The Norwegian Church Makes Formal Apology to LGBTQ+ Individuals for ‘Harm, Shame and Suffering’

Amid crimson theater drapes at one of Oslo’s most prominent LGBTQ+ spaces, Norway's national church expressed regret for harm and unequal treatment it had inflicted.

“The national church has brought LGBTQ+ people pain, shame and significant harm,” the presiding bishop, Olav Fykse Tveit, declared on Thursday. “This should never have happened and this is why today I say sorry.”

The “discrimination, unequal treatment and harassment” resulted in a loss of faith for some, Tveit recognized. A church service at Oslo Cathedral was planned to follow his apology.

The statement of regret was delivered at the London Pub establishment, one among two bars targeted in the 2022 violent incident that took two lives and caused serious injuries to nine during Oslo’s Pride celebrations. A Norwegian citizen originally from Iran, who had pledged allegiance to Islamic State, was given a prison term to a minimum of three decades behind bars for the murders.

In common with various worldwide religions, Norway's church – a Protestant Lutheran denomination that is Norway’s largest faith community – had long marginalised LGBTQ+ individuals, refusing to allow them to become pastors or to marry in church. In the 1950s, church leaders referred to homosexual individuals as “a worldwide social threat”.

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

Back in 2007, the Norwegian Lutheran Church started appointing gay pastors, and gay and lesbian couples were permitted to marry in church starting in 2017. During 2023, the bishop took part in the Pride march in Oslo in what was described as an unprecedented step for the church.

The apology on Thursday elicited a mixed reaction. The director of a group for Christian lesbians in Norway, Hanne Marie, a lesbian minister herself, called it “a significant step toward healing” and a moment that “signaled the conclusion of a painful era within the church's past”.

According to Stephen Adom, the head of the Association for Gender and Sexual Diversity in Norway, the apology represented “strong and important” but had come “not in time for those who lost their lives to AIDS … with hearts filled with anguish because the church considered the disease as divine punishment”.

Internationally, a few churches have sought to offer apologies for their past behavior regarding LGBTQ+ individuals. In 2023, England's church expressed regret for what it characterized as “disgraceful” conduct, though it still declines to allow same-sex marriages in religious settings.

Similarly, Ireland's Methodist Church in the past year issued an apology for “inadequate pastoral assistance and care” regarding the LGBTQ+ community and family members, but remained staunch in the view that marriage could only be a union between a man and a woman.

In the early part of this year, Canada's United Church delivered a statement of regret to two spirit and LGBTQIA+ communities, characterizing it as a confirmation of its “pledge to complete acceptance and open hospitality” in all aspects of church life.

“We have not succeeded to honor and appreciate the beauty of all creation,” Rev Michael Blair, the church's general secretary, remarked. “We have hurt individuals in place of fostering completeness. We are sorry.”