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

Amid red stage curtains at one of Oslo’s most prominent LGBTQ+ spaces, Norway's national church issued a formal apology for harm and unequal treatment perpetrated over the years.

“Norway's church has inflicted the LGBTQ+ community shame, great harm and pain,” the presiding bishop, Olav Fykse Tveit, stated during a Thursday event. “This should never have happened and that is why today I say sorry.”

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

This formal apology occurred at a venue called London Pub, a bar that was one of two targeted in the 2022 violent incident that took two lives and injured nine people severely at Oslo's Pride event. A Norwegian of Iranian origin, who expressed support for ISIS, was given a prison term to at least 30 years behind bars for the killings.

Similar to numerous global faiths, the Norwegian Lutheran Church – a Lutheran evangelical community that is the most extensive faith community in the country – historically excluded LGBTQ+ people, refusing to allow them from serving as pastors or to marry in church. Back in the 1950s, the church’s bishops referred to homosexual individuals as “a worldwide social threat”.

Yet, with Norwegian society turning more progressive, ranking as the second globally to legalize same-sex partnerships during 1993 and during 2009 the first Scandinavian country to allow same-sex marriage, the church gradually changed.

Back in 2007, Norway's church began ordaining homosexual ministers, and gay and lesbian couples were permitted to have church weddings from 2017 onward. During 2023, the bishop took part in Oslo’s Pride parade in what was described as an unprecedented step for the church.

The Thursday statement of regret received a mixed reaction. The leader of an organization for Christian lesbians in Norway, Hanne Marie Pedersen-Eriksen, who is also a gay pastor, described it as “a crucial act of amends” and a moment that “represented the closure of a painful era in the history of the church”.

According to Stephen Adom, the leader of Norway’s Association for Gender and Sexual Diversity, the apology was “meaningful and vital” but arrived “too late for those among us who died of Aids … carrying heavy hearts as the church regarded the disease as divine punishment”.

Worldwide, several faith-based organizations have tried to offer apologies for their actions concerning the LGBTQ+ community. In 2023, the Church of England expressed regret for what it described as its “shameful” treatment, though it still declines to allow same-sex marriages in church.

In a similar vein, Ireland's Methodist Church in the past year issued an apology for “shortcomings in pastoral care and support” regarding the LGBTQ+ community and their relatives, but held fast in the view that marriage should only represent a partnership of one man and one woman.

Several months ago, the United Church of Canada offered an apology to two spirit and LGBTQIA+ communities, labeling it a confirmation of the church’s “commitment to radical hospitality and full inclusion” in every part of the church's activities.

“We have not succeeded to honor and appreciate the wonderful diversity of creation,” Reverend Blair, the top administrative leader of the church, stated. “We have hurt individuals rather than pursuing healing. We apologize.”