🔗 Share this article

Amid crimson theater drapes at a leading Oslo LGBTQ+ venue, the Norwegian Lutheran Church expressed regret for discrimination and harm perpetrated over the years.

“The church in Norway has caused the LGBTQ+ community shame, great harm and pain,” bishop Olav Fykse Tveit, the church leader, stated during a Thursday event. “This ought not to have occurred and that is why I offer my apology now.”

“Harassment, discrimination and unfair treatment” had caused a loss of faith for some, Tveit acknowledged. A worship service at Oslo's main cathedral was planned to come after the apology.

The statement of regret took place at the London Pub, one of two bars attacked during the 2022 violent incident that killed two people and caused serious injuries to nine throughout the Oslo Pride festivities. An individual of Iranian descent living in Norway, who expressed support for ISIS, was sentenced to at least 30 years in incarceration for the killings.

In common with various worldwide religions, the Church of Norway – a Lutheran evangelical community that is the most extensive faith community in the country – for years sidelined the LGBTQ+ community, denying them the opportunity from serving as pastors or from marrying in religious ceremonies. During the 1950s, bishops of the church described gay people as a “social danger of global proportions”.

But as Norwegian society became increasingly liberal, emerging as the world's second to legalize same-sex partnerships during 1993 and during 2009 the first in Scandinavia to allow same-sex marriage, the church slowly followed.

During 2007, Norway's church began ordaining LGBTQ+ clergy, and same-sex couples were permitted to get married in religious ceremonies from 2017 onward. In 2023, Tveit participated in the Pride march in Oslo in what was called a historic moment for the religious institution.

Thursday’s apology was met with differing opinions. The director of a group of Christian lesbians in Norway, Pedersen-Eriksen, who is also a gay pastor, described it as “a crucial act of amends” and a point in time that “signaled the conclusion of a dark chapter within the church's past”.

For Stephen Adom, the director of the Norwegian Association for Gender and Sexual Diversity, the statement was “powerful and significant” but arrived “overdue for individuals among us who died of Aids … with hearts filled with anguish as the church regarded the disease as punishment from God”.

Globally, a few churches have tried to offer apologies for their past behavior concerning the LGBTQ+ community. During 2023, England's church said sorry for what it described as “disgraceful” conduct, though it still declines to permit gay marriages within the church.

In a similar vein, the Methodist Church in Ireland the previous year expressed regret for “inadequate pastoral assistance and care” toward LGBTQ+ individuals and family members, but remained staunch in the view that marriage could only be a union between a man and a woman.

Earlier this year, the United Church of Canada 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 every part of the church's activities.

“We have not succeeded to celebrate and delight in all of your beautiful creation,” Michael Blair, the top administrative leader of the church, stated. “We caused pain to people in place of fostering completeness. We express our regret.”