🔗 Share this article

Against deep red curtains at a well-known Oslo location for LGBTQ+ gatherings, the Church of Norway offered an apology for harm and unequal treatment caused by the church.

“The national church has caused LGBTQ+ people pain, shame and significant harm,” bishop Olav Fykse Tveit, the church leader, announced on Thursday. “This ought not to have occurred and which is the reason I offer my apology now.”

The “discrimination, unequal treatment and harassment” led to some to lose their faith, the bishop admitted. A worship service at Oslo Cathedral was arranged to take place after his statement.

The statement of regret took place at a venue called London Pub, a bar that was one of two attacked during the 2022 attack that resulted in two deaths and caused serious injuries to nine at Oslo's Pride event. A Norwegian citizen originally from Iran, who had pledged allegiance to Islamic State, was sentenced to at least 30 years in incarceration for carrying out the attacks.

In common with various worldwide religions, Norway's church – an evangelical Lutheran church that is the biggest religious group in Norway – had long marginalised LGBTQ+ people, refusing to allow them to become pastors or to have church weddings. In the 1950s, church leaders referred to homosexual individuals as a “social danger of global proportions”.

However, as Norway's society grew more liberal, becoming the second in the world to legalize same-sex partnerships back in 1993 and in 2009 the first in Scandinavia to legalize same-sex marriage, the church slowly followed.

Back in 2007, the Church of Norway started appointing homosexual ministers, and gay and lesbian couples were permitted to have church weddings since 2017. In 2023, Tveit joined in the Oslo Pride event in what was noted as a first for the church.

The Thursday statement of regret elicited a mixed reaction. The head of a network for Christian lesbians in Norway, Pedersen-Eriksen, a lesbian minister herself, called it “a significant step toward healing” and an occasion that “represented the closure of a painful era within the church's past”.

According to Stephen Adom, the head of the Association for Gender and Sexual Diversity in Norway, the apology represented “meaningful and vital” but was delivered “not in time for those who passed away from AIDS … with deep sorrow in their hearts because the church considered the disease as punishment from God”.

Worldwide, a few churches have sought to reconcile for historical treatment concerning the LGBTQ+ community. During 2023, England's church expressed regret for what it described as “shameful” actions, though it persists in refusing to authorize same-sex weddings in church.

In a similar vein, the Methodist Church located in Ireland the previous year expressed regret for “inadequate pastoral assistance and care” regarding the LGBTQ+ community and family members, but stayed firm in its belief that marriage should only represent a partnership of one man and one woman.

Several months ago, the United Church based in Canada delivered a statement of regret toward Two-Spirit and LGBTQIA+ individuals, characterizing it as a reaffirmation of its “pledge to complete acceptance and open hospitality” in all aspects of church life.

“We have not succeeded to rejoice and take pleasure in all of your beautiful creation,” Reverend Blair, the top administrative leader of the church, stated. “We have hurt individuals rather than pursuing healing. We are sorry.”