🔗 Share this article

Amid red stage curtains at one of Oslo’s most prominent LGBTQ+ spaces, the Church of Norway expressed regret for harm and unequal treatment it had inflicted.

“The church in Norway has brought the LGBTQ+ community shame, great harm and pain,” the lead bishop, Bishop Tveit, announced during a Thursday event. “This ought not to have occurred and that is why I offer my apology now.”

The “discrimination, unequal treatment and harassment” had caused some to lose their faith, the bishop admitted. A religious service at Oslo Cathedral was arranged to take place after his statement.

This formal apology was delivered at a venue called London Pub, one among two bars attacked during the 2022 attack that took two lives and caused serious injuries to nine at Oslo's Pride event. An individual of Iranian descent living in Norway, who expressed support for ISIS, was sentenced to at least 30 years in prison for the murders.

Similar to numerous global faiths, Norway's church – a Lutheran evangelical community that is Norway’s largest faith community – had long marginalised LGBTQ+ individuals, preventing them from serving as pastors or from marrying in religious ceremonies. In the 1950s, church leaders described gay people as a “social danger of global proportions”.

Yet, with Norwegian society turning more progressive, ranking as the second globally to allow same-sex registered partnerships during 1993 and during 2009 the first Scandinavian country to approve gay marriage, the church gradually changed.

Back in 2007, the Church of Norway commenced the ordination of LGBTQ+ clergy, and gay and lesbian couples have been able to have church weddings from 2017 onward. In 2023, Tveit joined in the Oslo Pride event in what was noted as a historic moment for the religious institution.

Thursday’s apology elicited varied responses. The director of a group of Christian lesbians in Norway, Hanne Marie, herself a gay pastor, referred to it as “an important reparation” and an occasion that “signaled the conclusion of a painful era in the history of the church”.

According to Stephen Adom, the director of Norway’s Association for Gender and Sexual Diversity, the apology was “powerful and significant” but arrived “not in time for those who lost their lives to AIDS … with deep sorrow in their hearts as the church regarded the crisis as punishment from God”.

Internationally, several faith-based organizations have sought to reconcile for their actions towards LGBTQ+ people. During 2023, the Church of England apologised for what it referred to as “disgraceful” conduct, though it still declines to authorize same-sex weddings in religious settings.

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

Earlier this year, Canada's United Church offered an apology to Two-Spirit and LGBTQIA+ groups, labeling it a renewed commitment of the church’s “commitment to radical hospitality and full inclusion” in every part of the church's activities.

“We have failed to celebrate and delight in the wonderful diversity of creation,” Reverend Blair, the general secretary of the church, said. “We have hurt individuals instead of seeking wholeness. We express our regret.”