The Norwegian Church Issues Apology to LGBTQ+ Community for ‘Pain, Shame and Significant Harm’

Against red stage curtains at one of Oslo’s most prominent LGBTQ+ spaces, Norway's national church offered an apology for discrimination and harm it had inflicted.

“The national church has caused LGBTQ+ individuals pain, shame and significant harm,” bishop Olav Fykse Tveit, Bishop Tveit, announced during a Thursday event. “It was wrong for this to take place and that is why today I say sorry.”

“Harassment, discrimination and unfair treatment” had caused certain individuals abandoning their faith, the bishop admitted. A religious service at Oslo Cathedral was scheduled to come after the apology.

The apology occurred at a venue called London Pub, a bar that was one of two targeted in the 2022 shooting that took two lives and left nine seriously injured during Oslo’s Pride celebrations. A Norwegian citizen originally from Iran, who expressed support for ISIS, was given a prison term to at least 30 years in incarceration for carrying out the attacks.

Like many religions around the world, Norway's church – a Protestant Lutheran denomination that is the most extensive faith community in the country – for years sidelined the LGBTQ+ community, preventing them from serving as pastors or from marrying in religious ceremonies. Back in the 1950s, bishops of the church characterized LGBTQ+ persons as “a worldwide social threat”.

Yet, with Norwegian society turning more progressive, becoming the second in the world to legalize same-sex partnerships back in 1993 and by 2009 the initial Nordic nation to legalize same-sex marriage, the church slowly followed.

During 2007, the Norwegian Lutheran Church began ordaining homosexual ministers, and gay and lesbian couples have been able to have church weddings since 2017. In 2023, the bishop took part in Oslo’s Pride parade in what was noted as a first for the church.

Thursday’s apology received varied responses. The leader of an organization of Christian lesbians in Norway, Hanne Marie Pedersen-Eriksen, a lesbian minister herself, referred to it as “a crucial act of amends” and a moment that “signaled the conclusion of a dark chapter in the history of the church”.

According to Stephen Adom, the head of the Association for Gender and Sexual Diversity in Norway, the apology was “powerful and significant” 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, a handful of religious institutions have sought to make amends for their past behavior towards LGBTQ+ people. Last year, the Church of England apologised for what it referred to as “disgraceful” conduct, though it persists in refusing to authorize same-sex weddings within the church.

Likewise, the Methodist Church in Ireland in the past year expressed regret for “inadequate pastoral assistance and care” toward LGBTQ+ individuals and their relatives, but stayed firm in the view that matrimony must only constitute a partnership of one man and one woman.

In the early part of this year, the United Church based in Canada offered an apology to two spirit and LGBTQIA+ communities, labeling it a confirmation of its “pledge to complete acceptance and open hospitality” in all aspects of church life.

“We have failed to rejoice and take pleasure in all of your beautiful creation,” Reverend Blair, the general secretary of the church, remarked. “We caused pain to people instead of seeking wholeness. We express our regret.”