Norway's Church Makes Formal Apology to LGBTQ+ Community for ‘Harm, Shame and Suffering’

Amid red stage curtains at one of Oslo’s most prominent LGBTQ+ spaces, Norway's national church expressed regret for discrimination and harm perpetrated over the years.

“Norway's church has inflicted the LGBTQ+ community pain, shame and significant harm,” bishop Olav Fykse Tveit, Bishop Tveit, announced on Thursday. “This ought not to have occurred and that is why today I say sorry.”

The “discrimination, unequal treatment and harassment” resulted in a loss of faith for some, the bishop admitted. A worship service at Oslo Cathedral was arranged to come after the apology.

This formal apology took place at the London Pub, a bar that was one of two targeted in the 2022 shooting that took two lives and injured nine people severely throughout the Oslo Pride festivities. A Norwegian of Iranian origin, who expressed support for ISIS, was sentenced to no less than 30 years behind bars for the murders.

Like many religions around the world, Norway's church – an evangelical Lutheran church that is Norway’s largest faith community – for years sidelined the LGBTQ+ community, preventing them from joining the clergy or from marrying in religious ceremonies. During the 1950s, the church’s bishops characterized LGBTQ+ persons as a “social danger of global proportions”.

But as Norwegian society became increasingly liberal, ranking as the second globally to permit registered partnerships for same-sex couples in 1993 and by 2009 the first Scandinavian country to legalize same-sex marriage, the religious institution eventually adapted.

In 2007, the Church of Norway commenced the ordination of gay pastors, and LGBTQ+ partners were permitted to get married in religious ceremonies since 2017. During 2023, Tveit joined in Oslo’s Pride parade in what was called an unprecedented step for the church.

The apology on Thursday received varied responses. The director of a group for Christian lesbians in Norway, Pedersen-Eriksen, who is also a gay pastor, referred to it as “a significant step toward healing” and an occasion that “finally marked the end of a painful era within the church's past”.

As stated by Stephen Adom, the director of the Association for Gender and Sexual Diversity in Norway, the statement was “meaningful and vital” but was delivered “overdue for individuals among us who died of Aids … with deep sorrow in their hearts because the church considered the epidemic to be God’s punishment”.

Internationally, a handful of religious institutions have tried to reconcile for their past behavior towards LGBTQ+ people. In 2023, the Church of England expressed regret for what it characterized as “disgraceful” conduct, though it still declines to permit gay marriages in religious settings.

Likewise, Ireland's Methodist Church in the past year expressed regret for its “failures in pastoral support and care” toward LGBTQ+ individuals and family members, but held fast in the view that matrimony must only constitute a bond between male and female.

In the early part of this year, the United Church based in Canada issued an apology toward Two-Spirit and LGBTQIA+ individuals, labeling it a renewed commitment of the church’s “commitment to radical hospitality and full inclusion” throughout every area of church life.

“We have failed to honor and appreciate the wonderful diversity of creation,” Michael Blair, the church's general secretary, stated. “We caused pain to people in place of fostering completeness. We are sorry.”