🔗 Share this article

Amid crimson theater drapes at one of Oslo’s most prominent LGBTQ+ spaces, the Norwegian Lutheran Church offered an apology for hurtful actions and exclusion perpetrated over the years.

“Norway's church has inflicted LGBTQ+ individuals shame, great harm and pain,” the presiding bishop, Bishop Tveit, declared on Thursday. “It was wrong for this to take place and that is why I apologise today.”

“Harassment, discrimination and unfair treatment” led to certain individuals abandoning their faith, the bishop admitted. A worship service at the cathedral in Oslo was planned to take place after his statement.

The statement of regret took place at the London Pub, a bar that was one of two attacked during the 2022 attack that took two lives and left nine seriously injured throughout the Oslo Pride festivities. A Norwegian citizen originally from Iran, who expressed support for ISIS, was given a prison term to a minimum of three decades in incarceration for the killings.

Similar to numerous global faiths, Norway's church – a Lutheran evangelical community that is Norway’s largest faith community – historically excluded LGBTQ+ individuals, refusing to allow them from serving as pastors or to have church weddings. In the 1950s, church leaders described gay people as “a global-scale societal hazard”.

However, as Norway's society grew more liberal, ranking as the second globally to legalize same-sex partnerships in 1993 and during 2009 the first in Scandinavia to allow same-sex marriage, the religious institution eventually adapted.

In 2007, the Norwegian Lutheran Church started appointing gay pastors, and gay and lesbian couples could have church weddings since 2017. During 2023, Tveit participated in Oslo’s Pride parade in what was described as an unprecedented step for the church.

Thursday’s apology was met with varied responses. The leader of an organization for Christian lesbians in Norway, Pedersen-Eriksen, who is also a gay pastor, called it “an important reparation” and a point in time that “represented the closure of a painful era in the church’s history”.

According to Stephen Adom, the leader of Norway’s Association for Gender and Sexual Diversity, the apology represented “strong and important” but was delivered “not in time for those among us who died of Aids … with hearts filled with anguish because the church considered the disease as divine punishment”.

Internationally, several faith-based organizations have attempted to make amends for their past behavior regarding LGBTQ+ individuals. During 2023, the Church of England expressed regret for what it referred to as its “shameful” treatment, though it persists in refusing to permit gay marriages in religious settings.

Similarly, the Methodist Church in Ireland last year apologised for “shortcomings in pastoral care and support” regarding the LGBTQ+ community and their families, but stayed firm in its belief that marriage could only be a union between a man and a woman.

In the early part of this year, the United Church of Canada issued an apology toward Two-Spirit and LGBTQIA+ individuals, characterizing it as a confirmation of the church's “dedication to welcoming all and full inclusion” in every part of the church's activities.

“We did not manage to celebrate and delight in the wonderful diversity of creation,” Rev Michael Blair, the church's general secretary, stated. “We have hurt individuals instead of seeking wholeness. We are sorry.”