🔗 Share this article

Against crimson theater drapes at a leading Oslo LGBTQ+ venue, Norway's national church offered an apology for hurtful actions and exclusion caused by the church.

“The church in Norway has caused LGBTQ+ individuals shame, great harm and pain,” bishop Olav Fykse Tveit, the church leader, declared on Thursday. “It was wrong for this to take place and this is why I offer my apology now.”

“Unequal treatment, harassment and discrimination” led to certain individuals abandoning their faith, the bishop admitted. A religious service at Oslo Cathedral was arranged to follow his apology.

The statement of regret took place at the London Pub, one among two bars targeted in the 2022 shooting that killed two people and left nine seriously injured throughout the Oslo Pride festivities. An individual of Iranian descent living in Norway, who had pledged allegiance to Islamic State, was sentenced to at least 30 years in prison for the murders.

Like many religions around the world, Norway's church – an evangelical Lutheran church that is the most extensive faith community in the country – had long marginalised the LGBTQ+ community, preventing them to become pastors or from marrying in religious ceremonies. Back in the 1950s, church leaders described gay people as “a global-scale societal hazard”.

Yet, with Norwegian society turning more progressive, becoming the second in the world to allow same-sex registered partnerships during 1993 and during 2009 the first in Scandinavia to approve gay marriage, the church gradually changed.

During 2007, the Norwegian Lutheran Church started appointing homosexual ministers, and same-sex couples were permitted to marry in church from 2017 onward. In 2023, Tveit joined in the Pride march in Oslo in what was described as an unprecedented step for the church.

The apology on Thursday received varied responses. The director of a group of Christian lesbians in Norway, Hanne Marie, who is also a gay pastor, referred to it as “a significant step toward healing” and a point in time that “signaled the conclusion of a painful era in the history of the church”.

According to Stephen Adom, the head of the Norwegian Association for Gender and Sexual Diversity, the apology represented “strong and important” but arrived “too late for those who passed away from AIDS … with hearts filled with anguish as the church regarded the crisis as punishment from God”.

Worldwide, several faith-based organizations have sought to make amends for their actions concerning the LGBTQ+ community. Last year, England's church said sorry for what it described as its “shameful” treatment, though it still declines to authorize same-sex weddings within the church.

Likewise, Ireland's Methodist Church last year apologised for “inadequate pastoral assistance and care” to LGBTQ+ people and family members, but stayed firm in the view that marriage could only be a union between a man and a woman.

In the early part of this year, Canada's United Church issued an apology to Two-Spirit and LGBTQIA+ groups, characterizing it as a confirmation of the church's “dedication to welcoming all and full inclusion” in every part of the church's activities.

“We have failed to honor and appreciate the beauty of all creation,” Michael Blair, the top administrative leader of the church, remarked. “We have hurt individuals rather than pursuing healing. We express our regret.”