🔗 Share this article

Set against deep red curtains at a well-known Oslo location for LGBTQ+ gatherings, the Church of Norway expressed regret for discrimination and harm perpetrated over the years.

“Norway's church has brought LGBTQ+ people pain, shame and significant harm,” bishop Olav Fykse Tveit, Bishop Tveit, announced this Thursday. “It was wrong for this to take place and this is why today I say sorry.”

“Unequal treatment, harassment and discrimination” resulted in certain individuals abandoning their faith, Tveit acknowledged. A religious service at the cathedral in Oslo was planned to follow his apology.

The apology was delivered at the London Pub establishment, one of two bars attacked during the 2022 violent incident that killed two people and caused serious injuries to nine at Oslo's Pride event. A Norwegian citizen originally from Iran, who swore loyalty to Islamic State, received a sentence to a minimum of three decades in incarceration for the murders.

Similar to numerous global faiths, the Norwegian Lutheran Church – a Protestant Lutheran denomination that is the biggest religious group in Norway – for years sidelined LGBTQ+ people, denying them the opportunity to become pastors or to have church weddings. During the 1950s, church leaders described gay people as “a worldwide social threat”.

But as Norwegian society became increasingly liberal, ranking as the second globally to legalize same-sex partnerships back in 1993 and in 2009 the initial Nordic nation to approve gay marriage, the church gradually changed.

During 2007, the Church of Norway commenced the ordination of homosexual ministers, and LGBTQ+ partners have been able to marry in church from 2017 onward. Last year, the bishop took part in Oslo’s Pride parade in what was described as a historic moment for the religious institution.

The Thursday statement of regret elicited a mixed reaction. The leader of an organization for Christian lesbians in Norway, Hanne Marie Pedersen-Eriksen, herself a gay pastor, called it “a significant step toward healing” and a moment that “represented the closure of a difficult period within the church's past”.

For Stephen Adom, the leader of the Norwegian Association for Gender and Sexual Diversity, the apology represented “meaningful and vital” but arrived “not in time for those who lost their lives to AIDS … with deep sorrow in their hearts as the church regarded the epidemic to be God’s punishment”.

Internationally, several faith-based organizations have sought to make amends for historical treatment concerning the LGBTQ+ community. Last year, the Church of England expressed regret for what it characterized as its “shameful” treatment, even as it persists in refusing to authorize same-sex weddings in church.

In a similar vein, the Methodist Church located in Ireland in the past year expressed regret for “shortcomings in pastoral care and support” toward LGBTQ+ individuals and their families, but remained staunch in its conviction that marriage should only represent a union between a man and a woman.

Several months ago, Canada's United Church issued an apology toward Two-Spirit and LGBTQIA+ individuals, characterizing it as a renewed commitment of the church’s “commitment to radical hospitality and full inclusion” throughout every area of church life.

“We have not succeeded to rejoice and take pleasure in all of your beautiful creation,” Reverend Blair, the general secretary of the church, stated. “We have hurt individuals instead of seeking wholeness. We apologize.”