🔗 Share this article

Set against deep red curtains 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 caused LGBTQ+ individuals pain, shame and significant harm,” the lead bishop, Olav Fykse Tveit, declared during a Thursday event. “It was wrong for this to take place and that is why I offer my apology now.”

“Harassment, discrimination and unfair treatment” resulted in some to lose their faith, Tveit acknowledged. A worship service at Oslo Cathedral was scheduled to come after the apology.

The apology was delivered at a venue called London Pub, one among two bars targeted in the 2022 attack that took two lives and caused serious injuries to nine throughout the Oslo Pride festivities. A Norwegian of Iranian origin, who expressed support for ISIS, was given a prison term to no less than 30 years in incarceration for the murders.

Similar to numerous global faiths, the Norwegian Lutheran Church – an evangelical Lutheran church that is the biggest religious group in Norway – had long marginalised LGBTQ+ individuals, preventing them from serving as pastors or to have church weddings. In the 1950s, the church’s bishops characterized LGBTQ+ persons as “a global-scale societal hazard”.

Yet, with Norwegian society turning more progressive, ranking as the second globally to permit registered partnerships for same-sex couples back in 1993 and by 2009 the first Scandinavian country to legalize same-sex marriage, the church gradually changed.

In 2007, the Norwegian Lutheran Church commenced the ordination of gay pastors, and gay and lesbian couples have been able to get married in religious ceremonies from 2017 onward. During 2023, the bishop took part in the Oslo Pride event in what was noted as an unprecedented step for the church.

The Thursday statement of regret elicited a mixed reaction. The head of a network of Christian lesbians in Norway, Hanne Marie, a lesbian minister herself, called it “a crucial act of amends” and a point in time that “finally marked the end of a painful era within the church's past”.

For Stephen Adom, the director of Norway’s Association for Gender and Sexual Diversity, the apology was “strong and important” but had come “too late for those who passed away from AIDS … with deep sorrow in their hearts since the church viewed the disease to be God’s punishment”.

Worldwide, several faith-based organizations have attempted to offer apologies for historical treatment concerning the LGBTQ+ community. Last year, the Anglican Church apologised for what it referred to as “shameful” actions, though it continues to refuse to permit gay marriages within the church.

Likewise, the Methodist Church located in Ireland in the past year apologised for its “failures in pastoral support and care” to LGBTQ+ people and their families, but stayed firm in its conviction that matrimony must only constitute a partnership of one man and one woman.

Several months ago, the United Church of Canada offered an apology to Two-Spirit and LGBTQIA+ groups, characterizing it as a renewed commitment 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 wonderful diversity of creation,” Reverend Blair, the church's general secretary, remarked. “We have wounded people in place of fostering completeness. We express our regret.”