🔗 Share this article

Against crimson theater drapes at one of Oslo’s most prominent LGBTQ+ spaces, Norway's national church offered an apology for harm and unequal treatment it had inflicted.

“The church in Norway has inflicted LGBTQ+ individuals pain, shame and significant harm,” the presiding bishop, Olav Fykse Tveit, stated on Thursday. “This ought not to have occurred and that is why today I say sorry.”

The “discrimination, unequal treatment and harassment” had caused certain individuals abandoning their faith, Tveit acknowledged. A church service at Oslo Cathedral was planned to take place after his statement.

The statement of regret occurred at the London Pub, one among two bars attacked during the 2022 shooting that resulted in two deaths and injured nine people severely throughout the Oslo Pride festivities. An individual of Iranian descent living in Norway, who expressed support for ISIS, received a sentence to no less than 30 years behind bars for the killings.

Similar to numerous global faiths, the Norwegian Lutheran Church – an evangelical Lutheran church that is the biggest religious group in Norway – historically excluded LGBTQ+ individuals, refusing to allow them from serving as pastors or to have church weddings. During the 1950s, bishops of the church characterized LGBTQ+ persons as a “social danger of global proportions”.

However, as Norway's society grew more liberal, ranking as the second globally to allow same-sex registered partnerships in 1993 and during 2009 the first in Scandinavia to approve gay marriage, the church gradually changed.

In 2007, Norway's church commenced the ordination of LGBTQ+ clergy, and same-sex couples could have church weddings since 2017. Last year, Tveit participated in Oslo’s Pride parade in what was described as an unprecedented step for the church.

Thursday’s apology was met with differing opinions. The leader of an organization for Christian lesbians in Norway, Pedersen-Eriksen, herself a gay pastor, referred to it as “an important reparation” and a point in time that “represented the closure of a difficult period in the church’s history”.

According to Stephen Adom, the director of Norway’s Association for Gender and Sexual Diversity, the apology represented “powerful and significant” but had come “not in time for those who passed away from AIDS … carrying heavy hearts since the church viewed the epidemic as punishment from God”.

Globally, a few churches have tried to reconcile for their actions regarding LGBTQ+ individuals. During 2023, the Church of England said sorry for what it characterized as “shameful” actions, even as it still declines to authorize same-sex weddings in church.

In a similar vein, the Methodist Church located in Ireland the previous year apologised for “shortcomings in pastoral care and support” to LGBTQ+ people and their families, but stayed firm in its conviction that marriage could only be 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 confirmation of the church’s “commitment to radical hospitality and full inclusion” in all aspects of church life.

“We have not succeeded to honor and appreciate the beauty of all creation,” Reverend Blair, the top administrative leader of the church, stated. “We have hurt individuals rather than pursuing healing. We apologize.”