🔗 Share this article

Set against red stage curtains at a well-known Oslo location for LGBTQ+ gatherings, the Church of Norway expressed regret for discrimination and harm it had inflicted.

“The church in Norway has inflicted LGBTQ+ individuals pain, shame and significant harm,” bishop Olav Fykse Tveit, Bishop Tveit, stated during a Thursday event. “This should never have happened and this is why today I say sorry.”

The “discrimination, unequal treatment and harassment” had caused a loss of faith for some, the bishop admitted. A worship service at the cathedral in Oslo was scheduled to come after the apology.

The statement of regret took place at the London Pub, one of two bars targeted in the 2022 attack that resulted in two deaths and injured nine people severely throughout the Oslo Pride festivities. A Norwegian citizen originally from Iran, who expressed support for ISIS, was given a prison term to no less than 30 years behind bars for the murders.

In common with various worldwide religions, the Norwegian Lutheran Church – a Protestant Lutheran denomination that is the biggest religious group in Norway – for years sidelined the LGBTQ+ community, denying them the opportunity from serving as pastors or to marry in church. Back in the 1950s, bishops of the church described gay people as “a global-scale societal hazard”.

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

Back in 2007, the Church of Norway began ordaining gay pastors, and gay and lesbian couples have been able to marry in church from 2017 onward. During 2023, Tveit participated in Oslo’s Pride parade in what was described as an unprecedented step for the church.

The Thursday statement of regret was met with a mixed reaction. The head of a network representing Norwegian Christian lesbians, Hanne Marie Pedersen-Eriksen, who is also a gay pastor, referred to it as “a significant step toward healing” and a point in time that “represented the closure of a difficult period in the history of the church”.

For Stephen Adom, the director of the Association for Gender and Sexual Diversity in Norway, the apology was “powerful and significant” but was delivered “too late for those who lost their lives to AIDS … carrying heavy hearts because the church considered the epidemic to be God’s punishment”.

Worldwide, a handful of religious institutions have attempted to offer apologies for their actions concerning the LGBTQ+ community. During 2023, the Church of England said sorry for what it described as its “shameful” treatment, though it still declines to permit gay marriages within the church.

In a similar vein, Ireland's Methodist Church in the past year apologised for “shortcomings in pastoral care and support” regarding the LGBTQ+ community and their relatives, but stayed firm in its belief that marriage should only represent a bond between male and female.

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

“We have failed to celebrate and delight in all of your beautiful creation,” Reverend Blair, the general secretary of the church, remarked. “We have hurt individuals instead of seeking wholeness. We are sorry.”