The Norwegian Church Makes Apology to LGBTQ+ Individuals for ‘Shame, Great Harm and Pain’

Amid crimson theater drapes at one of Oslo’s most prominent LGBTQ+ spaces, Norway's national church offered an apology for hurtful actions and exclusion perpetrated over the years.

“Norway's church has brought LGBTQ+ people shame, great harm and pain,” bishop Olav Fykse Tveit, Bishop Tveit, declared on Thursday. “This should never have happened and that is why I offer my apology now.”

The “discrimination, unequal treatment and harassment” led to a loss of faith for some, the bishop admitted. A church service at the cathedral in Oslo was planned to follow his apology.

The apology took place at the London Pub, one of two bars involved in the 2022 shooting 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, received a sentence to a minimum of three decades in prison for the killings.

Similar to numerous global faiths, the Church of Norway – a Lutheran evangelical community that is Norway’s largest faith community – for years sidelined LGBTQ+ people, refusing to allow them from joining the clergy or to marry in church. Back in the 1950s, church leaders described gay people as a “social danger of global proportions”.

Yet, with Norwegian society turning more progressive, emerging as the world's second to legalize same-sex partnerships during 1993 and in 2009 the initial Nordic nation to legalize same-sex marriage, the religious institution eventually adapted.

During 2007, Norway's church commenced the ordination of homosexual ministers, and gay and lesbian couples have been able to marry in church since 2017. Last year, Tveit joined in the Pride march in Oslo in what was called a historic moment for the religious institution.

The Thursday statement of regret received differing opinions. The leader of an organization representing Norwegian Christian lesbians, Pedersen-Eriksen, who is also a gay pastor, described it as “a significant step toward healing” and a moment that “represented the closure of a difficult period within the church's past”.

As stated by Stephen Adom, the head of the Association for Gender and Sexual Diversity in Norway, the apology represented “powerful and significant” but arrived “too late for those who passed away from AIDS … carrying heavy hearts because the church considered the disease as divine punishment”.

Internationally, a handful of religious institutions have attempted to make amends for their actions concerning the LGBTQ+ community. During 2023, England's church said sorry for what it referred to as “disgraceful” conduct, though it persists in refusing to allow same-sex marriages in religious settings.

Similarly, the Methodist Church located in Ireland the previous year issued an apology for “inadequate pastoral assistance and care” toward LGBTQ+ individuals and their families, but held fast in its belief that matrimony must only constitute a union between a man and a woman.

Several months ago, Canada's United Church delivered a statement of regret to Two-Spirit and LGBTQIA+ groups, describing it as a reaffirmation of the church's “dedication to welcoming all and full inclusion” in all aspects of church life.

“We have failed to celebrate and delight in all of your beautiful creation,” Rev Michael Blair, the top administrative leader of the church, said. “We caused pain to people rather than pursuing healing. We apologize.”