🔗 Share this article

Against red stage curtains at a well-known Oslo location for LGBTQ+ gatherings, the Norwegian Lutheran Church offered an apology for harm and unequal treatment it had inflicted.

“The national church has inflicted the LGBTQ+ community pain, shame and significant harm,” bishop Olav Fykse Tveit, Bishop Tveit, announced on Thursday. “This should never have happened and this is why today I say sorry.”

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

This formal apology was delivered at a venue called London Pub, one among two bars attacked during the 2022 shooting 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 given a prison term to no less than 30 years in prison for the murders.

Like many religions around the world, the Norwegian Lutheran Church – a Lutheran evangelical community that is Norway’s largest faith community – had long marginalised LGBTQ+ people, refusing to allow them from serving as pastors or from marrying in religious ceremonies. During the 1950s, church leaders characterized LGBTQ+ persons as a “social danger of global proportions”.

Yet, with Norwegian society turning more progressive, ranking as the second globally to legalize same-sex partnerships during 1993 and during 2009 the first in Scandinavia to allow same-sex marriage, the church gradually changed.

In 2007, Norway's church began ordaining homosexual ministers, and same-sex couples have been able to get married in religious ceremonies starting in 2017. During 2023, Tveit participated in the Oslo Pride event in what was noted as a first for the church.

The apology on Thursday received a mixed reaction. The director of a group of Christian lesbians in Norway, Hanne Marie Pedersen-Eriksen, herself a gay pastor, called it “a crucial act of amends” and an occasion that “signaled the conclusion of a dark chapter in the church’s history”.

For Stephen Adom, the head of Norway’s Association for Gender and Sexual Diversity, the apology was “powerful and significant” but arrived “overdue for individuals who passed away from AIDS … with deep sorrow in their hearts since the church viewed the crisis as divine punishment”.

Worldwide, a few churches have sought to reconcile for their actions concerning the LGBTQ+ community. During 2023, the Church of England expressed regret for what it characterized as its “shameful” treatment, even as it persists in refusing to allow same-sex marriages in religious settings.

Likewise, the Methodist Church located in Ireland last year issued an apology for its “failures in pastoral support and care” regarding the LGBTQ+ community and family members, but held fast in its belief that matrimony must only constitute a partnership of one man and one woman.

Several months ago, the United Church based in Canada delivered a statement of regret to Two-Spirit and LGBTQIA+ groups, characterizing it as a confirmation of the church's “dedication to welcoming all and full inclusion” throughout every area of church life.

“We have failed to celebrate and delight in all of your beautiful creation,” Rev Michael Blair, the top administrative leader of the church, stated. “We have hurt individuals in place of fostering completeness. We express our regret.”