Church of Norway Delivers Sincere Apology to LGBTQ+ Individuals for ‘Shame, Great Harm and Pain’

Against deep red curtains at a leading Oslo LGBTQ+ venue, the Norwegian Lutheran Church expressed regret for hurtful actions and exclusion caused by the church.

“Norway's church has brought LGBTQ+ individuals harm, suffering and humiliation,” bishop Olav Fykse Tveit, the church leader, declared on Thursday. “This ought not to have occurred and which is the reason I apologise today.”

“Harassment, discrimination and unfair treatment” had caused certain individuals abandoning their faith, Tveit recognized. A church service at the cathedral in Oslo was scheduled to come after the apology.

The statement of regret took place at the London Pub, one of two bars attacked during the 2022 attack that resulted in two deaths and injured nine people severely at Oslo's Pride event. An individual of Iranian descent living in Norway, who swore loyalty to Islamic State, was sentenced to no less than 30 years in prison for the killings.

Like many religions around the world, Norway's church – an evangelical Lutheran church that is the biggest religious group in Norway – had long marginalised the LGBTQ+ community, refusing to allow them from joining the clergy or from marrying in religious ceremonies. During the 1950s, the church’s bishops referred to homosexual individuals as “a global-scale societal hazard”.

But as Norwegian society became increasingly liberal, emerging as the world's second to allow same-sex registered partnerships in 1993 and during 2009 the first in Scandinavia to allow same-sex marriage, the church gradually changed.

During 2007, the Norwegian Lutheran Church started appointing LGBTQ+ clergy, and LGBTQ+ partners were permitted to have church weddings from 2017 onward. During 2023, Tveit joined in the Pride march in Oslo in what was called an unprecedented step for the church.

The Thursday statement of regret received a mixed reaction. The leader of an organization of Christian lesbians in Norway, Hanne Marie Pedersen-Eriksen, a lesbian minister herself, described it as “a significant step toward healing” and a moment that “represented the closure of a painful era in the history of the church”.

For Stephen Adom, the leader of the Norwegian Association for Gender and Sexual Diversity, the apology represented “powerful and significant” but had come “too late for those who lost their lives to AIDS … with deep sorrow in their hearts as the church regarded the epidemic as divine punishment”.

Internationally, several faith-based organizations have attempted to reconcile for historical treatment towards LGBTQ+ people. During 2023, England's church apologised for what it characterized as “disgraceful” conduct, even as it still declines to allow same-sex marriages in religious settings.

In a similar vein, the Methodist Church in Ireland in the past year issued an apology for “inadequate pastoral assistance 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.

In the early part of this year, the United Church of Canada delivered a statement of regret toward Two-Spirit and LGBTQIA+ individuals, labeling it a reaffirmation of the church's “dedication to welcoming all and full inclusion” in all aspects of church life.

“We have failed to honor and appreciate the beauty of all creation,” Reverend Blair, the general secretary of the church, said. “We have hurt individuals in place of fostering completeness. We are sorry.”