Church of Norway Delivers Apology to LGBTQ+ Individuals for ‘Harm, Shame and Suffering’

Against crimson theater drapes at a well-known Oslo location for LGBTQ+ gatherings, Norway's national church expressed regret for hurtful actions and exclusion it had inflicted.

“The church in Norway has caused LGBTQ+ individuals harm, suffering and humiliation,” the presiding bishop, Olav Fykse Tveit, declared on Thursday. “It was wrong for this to take place and this is why I offer my apology now.”

The “discrimination, unequal treatment and harassment” led to some to lose their faith, Tveit recognized. A church service at Oslo's main cathedral was scheduled to follow his apology.

This formal apology was delivered at the London Pub, a bar that was one of two targeted 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, was given a prison term to a minimum of three decades behind bars for carrying out the attacks.

Like many religions around the world, the Church of Norway – a Protestant Lutheran denomination that is the biggest religious group in Norway – for years sidelined LGBTQ+ people, preventing them from serving as pastors or from marrying in religious ceremonies. During the 1950s, the church’s bishops characterized LGBTQ+ persons as “a global-scale societal hazard”.

Yet, with Norwegian society turning more progressive, emerging as the world's second to legalize same-sex partnerships back in 1993 and during 2009 the first Scandinavian country to legalize same-sex marriage, the church gradually changed.

Back in 2007, Norway's church commenced the ordination of LGBTQ+ clergy, and gay and lesbian couples could get married in religious ceremonies from 2017 onward. In 2023, Tveit joined in the Oslo Pride event in what was noted as a first for the church.

The apology on Thursday was met with varied responses. The head of a network representing Norwegian Christian lesbians, Pedersen-Eriksen, a lesbian minister herself, called it “an important reparation” and a point in time that “signaled the conclusion of a difficult period in the church’s history”.

According to Stephen Adom, the director of the Association for Gender and Sexual Diversity in Norway, the apology represented “powerful and significant” but was delivered “not in time for those who lost their lives to AIDS … with hearts filled with anguish as the church regarded the disease to be God’s punishment”.

Globally, a handful of religious institutions have tried to reconcile for their actions regarding LGBTQ+ individuals. In 2023, England's church apologised for what it described as its “shameful” treatment, though it still declines to allow same-sex marriages within the church.

Similarly, the Methodist Church located in Ireland the previous year issued an apology for “shortcomings in pastoral care and support” to LGBTQ+ people and their families, but held fast in its conviction that marriage should only represent a bond between male and female.

Several months ago, Canada's United Church issued an apology toward Two-Spirit and LGBTQIA+ individuals, characterizing it as a reaffirmation of its “pledge to complete acceptance and open hospitality” in all aspects of church life.

“We have failed to rejoice and take pleasure in the wonderful diversity of creation,” Rev Michael Blair, the top administrative leader of the church, stated. “We have hurt individuals rather than pursuing healing. We apologize.”