🔗 Share this article

Set against deep red curtains at a leading Oslo LGBTQ+ venue, the Norwegian Lutheran Church offered an apology for hurtful actions and exclusion perpetrated over the years.

“The church in Norway has brought LGBTQ+ individuals shame, great harm and pain,” bishop Olav Fykse Tveit, Olav Fykse Tveit, stated during a Thursday event. “This should never have happened and which is the reason I apologise today.”

“Harassment, discrimination and unfair treatment” had caused some to lose their faith, Tveit acknowledged. A religious service at the cathedral in Oslo was scheduled to take place after his statement.

The statement of regret occurred at the London Pub establishment, one of two bars targeted in the 2022 shooting that killed two people and left nine seriously injured during Oslo’s Pride celebrations. An individual of Iranian descent living in Norway, who expressed support for ISIS, was sentenced to no less than 30 years in incarceration for the killings.

Like many religions around the world, the Church of Norway – an evangelical Lutheran church that is the most extensive faith community in the country – had long marginalised LGBTQ+ individuals, preventing them to become pastors or from marrying in religious ceremonies. Back in the 1950s, church leaders characterized LGBTQ+ persons as a “social danger of global proportions”.

However, as Norway's society grew more liberal, ranking as the second globally to permit registered partnerships for same-sex couples during 1993 and by 2009 the first Scandinavian country to approve gay marriage, the church gradually changed.

In 2007, Norway's church began ordaining LGBTQ+ clergy, and LGBTQ+ partners were permitted to have church weddings from 2017 onward. During 2023, the bishop took part in Oslo’s Pride parade in what was described as a first for the church.

The Thursday statement of regret received varied responses. The director of a group of Christian lesbians in Norway, Pedersen-Eriksen, a lesbian minister herself, called it “an important reparation” and an occasion that “represented the closure of a dark chapter in the history of the church”.

According to Stephen Adom, the head of Norway’s Association for Gender and Sexual Diversity, the apology represented “strong and important” but arrived “not in time for those who passed away from AIDS … carrying heavy hearts as the church regarded the epidemic to be God’s punishment”.

Internationally, a handful of religious institutions have tried to offer apologies for historical treatment concerning the LGBTQ+ community. In 2023, England's church said sorry for what it characterized as its “shameful” treatment, though it continues to refuse to allow same-sex marriages in religious settings.

Similarly, the Methodist Church located in Ireland in the past year issued an apology for its “failures in pastoral support and care” toward LGBTQ+ individuals and family members, but held fast in its conviction that marriage should only represent a bond between male and female.

Several months ago, the United Church of Canada delivered a statement of regret to two spirit and LGBTQIA+ communities, labeling it a confirmation of its “pledge to complete acceptance and open hospitality” throughout every area of church life.

“We did not manage to honor and appreciate all of your beautiful creation,” Rev Michael Blair, the church's general secretary, remarked. “We have wounded people rather than pursuing healing. We are sorry.”