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

Amid crimson theater drapes at one of Oslo’s most prominent LGBTQ+ spaces, the Church of Norway offered an apology for hurtful actions and exclusion it had inflicted.

“The national church has caused the LGBTQ+ community harm, suffering and humiliation,” bishop Olav Fykse Tveit, Olav Fykse Tveit, announced during a Thursday event. “This ought not to have occurred and this is why today I say sorry.”

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

The statement of regret took place at the London Pub establishment, one of two bars attacked during the 2022 shooting that killed two people and left nine seriously injured throughout the Oslo Pride festivities. A Norwegian of Iranian origin, who had pledged allegiance 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 – an evangelical Lutheran church that is the biggest religious group in Norway – for years sidelined LGBTQ+ individuals, denying them the opportunity to become pastors or to have church weddings. Back in the 1950s, church leaders described gay people as a “social danger of global proportions”.

Yet, with Norwegian society turning more progressive, emerging as the world's second to permit registered partnerships for same-sex couples back in 1993 and during 2009 the first Scandinavian country to approve gay marriage, the church gradually changed.

During 2007, the Norwegian Lutheran Church began ordaining homosexual ministers, and gay and lesbian couples have been able to have church weddings starting in 2017. Last year, the bishop took part in Oslo’s Pride parade in what was described as a historic moment for the religious institution.

The apology on Thursday received a mixed reaction. The head of a network of Christian lesbians in Norway, Pedersen-Eriksen, a lesbian minister herself, called it “a significant step toward healing” and a point in time that “represented the closure of a dark chapter in the history of the church”.

As stated by Stephen Adom, the leader of Norway’s Association for Gender and Sexual Diversity, the apology was “powerful and significant” but was delivered “overdue for individuals who lost their lives to AIDS … with hearts filled with anguish because the church considered the disease as divine punishment”.

Worldwide, a few churches have sought to reconcile for their past behavior concerning the LGBTQ+ community. In 2023, the Anglican Church expressed regret for what it characterized as its “shameful” treatment, although it still declines to permit gay marriages in religious settings.

Likewise, the Methodist Church located in Ireland in the past year expressed regret for its “failures in pastoral support and care” to LGBTQ+ people and their relatives, but remained staunch in the view that marriage could only be a bond between male and female.

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

“We did not manage to rejoice and take pleasure in all of your beautiful creation,” Reverend Blair, the general secretary of the church, stated. “We have hurt individuals in place of fostering completeness. We are sorry.”