Church of Norway Issues Apology to LGBTQ+ People for ‘Harm, Shame and Suffering’

Amid crimson theater drapes at a well-known Oslo location for LGBTQ+ gatherings, Norway's national church expressed regret for discrimination and harm perpetrated over the years.

“Norway's church has caused the LGBTQ+ community shame, great harm and pain,” the lead bishop, the church leader, stated on Thursday. “This ought not to have occurred and that is why I apologise today.”

The “discrimination, unequal treatment and harassment” had caused certain individuals abandoning their faith, Tveit recognized. A religious service at Oslo Cathedral was scheduled to follow his apology.

This formal apology was delivered at the London Pub establishment, one of two bars attacked during the 2022 attack that took two lives and left nine seriously injured during Oslo’s Pride celebrations. A Norwegian of Iranian origin, who had pledged allegiance to Islamic State, was given a prison term to no less than 30 years behind bars for carrying out the attacks.

Like many religions around the world, the Church of Norway – an evangelical Lutheran church that is Norway’s largest faith community – historically excluded LGBTQ+ people, refusing to allow them to become pastors or to marry in church. Back in the 1950s, bishops of the church characterized LGBTQ+ persons as a “social danger of global proportions”.

However, as Norway's society grew more liberal, emerging as the world's second to permit registered partnerships for same-sex couples back in 1993 and by 2009 the first in Scandinavia to allow same-sex marriage, the religious institution eventually adapted.

Back in 2007, the Norwegian Lutheran Church started appointing LGBTQ+ clergy, and LGBTQ+ partners were permitted to get married in religious ceremonies from 2017 onward. During 2023, Tveit participated in Oslo’s Pride parade in what was described as an unprecedented step for the church.

The Thursday statement of regret elicited a mixed reaction. The head of a network for Christian lesbians in Norway, Hanne Marie, herself a gay pastor, called it “a crucial act of amends” and a moment that “represented the closure of a dark chapter within the church's past”.

For Stephen Adom, the leader of Norway’s Association for Gender and Sexual Diversity, the apology was “powerful and significant” but arrived “overdue for individuals among us who died of Aids … carrying heavy hearts as the church regarded the epidemic to be God’s punishment”.

Internationally, a few churches have tried to offer apologies for their actions concerning the LGBTQ+ community. In 2023, England's church expressed regret for what it described as its “shameful” treatment, although it continues to refuse to allow same-sex marriages in religious settings.

Similarly, Ireland's Methodist Church in the past year issued an apology for its “failures in pastoral support and care” toward LGBTQ+ individuals and family members, but stayed firm in its conviction that marriage could only be a bond between male and female.

In the early part of this year, the United Church based in Canada issued an apology toward Two-Spirit and LGBTQIA+ individuals, describing it as a confirmation of the church’s “commitment to radical hospitality and full inclusion” throughout every area of church life.

“We did not manage to rejoice and take pleasure in the beauty of all creation,” Michael Blair, the church's general secretary, stated. “We have hurt individuals instead of seeking wholeness. We are sorry.”