The Norwegian Church Delivers Formal Apology to LGBTQ+ Community for ‘Harm, Shame and Suffering’

Amid crimson theater drapes at one of Oslo’s most prominent LGBTQ+ spaces, the Norwegian Lutheran Church issued a formal apology for harm and unequal treatment caused by the church.

“The church in Norway has brought LGBTQ+ people shame, great harm and pain,” bishop Olav Fykse Tveit, Bishop Tveit, stated this Thursday. “This ought not to have occurred and which is the reason I apologise today.”

The “discrimination, unequal treatment and harassment” led to a loss of faith for some, the bishop admitted. A worship service at the cathedral in Oslo was scheduled to come after the apology.

This formal apology was delivered at a venue called London Pub, a bar that was one of two targeted in the 2022 violent incident that took two lives and left nine seriously injured at Oslo's Pride event. An individual of Iranian descent living in Norway, who swore loyalty to Islamic State, was given a prison term to no less than 30 years in incarceration for carrying out the attacks.

Similar to numerous global faiths, 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 from joining the clergy or from marrying in religious ceremonies. During the 1950s, church leaders characterized LGBTQ+ persons as a “social danger of global proportions”.

Yet, with Norwegian society turning more progressive, emerging as the world's second to allow same-sex registered partnerships during 1993 and during 2009 the initial Nordic nation to allow same-sex marriage, the church gradually changed.

In 2007, the Norwegian Lutheran Church commenced the ordination of LGBTQ+ clergy, and gay and lesbian couples could marry in church since 2017. During 2023, Tveit participated in the Oslo Pride event in what was noted as a first for the church.

The Thursday statement of regret elicited varied responses. The head of a network of Christian lesbians in Norway, Pedersen-Eriksen, a lesbian minister herself, referred to it as “an important reparation” and a moment that “finally marked the end of a painful era in the history of the church”.

For Stephen Adom, the leader of the Association for Gender and Sexual Diversity in Norway, the apology was “powerful and significant” but was delivered “not in time for those who passed away from AIDS … with hearts filled with anguish since the church viewed the disease to be God’s punishment”.

Internationally, a handful of religious institutions have sought to offer apologies for their past behavior towards LGBTQ+ people. During 2023, England's church apologised for what it described as “disgraceful” conduct, even as it still declines to authorize same-sex weddings in religious settings.

Similarly, Ireland's Methodist Church last year apologised for its “failures in pastoral support and care” toward LGBTQ+ individuals and family members, but remained staunch in its belief that matrimony must only constitute a union between a man and a woman.

Earlier this year, Canada's United Church delivered a statement of regret toward Two-Spirit and LGBTQIA+ individuals, describing it as a reaffirmation of its “pledge to complete acceptance and open hospitality” in every part of the church's activities.

“We did not manage to celebrate and delight in the wonderful diversity of creation,” Reverend Blair, the general secretary of the church, said. “We have wounded people rather than pursuing healing. We are sorry.”