🔗 Share this article

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

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

The “discrimination, unequal treatment and harassment” led to certain individuals abandoning their faith, Tveit acknowledged. A religious service at the cathedral in Oslo was arranged to follow his apology.

This formal apology occurred at the London Pub establishment, one among two bars attacked during the 2022 attack that took two lives and caused serious injuries to nine throughout the Oslo Pride festivities. A Norwegian citizen originally from Iran, who swore loyalty to Islamic State, received a sentence to a minimum of three decades behind bars for the killings.

Like many religions around the world, the Church of Norway – a Lutheran evangelical community that is Norway’s largest faith community – had long marginalised LGBTQ+ individuals, denying them the opportunity from joining the clergy or to marry in church. In the 1950s, bishops of the church described gay people as “a global-scale societal hazard”.

Yet, with Norwegian society turning more progressive, emerging as the world's second to allow same-sex registered partnerships back in 1993 and by 2009 the initial Nordic nation to allow same-sex marriage, the church slowly followed.

During 2007, the Church of Norway began ordaining homosexual ministers, and gay and lesbian couples could marry in church starting in 2017. During 2023, Tveit participated in the Pride march in Oslo in what was described as a first for the church.

The Thursday statement of regret was met with differing opinions. The head of a network of Christian lesbians in Norway, Pedersen-Eriksen, herself a gay pastor, called it “a crucial act of amends” and an occasion that “signaled the conclusion of a dark chapter in the church’s history”.

For Stephen Adom, the director of the Association for Gender and Sexual Diversity in Norway, the statement was “meaningful and vital” but arrived “not in time for those who passed away from AIDS … with deep sorrow in their hearts since the church viewed the epidemic to be God’s punishment”.

Globally, a handful of religious institutions have sought to reconcile for their past behavior towards LGBTQ+ people. In 2023, the Anglican Church expressed regret for what it referred to as “disgraceful” conduct, though it still declines to allow same-sex marriages in religious settings.

Similarly, the Methodist Church located in Ireland the previous year apologised for its “failures in pastoral support and care” toward LGBTQ+ individuals and their relatives, but held fast in its conviction that marriage should only represent a union between a man and a woman.

Earlier this year, the United Church based in Canada delivered a statement of regret to two spirit and LGBTQIA+ communities, characterizing it as a confirmation of its “pledge to complete acceptance and open hospitality” in every part of the church's activities.

“We have not succeeded to honor and appreciate all of your beautiful creation,” Reverend Blair, the church's general secretary, said. “We caused pain to people in place of fostering completeness. We apologize.”