Norway's Church Delivers Apology to LGBTQ+ Individuals for ‘Harm, Shame and Suffering’

Against red stage curtains at one of Oslo’s most prominent LGBTQ+ spaces, the Church of Norway expressed regret for discrimination and harm perpetrated over the years.

“Norway's church has inflicted LGBTQ+ people pain, shame and significant harm,” bishop Olav Fykse Tveit, the church leader, stated during a Thursday event. “This ought not to have occurred and this is why I apologise today.”

The “discrimination, unequal treatment and harassment” had caused some to lose their faith, Tveit recognized. A religious service at Oslo's main cathedral was arranged to take place after his statement.

This formal apology took place at the London Pub establishment, one of two bars targeted in the 2022 violent incident that killed two people and left nine seriously injured during Oslo’s Pride celebrations. A Norwegian of Iranian origin, who expressed support for ISIS, was given a prison term to no less than 30 years in prison for the killings.

Similar to numerous global faiths, Norway's church – an evangelical Lutheran church that is the most extensive faith community in the country – for years sidelined LGBTQ+ people, preventing them to become pastors or to marry in church. During the 1950s, the church’s bishops referred to homosexual individuals as a “social danger of global proportions”.

Yet, with Norwegian society turning more progressive, becoming the second in the world to allow same-sex registered partnerships during 1993 and in 2009 the first in Scandinavia to allow same-sex marriage, the religious institution eventually adapted.

Back in 2007, Norway's church began ordaining homosexual ministers, and LGBTQ+ partners could marry in church since 2017. During 2023, Tveit joined in the Pride march in Oslo in what was called a historic moment for the religious institution.

The Thursday statement of regret was met with varied responses. The leader of an organization representing Norwegian Christian lesbians, Hanne Marie, a lesbian minister herself, referred to it as “a crucial act of amends” and an occasion that “signaled the conclusion of a dark chapter in the history of the church”.

According to Stephen Adom, the leader of the Association for Gender and Sexual Diversity in Norway, the apology represented “strong and important” but had come “not in time for those among us who died of Aids … carrying heavy hearts since the church viewed the crisis as punishment from God”.

Worldwide, several faith-based organizations have tried to make amends for their actions towards LGBTQ+ people. Last year, the Church of England apologised for what it characterized as its “shameful” treatment, though it still declines to permit gay marriages in church.

In a similar vein, the Methodist Church in Ireland in the past year apologised for its “failures in pastoral support and care” toward LGBTQ+ individuals and their relatives, but held fast in its belief that marriage could only be a bond between male and female.

Several months ago, Canada's United Church offered an apology to Two-Spirit and LGBTQIA+ groups, describing it as a confirmation of its “pledge to complete acceptance and open hospitality” in every part of the church's activities.

“We have failed to celebrate and delight in the wonderful diversity of creation,” Reverend Blair, the church's general secretary, stated. “We have wounded people rather than pursuing healing. We apologize.”