The Norwegian Church Delivers Sincere Apology to LGBTQ+ Community for ‘Harm, Shame and Suffering’

Amid deep red curtains at one of Oslo’s most prominent LGBTQ+ spaces, the Church of Norway offered an apology for hurtful actions and exclusion perpetrated over the years.

“The national church has inflicted LGBTQ+ individuals pain, shame and significant harm,” the presiding bishop, Olav Fykse Tveit, announced this Thursday. “It was wrong for this to take place and this is why I apologise today.”

The “discrimination, unequal treatment and harassment” led to some to lose their faith, Tveit acknowledged. A worship service at Oslo Cathedral was planned to follow his apology.

The apology occurred at a venue called London Pub, a bar that was one of two involved in the 2022 violent incident that killed two people and injured nine people severely at Oslo's Pride event. A Norwegian citizen originally from Iran, who expressed support for ISIS, received a sentence to no less than 30 years in prison for the killings.

Similar to numerous global faiths, the Norwegian Lutheran Church – a Protestant Lutheran denomination that is the biggest religious group in Norway – historically excluded LGBTQ+ individuals, refusing to allow them from joining the clergy or to have church weddings. Back in the 1950s, church leaders characterized LGBTQ+ persons as “a global-scale societal hazard”.

Yet, with Norwegian society turning more progressive, emerging as the world's second to legalize same-sex partnerships back in 1993 and in 2009 the initial Nordic nation to legalize same-sex marriage, the church slowly followed.

Back in 2007, the Church of Norway started appointing gay pastors, and same-sex couples were permitted to have church weddings starting in 2017. During 2023, Tveit participated in the Pride march in Oslo in what was described as an unprecedented step for the church.

The Thursday statement of regret elicited varied responses. The director of a group representing Norwegian Christian lesbians, Hanne Marie, a lesbian minister herself, referred to it as “an important reparation” and an occasion that “finally marked the end of a dark chapter within the church's past”.

As stated by Stephen Adom, the director of the Norwegian Association for Gender and Sexual Diversity, the apology was “strong and important” but arrived “too late for those who lost their lives to AIDS … carrying heavy hearts since the church viewed the crisis as punishment from God”.

Worldwide, several faith-based organizations have sought to offer apologies for their actions towards LGBTQ+ people. Last year, the Church of England expressed regret for what it described as “shameful” actions, although it continues to refuse to permit gay marriages within the church.

Likewise, the Methodist Church in Ireland last year expressed regret for its “failures in pastoral support and care” toward LGBTQ+ individuals and their families, but remained staunch in its conviction that matrimony must only constitute a bond between male and female.

Earlier this year, the United Church based in Canada offered an apology toward Two-Spirit and LGBTQIA+ individuals, describing it as a renewed commitment of the church's “dedication to welcoming all and full inclusion” in every part of the church's activities.

“We have not succeeded to rejoice and take pleasure in all of your beautiful creation,” Reverend Blair, the top administrative leader of the church, said. “We have hurt individuals in place of fostering completeness. We are sorry.”