🔗 Share this article

Set against red stage curtains at one of Oslo’s most prominent LGBTQ+ spaces, the Church of Norway expressed regret for hurtful actions and exclusion caused by the church.

“Norway's church has brought the LGBTQ+ community harm, suffering and humiliation,” the presiding bishop, Olav Fykse Tveit, stated during a Thursday event. “This ought not to have occurred and this is why today I say sorry.”

“Unequal treatment, harassment and discrimination” led to some to lose their faith, the bishop admitted. A church service at the cathedral in Oslo was planned to come after the apology.

The statement of regret occurred at the London Pub establishment, a bar that was one of two involved in the 2022 shooting that took two lives and left nine seriously injured throughout the Oslo Pride festivities. An individual of Iranian descent living in Norway, who swore loyalty to Islamic State, was given a prison term to no less than 30 years behind bars for the murders.

Similar to numerous global faiths, the Norwegian Lutheran Church – a Protestant Lutheran denomination that is the biggest religious group in Norway – had long marginalised LGBTQ+ individuals, preventing them from serving as pastors or to have church weddings. During the 1950s, church leaders characterized LGBTQ+ persons as “a global-scale societal hazard”.

But as Norwegian society became increasingly liberal, ranking as the second globally to legalize same-sex partnerships in 1993 and in 2009 the first in Scandinavia to allow same-sex marriage, the church gradually changed.

In 2007, the Church of Norway started appointing gay pastors, and same-sex couples have been able to get married in religious ceremonies since 2017. Last year, Tveit joined in the Oslo Pride event in what was noted as a historic moment for the religious institution.

Thursday’s apology elicited differing opinions. The head of a network for Christian lesbians in Norway, Hanne Marie Pedersen-Eriksen, who is also a gay pastor, called it “a crucial act of amends” and an occasion that “signaled the conclusion of a difficult period in the history of the church”.

For Stephen Adom, the leader of the Norwegian Association for Gender and Sexual Diversity, the apology represented “meaningful and vital” but had come “too late for those who passed away from AIDS … with hearts filled with anguish because the church considered the disease as punishment from God”.

Internationally, several faith-based organizations have tried to offer apologies for their actions towards LGBTQ+ people. During 2023, the Church of England apologised for what it referred to as “shameful” actions, although it persists in refusing to authorize same-sex weddings in church.

In a similar vein, the Methodist Church located in Ireland in the past year apologised for its “failures in pastoral support and care” toward LGBTQ+ individuals and their families, but remained staunch in its conviction that marriage should only represent a union between a man and a woman.

Earlier this year, the United Church of Canada delivered a statement of regret to two spirit and LGBTQIA+ communities, describing it as a confirmation of the church's “dedication to welcoming all and full inclusion” in every part of the church's activities.

“We have failed to honor and appreciate the wonderful diversity of creation,” Reverend Blair, the church's general secretary, stated. “We have wounded people instead of seeking wholeness. We express our regret.”