGBTQ+ people, denying them the opportunity from serving as pastors or to have church weddings. In the 1950s, bishops of the church described gay people as “a worldwide social threat”.

Yet, with Norwegian society turning more progressive, emerging as the world's second to allow same-sex registered partnerships in 1993 and during 2009 the initial Nordic nation to approve gay marriage, the church slowly followed.

Back in 2007, the Church of Norway began ordaining homosexual ministers, and LGBTQ+ partners could marry in church since 2017. Last year, Tveit participated in Oslo’s Pride parade in what was noted as a first for the church.

The apology on Thursday elicited a mixed reaction. The director of a group for Christian lesbians in Norway, Pedersen-Eriksen, a lesbian minister herself, described it as “an important reparation” and an occasion that “represented the closure of a dark chapter in the church’s history”.

As stated by Stephen Adom, the director of the Norwegian Association for Gender and Sexual Diversity, the apology represented “strong and important” but arrived “too late for those who lost their lives to AIDS … with hearts filled with anguish since the church viewed the disease as divine punishment”.

Worldwide, a handful of religious institutions have sought to offer apologies for historical treatment concerning the LGBTQ+ community. During 2023, the Anglican Church expressed regret for what it described as “shameful” actions, though it still declines to allow same-sex marriages within the church.

Likewise, the Methodist Church located in Ireland the previous year expressed regret for “inadequate pastoral assistance and care” to LGBTQ+ people and family members, but held fast in its belief that matrimony must only constitute a bond between male and female.

Several months ago, Canada's United Church delivered a statement of regret to Two-Spirit and LGBTQIA+ groups, characterizing it as a reaffirmation of its “pledge to complete acceptance and open hospitality” in every part of the church's activities.

“We have not succeeded to celebrate and delight in the beauty of all creation,” Rev Michael Blair, the church's general secretary, stated. “We have hurt individuals rather than pursuing healing. We are sorry.”