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

Against crimson theater drapes at a well-known Oslo location for LGBTQ+ gatherings, Norway's national church offered an apology for harm and unequal treatment perpetrated over the years.

“The national church has inflicted the LGBTQ+ community shame, great harm and pain,” bishop Olav Fykse Tveit, Bishop Tveit, announced during a Thursday event. “It was wrong for this to take place and this is why I offer my apology now.”

The “discrimination, unequal treatment and harassment” resulted in a loss of faith for some, Tveit acknowledged. A church service at the cathedral in Oslo was arranged to come after the apology.

This formal apology took place at a venue called London Pub, a bar that was one of two attacked during the 2022 violent incident that resulted in two deaths and left nine seriously injured at Oslo's Pride event. An individual of Iranian descent living in Norway, who had pledged allegiance to Islamic State, was given a prison term to no less than 30 years in prison for the killings.

In common with various worldwide religions, the Church of Norway – a Lutheran evangelical community that is Norway’s largest faith community – had long marginalised the LGBTQ+ community, preventing them from serving as pastors or to have church weddings. In the 1950s, church leaders characterized LGBTQ+ persons as “a worldwide social threat”.

But as Norwegian society became increasingly liberal, emerging as the world's second to allow same-sex registered partnerships back in 1993 and during 2009 the first Scandinavian country to allow same-sex marriage, the church gradually changed.

During 2007, Norway's church started appointing gay pastors, and LGBTQ+ partners were permitted to marry in church since 2017. Last year, the bishop took part in the Oslo Pride event in what was described as a first for the church.

The apology on Thursday received a mixed reaction. The director of a group of Christian lesbians in Norway, Hanne Marie, who is also a gay pastor, described it as “a significant step toward healing” and an occasion that “signaled the conclusion of a difficult period within the church's past”.

According to Stephen Adom, the head of Norway’s Association for Gender and Sexual Diversity, the apology was “powerful and significant” but was delivered “too late for those who lost their lives to AIDS … with deep sorrow in their hearts because the church considered the crisis to be God’s punishment”.

Internationally, a handful of religious institutions have tried to make amends for historical treatment concerning the LGBTQ+ community. Last year, the Anglican Church apologised for what it referred to as “shameful” actions, even as it persists in refusing to authorize same-sex weddings in religious settings.

In a similar vein, the Methodist Church in Ireland in the past year issued an apology for “shortcomings in pastoral care and support” to LGBTQ+ people and family members, but held fast in its belief that matrimony must only constitute a union between a man and a woman.

In the early part of this year, Canada's United Church offered an apology toward Two-Spirit and LGBTQIA+ individuals, labeling it a renewed commitment of its “pledge to complete acceptance and open hospitality” throughout every area of church life.

“We have failed to rejoice and take pleasure in all of your beautiful creation,” Michael Blair, the church's general secretary, said. “We caused pain to people in place of fostering completeness. We apologize.”