🔗 Share this article

Amid red stage curtains at a well-known Oslo location for LGBTQ+ gatherings, the Norwegian Lutheran Church issued a formal apology for harm and unequal treatment it had inflicted.

“Norway's church has brought LGBTQ+ people shame, great harm and pain,” bishop Olav Fykse Tveit, Bishop Tveit, announced on Thursday. “This should never have happened and which is the reason I offer my apology now.”

“Unequal treatment, harassment and discrimination” had caused certain individuals abandoning their faith, Tveit recognized. A religious service at Oslo's main cathedral was planned to follow his apology.

The statement of regret took place at the London Pub establishment, one among two bars targeted in the 2022 attack that killed two people and caused serious injuries to nine during Oslo’s Pride celebrations. A Norwegian citizen originally from Iran, who had pledged allegiance to Islamic State, was given a prison term to no less than 30 years in incarceration for carrying out the attacks.

Similar to numerous global faiths, Norway's church – an evangelical Lutheran church that is the most extensive faith community in the country – had long marginalised the LGBTQ+ community, denying them the opportunity to become pastors or to have church weddings. During the 1950s, church leaders characterized LGBTQ+ persons as a “social danger of global proportions”.

But as Norwegian society became increasingly liberal, ranking as the second globally to legalize same-sex partnerships during 1993 and during 2009 the initial Nordic nation to legalize same-sex marriage, the religious institution eventually adapted.

During 2007, Norway's church began ordaining LGBTQ+ clergy, and gay and lesbian couples have been able to marry in church since 2017. Last year, Tveit participated in Oslo’s Pride parade in what was noted as an unprecedented step for the church.

The apology on Thursday was met with differing opinions. The head of a network representing Norwegian Christian lesbians, Pedersen-Eriksen, a lesbian minister herself, referred to it as “a crucial act of amends” and an occasion that “signaled the conclusion of a difficult period within the church's past”.

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

Internationally, a handful of religious institutions have sought to reconcile for historical treatment concerning the LGBTQ+ community. During 2023, the Anglican Church apologised for what it referred to as “shameful” actions, although it persists in refusing to authorize same-sex weddings in church.

Likewise, the Methodist Church in Ireland in the past year expressed regret for “inadequate pastoral assistance and care” toward LGBTQ+ individuals and their relatives, but remained staunch in its belief that matrimony must only constitute a partnership of one man and one woman.

In the early part of this year, Canada's United Church issued an apology to Two-Spirit and LGBTQIA+ groups, characterizing it as a reaffirmation of the church’s “commitment to radical hospitality and full inclusion” in every part of the church's activities.

“We have failed to honor and appreciate the wonderful diversity of creation,” Rev Michael Blair, the general secretary of the church, remarked. “We have hurt individuals rather than pursuing healing. We are sorry.”