🔗 Share this article

Set against deep red curtains at a well-known Oslo location for LGBTQ+ gatherings, Norway's national church offered an apology for hurtful actions and exclusion perpetrated over the years.

“The national church has caused the LGBTQ+ community harm, suffering and humiliation,” the lead bishop, Bishop Tveit, declared during a Thursday event. “It was wrong for this to take place and that is why today I say sorry.”

“Unequal treatment, harassment and discrimination” had caused a loss of faith for some, Tveit acknowledged. A religious service at Oslo Cathedral was scheduled to take place after his statement.

This formal apology was delivered at the London Pub, one of two bars attacked during the 2022 attack that resulted in two deaths 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 in incarceration for the murders.

In common with various worldwide religions, the Norwegian Lutheran Church – a Lutheran evangelical community that is Norway’s largest faith community – had long marginalised LGBTQ+ people, refusing to allow them to become pastors or to marry in church. During the 1950s, the church’s bishops referred to homosexual individuals as a “social danger of global proportions”.

But as Norwegian society became increasingly liberal, emerging as the world's second to allow same-sex registered partnerships back in 1993 and in 2009 the initial Nordic nation to approve gay marriage, the church slowly followed.

Back in 2007, Norway's church started appointing LGBTQ+ clergy, and same-sex couples have been able to have church weddings since 2017. In 2023, Tveit participated in the Oslo Pride event in what was noted as an unprecedented step for the church.

Thursday’s apology received a mixed reaction. The head of a network for Christian lesbians in Norway, Hanne Marie Pedersen-Eriksen, a lesbian minister herself, called it “a crucial act of amends” and a point in time that “signaled the conclusion of a painful era in the history of the church”.

As stated by Stephen Adom, the leader of the Norwegian Association for Gender and Sexual Diversity, the apology was “meaningful and vital” but arrived “overdue for individuals who passed away from AIDS … with deep sorrow in their hearts because the church considered the disease as punishment from God”.

Internationally, several faith-based organizations have tried to make amends for historical treatment regarding LGBTQ+ individuals. Last year, the Anglican Church apologised for what it characterized as “shameful” actions, although it still declines to allow same-sex marriages within the church.

In a similar vein, the Methodist Church located in Ireland last year issued an apology for its “failures in pastoral support and care” to LGBTQ+ people and family members, but remained staunch 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, describing it as a confirmation of the church’s “commitment to radical hospitality and full inclusion” in all aspects of church life.

“We have failed to celebrate and delight in the wonderful diversity of creation,” Reverend Blair, the church's general secretary, remarked. “We caused pain to people instead of seeking wholeness. We apologize.”