🔗 Share this article

Amid deep red curtains at one of Oslo’s most prominent LGBTQ+ spaces, the Church of Norway offered an apology for hurtful actions and exclusion perpetrated over the years.

“The national church has caused LGBTQ+ people shame, great harm and pain,” the lead bishop, Olav Fykse Tveit, announced on Thursday. “This ought not to have occurred and that is why I apologise today.”

“Harassment, discrimination and unfair treatment” resulted in some to lose their faith, Tveit acknowledged. A religious service at the cathedral in Oslo was scheduled to follow his apology.

The apology was delivered at the London Pub, one among two bars targeted in the 2022 shooting that resulted in two deaths and left nine seriously injured throughout the Oslo Pride festivities. A Norwegian citizen originally from Iran, who had pledged allegiance to Islamic State, received a sentence to a minimum of three decades in incarceration for the murders.

Like many religions around the world, the Church of Norway – a Lutheran evangelical community that is the biggest religious group in Norway – had long marginalised the LGBTQ+ community, denying them the opportunity from serving as pastors or to marry in church. In the 1950s, church leaders referred to homosexual individuals as “a worldwide social threat”.

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

In 2007, the Norwegian Lutheran Church began ordaining gay pastors, and gay and lesbian couples have been able to have church weddings since 2017. In 2023, Tveit participated in the Oslo Pride event in what was called a first for the church.

The Thursday statement of regret was met with differing opinions. The head of a network for Christian lesbians in Norway, Hanne Marie, who is also a gay pastor, referred to it as “a significant step toward healing” and a point in time that “finally marked the end of a dark chapter within the church's past”.

As stated by Stephen Adom, the director of Norway’s Association for Gender and Sexual Diversity, the statement was “powerful and significant” but arrived “not in time for those who passed away from AIDS … carrying heavy hearts as the church regarded the crisis as divine punishment”.

Internationally, a few churches have tried to offer apologies for historical treatment concerning the LGBTQ+ community. During 2023, the Church of England said sorry for what it characterized as “disgraceful” conduct, although it still declines to allow same-sex marriages in religious settings.

In a similar vein, Ireland's Methodist Church in the past year apologised for its “failures in pastoral support and care” toward LGBTQ+ individuals and family members, but held fast in the view that marriage could only be a partnership of one man and one woman.

Several months ago, Canada's United Church offered an apology toward Two-Spirit and LGBTQIA+ individuals, characterizing it as a confirmation of the church’s “commitment to radical hospitality and full inclusion” in all aspects of church life.

“We did not manage to honor and appreciate all of your beautiful creation,” Reverend Blair, the general secretary of the church, said. “We have hurt individuals rather than pursuing healing. We apologize.”