The Norwegian Church Issues Formal Apology to LGBTQ+ People for ‘Harm, Shame and Suffering’

Against deep red curtains at a leading Oslo LGBTQ+ venue, the Church of Norway offered an apology for harm and unequal treatment it had inflicted.

“Norway's church has inflicted the LGBTQ+ community shame, great harm and pain,” bishop Olav Fykse Tveit, Olav Fykse Tveit, announced during a Thursday event. “It was wrong for this to take place and that is why I apologise today.”

The “discrimination, unequal treatment and harassment” resulted in certain individuals abandoning their faith, Tveit acknowledged. A church service at Oslo's main cathedral was planned to take place after his statement.

This formal apology occurred at the London Pub, one of two bars attacked during the 2022 violent incident that resulted in two deaths and injured nine people severely at Oslo's Pride event. A Norwegian of Iranian origin, who had pledged allegiance to Islamic State, was given a prison term to a minimum of three decades behind bars for the killings.

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 from serving as pastors or to marry in church. In the 1950s, bishops of the church characterized LGBTQ+ persons 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 during 2009 the first in Scandinavia to legalize same-sex marriage, the church gradually changed.

During 2007, Norway's church commenced the ordination of homosexual ministers, and same-sex couples were permitted to marry in church since 2017. During 2023, the bishop took part in the Pride march in Oslo in what was described as a first for the church.

Thursday’s apology received a mixed reaction. The director of a group representing Norwegian Christian lesbians, Hanne Marie Pedersen-Eriksen, a lesbian minister herself, referred to it as “a significant step toward healing” and a moment that “finally marked the end of a difficult period within the church's past”.

For Stephen Adom, the head of Norway’s Association for Gender and Sexual Diversity, the apology represented “powerful and significant” but arrived “too late for those who passed away from AIDS … with deep sorrow in their hearts since the church viewed the crisis to be God’s punishment”.

Globally, a few churches have sought to offer apologies for historical treatment towards LGBTQ+ people. Last year, England's church expressed regret for what it characterized as its “shameful” treatment, though it continues to refuse to allow same-sex marriages in religious settings.

Likewise, the Methodist Church in Ireland last year apologised for “shortcomings in pastoral care and support” regarding the LGBTQ+ community and their relatives, but remained staunch in the view that marriage should only represent a union between a man and a woman.

Several months ago, Canada's United Church offered an apology toward Two-Spirit and LGBTQIA+ individuals, describing it as a confirmation of the church’s “commitment to radical hospitality and full inclusion” in all aspects of church life.

“We did not manage to honor and appreciate the wonderful diversity of creation,” Reverend Blair, the top administrative leader of the church, said. “We have wounded people in place of fostering completeness. We apologize.”