The Norwegian Church Issues Apology to LGBTQ+ Individuals for ‘Pain, Shame and Significant Harm’
Set against crimson theater drapes 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 brought the LGBTQ+ community shame, great harm and pain,” the presiding bishop, Olav Fykse Tveit, declared on Thursday. “It was wrong for this to take place and this is why today I say sorry.”
“Unequal treatment, harassment and discrimination” resulted in certain individuals abandoning their faith, Tveit acknowledged. A church service at the cathedral in Oslo was arranged to take place after his statement.
This formal apology was delivered at the London Pub, one among two bars targeted in the 2022 violent incident that killed two people and caused serious injuries to nine during Oslo’s Pride celebrations. A Norwegian of Iranian origin, who swore loyalty to Islamic State, received a sentence to a minimum of three decades behind bars for the murders.
Like many religions around the world, the Norwegian Lutheran Church – a Protestant Lutheran denomination that is Norway’s largest faith community – had long marginalised LGBTQ+ people, preventing them to become pastors or to marry in church. Back in the 1950s, church leaders referred to homosexual individuals as “a global-scale societal hazard”.
However, as Norway's society grew more liberal, becoming the second in the world to allow same-sex registered partnerships in 1993 and during 2009 the first in Scandinavia to allow same-sex marriage, the church gradually changed.
In 2007, Norway's church commenced the ordination of LGBTQ+ clergy, and gay and lesbian couples could get married in religious ceremonies since 2017. During 2023, the bishop took part in Oslo’s Pride parade in what was noted as an unprecedented step for the church.
Thursday’s apology was met with differing opinions. The leader of an organization for Christian lesbians in Norway, Pedersen-Eriksen, who is also a gay pastor, referred to it as “an important reparation” and an occasion that “finally marked the end of a dark chapter in the history of the church”.
For Stephen Adom, the director of the Association for Gender and Sexual Diversity in Norway, the statement was “powerful and significant” but had come “too late for those among us who died of Aids … with deep sorrow in their hearts because the church considered the epidemic to be God’s punishment”.
Internationally, a handful of religious institutions have tried to reconcile for their past behavior towards LGBTQ+ people. In 2023, England's church expressed regret for what it described as its “shameful” treatment, even as it continues to refuse to authorize same-sex weddings in religious settings.
In a similar vein, Ireland's Methodist Church in the past year expressed regret for “shortcomings in pastoral care and support” to LGBTQ+ people and family members, but remained staunch in its belief that marriage should only represent a partnership of one man and one woman.
In the early part of this year, the United Church based in Canada offered an apology to Two-Spirit and LGBTQIA+ groups, labeling it a renewed commitment of the church's “dedication to welcoming all and full inclusion” in all aspects of church life.
“We have not succeeded to rejoice and take pleasure in the beauty of all creation,” Michael Blair, the top administrative leader of the church, remarked. “We have hurt individuals in place of fostering completeness. We express our regret.”