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

Against red stage curtains at a well-known Oslo location for LGBTQ+ gatherings, the Church of Norway issued a formal apology for discrimination and harm perpetrated over the years.

“Norway's church has caused LGBTQ+ individuals pain, shame and significant harm,” the presiding bishop, Bishop Tveit, stated during a Thursday event. “This should never have happened and that is why I offer my apology now.”

“Harassment, discrimination and unfair treatment” had caused certain individuals abandoning their faith, Tveit recognized. A religious service at Oslo Cathedral was planned to follow his apology.

The apology took place at the London Pub establishment, one of two bars targeted in the 2022 violent incident that took two lives and caused serious injuries to nine throughout the Oslo Pride festivities. An individual of Iranian descent living in Norway, who had pledged allegiance to Islamic State, was given a prison term to at least 30 years in incarceration for carrying out the attacks.

In common with various worldwide religions, the Church of Norway – a Lutheran evangelical community that is the most extensive faith community in the country – for years sidelined LGBTQ+ individuals, preventing them from serving as pastors or from marrying in religious ceremonies. Back in the 1950s, church leaders characterized LGBTQ+ persons as a “social danger of global proportions”.

But as Norwegian society became increasingly liberal, emerging as the world's second to legalize same-sex partnerships in 1993 and during 2009 the first Scandinavian country to approve gay marriage, the church gradually changed.

During 2007, the Norwegian Lutheran Church commenced the ordination of gay pastors, and same-sex couples have been able to marry in church starting in 2017. During 2023, Tveit joined in the Pride march in Oslo in what was noted as a first for the church.

The apology on Thursday received varied responses. The head of a network of Christian lesbians in Norway, Hanne Marie, herself a gay pastor, called it “a crucial act of amends” and a point in time that “represented the closure of a difficult period within the church's past”.

According to Stephen Adom, the leader of Norway’s Association for Gender and Sexual Diversity, the apology was “meaningful and vital” but was delivered “too late for those among us who died of Aids … with deep sorrow in their hearts since the church viewed the crisis as punishment from God”.

Worldwide, a few churches have tried to offer apologies for their past behavior regarding LGBTQ+ individuals. Last year, the Church of England expressed regret for what it described as “disgraceful” conduct, though it still declines to allow same-sex marriages in religious settings.

Likewise, the Methodist Church in Ireland in the past year apologised for “inadequate pastoral assistance and care” toward LGBTQ+ individuals and family members, but stayed firm in its conviction that matrimony must only constitute a union between a man and a woman.

In the early part of this year, Canada's United Church offered an apology to two spirit and LGBTQIA+ communities, describing it as a confirmation of the church’s “commitment to radical hospitality and full inclusion” throughout every area of church life.

“We have failed to rejoice and take pleasure in the wonderful diversity of creation,” Reverend Blair, the general secretary of the church, stated. “We have hurt individuals in place of fostering completeness. We express our regret.”