🔗 Share this article

Amid crimson theater drapes 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 brought LGBTQ+ people pain, shame and significant harm,” the presiding bishop, the church leader, announced this Thursday. “It was wrong for this to take place and that is why I apologise today.”

The “discrimination, unequal treatment and harassment” had caused certain individuals abandoning their faith, the bishop admitted. A religious service at the cathedral in Oslo was planned to follow his apology.

The statement of regret was delivered at the London Pub establishment, one of two bars attacked during the 2022 violent incident that resulted in two deaths and caused serious injuries to nine during Oslo’s Pride celebrations. A Norwegian citizen originally from Iran, who swore loyalty to Islamic State, was given a prison term to at least 30 years in incarceration for the murders.

Similar to numerous global faiths, the Norwegian Lutheran Church – an evangelical Lutheran church that is Norway’s largest faith community – historically excluded LGBTQ+ people, preventing them from serving as pastors or to marry in church. In the 1950s, bishops of the church referred to homosexual individuals as “a global-scale societal hazard”.

Yet, with Norwegian society turning more progressive, ranking as the second globally to allow same-sex registered partnerships back in 1993 and in 2009 the first Scandinavian country to legalize same-sex marriage, the religious institution eventually adapted.

During 2007, the Church of Norway started appointing homosexual ministers, and same-sex couples have been able to have church weddings starting in 2017. During 2023, Tveit participated in Oslo’s Pride parade in what was called a historic moment for the religious institution.

Thursday’s apology received differing opinions. The director of a group for Christian lesbians in Norway, Pedersen-Eriksen, a lesbian minister herself, referred to it as “an important reparation” and a moment that “signaled the conclusion of a painful era within the church's past”.

For Stephen Adom, the director of the Norwegian Association for Gender and Sexual Diversity, the apology was “meaningful and vital” but had come “too late for those who lost their lives to AIDS … carrying heavy hearts because the church considered the crisis to be God’s punishment”.

Internationally, a handful of religious institutions have sought to offer apologies for their actions towards LGBTQ+ people. Last year, England's church apologised for what it referred to as “disgraceful” conduct, although it continues to refuse to authorize same-sex weddings within the church.

In a similar vein, the Methodist Church in Ireland the previous year expressed regret for “shortcomings in pastoral care and support” to LGBTQ+ people and their families, but stayed firm in its conviction that marriage could only be a union between a man and a woman.

Earlier this year, the United Church based in Canada delivered a statement of regret to Two-Spirit and LGBTQIA+ groups, describing it as a reaffirmation of the church’s “commitment to radical hospitality and full inclusion” throughout every area of church life.

“We have failed to celebrate and delight in the wonderful diversity of creation,” Michael Blair, the church's general secretary, stated. “We caused pain to people in place of fostering completeness. We express our regret.”