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

Amid red stage curtains at a leading Oslo LGBTQ+ venue, the Church of Norway issued a formal apology for harm and unequal treatment it had inflicted.

“The church in Norway has caused LGBTQ+ people shame, great harm and pain,” the presiding bishop, Bishop Tveit, announced during a Thursday event. “This should never have happened and this is why today I say sorry.”

“Unequal treatment, harassment and discrimination” had caused certain individuals abandoning their faith, Tveit recognized. A worship service at Oslo Cathedral was scheduled to come after the apology.

The apology took place at the London Pub, one of two bars involved in the 2022 violent incident that took two lives and caused serious injuries to nine during Oslo’s Pride celebrations. An individual of Iranian descent living in Norway, who had pledged allegiance to Islamic State, received a sentence to no less than 30 years behind bars for the murders.

Like many religions around the world, Norway's church – an evangelical Lutheran church that is Norway’s largest faith community – for years sidelined LGBTQ+ people, refusing to allow them from serving as pastors or to have church weddings. Back in the 1950s, bishops of the church described gay people as “a worldwide social threat”.

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

In 2007, Norway's church commenced the ordination of homosexual ministers, and LGBTQ+ partners were permitted to marry in church starting in 2017. In 2023, the bishop took part in Oslo’s Pride parade in what was noted as a first for the church.

Thursday’s apology elicited differing opinions. The head of a network representing Norwegian Christian lesbians, Pedersen-Eriksen, who is also a gay pastor, referred to it as “an important reparation” and a point in time that “represented the closure of a painful era in the history of the church”.

For Stephen Adom, the director of the Association for Gender and Sexual Diversity in Norway, the apology represented “strong and important” but arrived “overdue for individuals among us who died of Aids … with deep sorrow in their hearts because the church considered the epidemic to be God’s punishment”.

Worldwide, a handful of religious institutions have tried to offer apologies for historical treatment concerning the LGBTQ+ community. Last year, the Church of England said sorry for what it described as “disgraceful” conduct, although it persists in refusing to permit gay marriages in church.

Likewise, Ireland's Methodist Church last year apologised for “inadequate pastoral assistance and care” regarding the LGBTQ+ community and their relatives, but remained staunch in its conviction that marriage could only be 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+ groups, describing it as 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 celebrate and delight in all of your beautiful creation,” Rev Michael Blair, the top administrative leader of the church, remarked. “We caused pain to people rather than pursuing healing. We express our regret.”