Norway's Church Makes Apology to LGBTQ+ Individuals for ‘Shame, Great Harm and Pain’

Against deep red curtains at a leading Oslo LGBTQ+ venue, Norway's national church offered an apology for discrimination and harm perpetrated over the years.

“The church in Norway has inflicted the LGBTQ+ community shame, great harm and pain,” the lead bishop, Bishop Tveit, stated during a Thursday event. “This ought not to have occurred and which is the reason today I say sorry.”

The “discrimination, unequal treatment and harassment” had caused certain individuals abandoning their faith, the bishop admitted. A church service at Oslo Cathedral was scheduled to take place after his statement.

The statement of regret took place at the London Pub, one among two bars attacked during the 2022 shooting that resulted in two deaths and left nine seriously injured at Oslo's Pride event. An individual of Iranian descent living in Norway, who expressed support for ISIS, was sentenced to no less than 30 years behind bars for the killings.

In common with various worldwide religions, the Church of Norway – an evangelical Lutheran church that is the most extensive faith community in the country – for years sidelined LGBTQ+ people, preventing them to become pastors or to have church weddings. In the 1950s, the church’s bishops described gay people 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 religious institution eventually adapted.

In 2007, the Norwegian Lutheran Church started appointing gay pastors, and same-sex couples could have church weddings from 2017 onward. During 2023, Tveit participated in the Pride march in Oslo in what was called a first for the church.

The Thursday statement of regret elicited a mixed reaction. The director of a group representing Norwegian Christian lesbians, Pedersen-Eriksen, who is also a gay pastor, described it as “a crucial act of amends” and an occasion that “finally marked the end of a painful era within the church's past”.

For Stephen Adom, the director of the Norwegian Association for Gender and Sexual Diversity, the statement was “meaningful and vital” but had come “too late for those among us who died of Aids … carrying heavy hearts because the church considered the epidemic to be God’s punishment”.

Globally, several faith-based organizations have attempted to offer apologies for their past behavior towards LGBTQ+ people. Last year, the Church of England expressed regret for what it referred to as its “shameful” treatment, even as it persists in refusing to permit gay marriages within the church.

In a similar vein, Ireland's Methodist Church last year issued an apology for its “failures in pastoral support and care” to LGBTQ+ people and their relatives, but held fast in its conviction that marriage could only be a bond between male and female.

Earlier this year, the United Church based in Canada offered an apology to two spirit and LGBTQIA+ communities, labeling it a reaffirmation of the church’s “commitment to radical hospitality and full inclusion” throughout every area of church life.

“We did not manage to celebrate and delight in all of your beautiful creation,” Reverend Blair, the general secretary of the church, said. “We caused pain to people instead of seeking wholeness. We apologize.”