🔗 Share this article

Amid crimson theater drapes at one of Oslo’s most prominent LGBTQ+ spaces, Norway's national church offered an apology for discrimination and harm caused by the church.

“The national church has inflicted LGBTQ+ people shame, great harm and pain,” bishop Olav Fykse Tveit, the church leader, stated this Thursday. “It was wrong for this to take place and that is why today I say sorry.”

The “discrimination, unequal treatment and harassment” had caused a loss of faith for some, Tveit acknowledged. A worship service at Oslo's main cathedral was arranged to come after the apology.

The apology took place at the London Pub, a bar that was one of two targeted in the 2022 shooting that resulted in two deaths and injured nine people severely during Oslo’s Pride celebrations. An individual of Iranian descent living in Norway, who expressed support for ISIS, received a sentence to at least 30 years behind bars for carrying out the attacks.

Like many religions around the world, the Church of Norway – an evangelical Lutheran church that is the biggest religious group in Norway – for years sidelined the LGBTQ+ community, refusing to allow them to become pastors or from marrying in religious ceremonies. In the 1950s, church leaders described gay people as “a global-scale societal hazard”.

But as Norwegian society became increasingly liberal, becoming the second in the world to permit registered partnerships for same-sex couples back in 1993 and in 2009 the first Scandinavian country to allow same-sex marriage, the church slowly followed.

Back in 2007, Norway's church began ordaining LGBTQ+ clergy, and gay and lesbian couples have been able to have church weddings starting in 2017. Last year, the bishop took part in the Pride march in Oslo in what was called an unprecedented step for the church.

The Thursday statement of regret elicited differing opinions. The head of a network of Christian lesbians in Norway, Pedersen-Eriksen, herself a gay pastor, referred to it as “an important reparation” and a moment that “finally marked the end of a dark chapter in the history of the church”.

For Stephen Adom, the leader of the Association for Gender and Sexual Diversity in Norway, the apology was “meaningful and vital” but was delivered “too late for those among us who died of Aids … with hearts filled with anguish since the church viewed the disease as punishment from God”.

Internationally, a few churches have sought to make amends for historical treatment regarding LGBTQ+ individuals. In 2023, the Church of England apologised for what it characterized as “disgraceful” conduct, even as it still declines to permit gay marriages within the church.

Similarly, the Methodist Church in Ireland last year issued an apology for “inadequate pastoral assistance and care” to LGBTQ+ people and their families, but held fast in its conviction that marriage should only represent a union between a man and a woman.

Several months ago, the United Church based in Canada issued an apology toward Two-Spirit and LGBTQIA+ individuals, describing it as a confirmation of its “pledge to complete acceptance and open hospitality” in all aspects of church life.

“We have failed to celebrate and delight in the beauty of all creation,” Reverend Blair, the church's general secretary, stated. “We have wounded people rather than pursuing healing. We express our regret.”