🔗 Share this article

Against deep red curtains at a leading Oslo LGBTQ+ venue, the Church of Norway expressed regret for discrimination and harm it had inflicted.

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

The “discrimination, unequal treatment and harassment” led to some to lose their faith, Tveit recognized. A worship service at Oslo Cathedral was scheduled to take place after his statement.

This formal apology took place at the London Pub establishment, one among two bars targeted in the 2022 attack that resulted in two deaths and caused serious injuries to nine at Oslo's Pride event. An individual of Iranian descent living in Norway, who had pledged allegiance to Islamic State, was sentenced to a minimum of three decades behind bars for carrying out the attacks.

Like many religions around the world, the Norwegian Lutheran Church – a Protestant Lutheran denomination that is the biggest religious group in Norway – for years sidelined LGBTQ+ individuals, refusing to allow them from joining the clergy or from marrying in religious ceremonies. During the 1950s, the church’s bishops described gay people as a “social danger of global proportions”.

Yet, with Norwegian society turning more progressive, emerging as the world's second to permit registered partnerships for same-sex couples during 1993 and in 2009 the first in Scandinavia to legalize same-sex marriage, the church gradually changed.

Back in 2007, the Church of Norway started appointing gay pastors, and gay and lesbian couples have been able to get married in religious ceremonies from 2017 onward. In 2023, Tveit participated in Oslo’s Pride parade in what was noted as a first for the church.

The Thursday statement of regret received varied responses. The leader of an organization for Christian lesbians in Norway, Hanne Marie Pedersen-Eriksen, who is also a gay pastor, described it as “a significant step toward healing” and a moment that “finally marked the end of a dark chapter in the church’s history”.

As stated by Stephen Adom, the leader of the Norwegian Association for Gender and Sexual Diversity, the apology represented “powerful and significant” but arrived “not in time for those who passed away from AIDS … with hearts filled with anguish because the church considered the disease to be God’s punishment”.

Globally, a few churches have sought to offer apologies for their actions towards LGBTQ+ people. During 2023, the Anglican Church said sorry for what it described as its “shameful” treatment, though it continues to refuse to permit gay marriages in religious settings.

Likewise, Ireland's Methodist Church last year expressed regret for its “failures in pastoral support and care” to LGBTQ+ people and their relatives, but held fast in its belief that marriage could only be a partnership of one man and one woman.

Earlier this year, the United Church of Canada issued an apology toward Two-Spirit and LGBTQIA+ individuals, labeling it a renewed commitment of its “pledge to complete acceptance and open hospitality” in every part of the church's activities.

“We have not succeeded to honor and appreciate the beauty of all creation,” Michael Blair, the church's general secretary, remarked. “We have wounded people instead of seeking wholeness. We are sorry.”