🔗 Share this article

Set against crimson theater drapes at one of Oslo’s most prominent LGBTQ+ spaces, Norway's national church expressed regret for discrimination and harm perpetrated over the years.

“The church in Norway has inflicted LGBTQ+ people harm, suffering and humiliation,” the lead bishop, Olav Fykse Tveit, announced on Thursday. “This should never have happened and which is the reason I apologise today.”

The “discrimination, unequal treatment and harassment” resulted in certain individuals abandoning their faith, the bishop admitted. A worship service at Oslo Cathedral was planned to follow his apology.

The apology was delivered at a venue called London Pub, a bar that was one of two attacked during the 2022 violent incident that killed two people and injured nine people severely during Oslo’s Pride celebrations. An individual of Iranian descent living in Norway, who had pledged allegiance to Islamic State, received a sentence to at least 30 years behind bars for the killings.

Like many religions around the world, the Norwegian Lutheran Church – a Protestant Lutheran denomination that is Norway’s largest faith community – historically excluded LGBTQ+ individuals, denying them the opportunity to become pastors or to marry in church. Back in the 1950s, the church’s bishops characterized LGBTQ+ persons as “a global-scale societal hazard”.

However, as Norway's society grew more liberal, emerging as the world's second to permit registered partnerships for same-sex couples in 1993 and by 2009 the first Scandinavian country to legalize same-sex marriage, the church slowly followed.

During 2007, Norway's church commenced the ordination of homosexual ministers, and LGBTQ+ partners could have church weddings from 2017 onward. During 2023, Tveit joined in Oslo’s Pride parade in what was described as a historic moment for the religious institution.

Thursday’s apology received differing opinions. The director of a group of Christian lesbians in Norway, Hanne Marie, who is also a gay pastor, called it “a crucial act of amends” and a moment that “represented the closure of a painful era within the church's past”.

According to Stephen Adom, the director of the Norwegian Association for Gender and Sexual Diversity, the apology was “powerful and significant” but had come “not in time for those who passed away from AIDS … carrying heavy hearts since the church viewed the crisis to be God’s punishment”.

Internationally, a few churches have tried to reconcile for their actions regarding LGBTQ+ individuals. During 2023, England's church apologised for what it referred to as its “shameful” treatment, even as it continues to refuse to permit gay marriages in church.

In a similar vein, the Methodist Church in Ireland the previous year apologised for “inadequate pastoral assistance and care” to LGBTQ+ people and family members, but remained staunch in the view that marriage should only represent a bond between male and female.

Several months ago, Canada's United Church offered an apology to two spirit and LGBTQIA+ communities, characterizing it as a confirmation of the church's “dedication to welcoming all and full inclusion” in all aspects of church life.

“We have not succeeded to honor and appreciate the wonderful diversity of creation,” Rev Michael Blair, the top administrative leader of the church, remarked. “We have hurt individuals rather than pursuing healing. We express our regret.”