🔗 Share this article

Against deep red curtains at a leading Oslo LGBTQ+ venue, 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 shame, great harm and pain,” bishop Olav Fykse Tveit, Olav Fykse Tveit, announced this Thursday. “This should never have happened and which is the reason today I say sorry.”

“Harassment, discrimination and unfair treatment” led to some to lose their faith, Tveit recognized. A worship service at Oslo's main cathedral was arranged to come after the apology.

The apology was delivered at the London Pub establishment, a bar that was one of two targeted in the 2022 violent incident that resulted in two deaths and injured nine people severely at Oslo's Pride event. A Norwegian of Iranian origin, who expressed support for ISIS, received a sentence to no less than 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, preventing them to become pastors or to marry in church. During the 1950s, church leaders described gay people as “a worldwide social threat”.

Yet, with Norwegian society turning more progressive, becoming the second in the world to legalize same-sex partnerships in 1993 and in 2009 the first Scandinavian country to approve gay marriage, the church slowly followed.

During 2007, the Church of Norway started appointing LGBTQ+ clergy, and gay and lesbian couples were permitted to have church weddings since 2017. In 2023, Tveit participated in the Pride march in Oslo in what was described as a historic moment for the religious institution.

The Thursday statement of regret was met with differing opinions. The leader of an organization representing Norwegian Christian lesbians, Hanne Marie Pedersen-Eriksen, who is also a gay pastor, referred to it as “a crucial act of amends” and a point in time that “finally marked the end of a difficult period in the church’s history”.

For Stephen Adom, the leader of Norway’s Association for Gender and Sexual Diversity, the apology represented “powerful and significant” but was delivered “overdue for individuals who lost their lives to AIDS … with deep sorrow in their hearts since the church viewed the epidemic as punishment from God”.

Worldwide, a few churches have tried to offer apologies for their past behavior regarding LGBTQ+ individuals. In 2023, the Anglican Church said sorry for what it described as “disgraceful” conduct, even as it continues to refuse to authorize same-sex weddings in religious settings.

In a similar vein, the Methodist Church located in Ireland in the past year apologised for “shortcomings in pastoral care and support” regarding the LGBTQ+ community and family members, but stayed firm in its belief that marriage should only represent a union between a man and a woman.

Earlier this year, the United Church based in Canada delivered a statement of regret to two spirit and LGBTQIA+ communities, describing it as a renewed commitment of its “pledge to complete acceptance and open hospitality” throughout every area of church life.

“We have not succeeded to rejoice and take pleasure in the beauty of all creation,” Reverend Blair, the general secretary of the church, said. “We have wounded people instead of seeking wholeness. We apologize.”