🔗 Share this article

Against red stage curtains at one of Oslo’s most prominent LGBTQ+ spaces, the Norwegian Lutheran Church issued a formal apology for hurtful actions and exclusion caused by the church.

“The church in Norway has inflicted LGBTQ+ people pain, shame and significant harm,” bishop Olav Fykse Tveit, the church leader, declared on Thursday. “This ought not to have occurred and which is the reason I offer my apology now.”

“Harassment, discrimination and unfair treatment” resulted in certain individuals abandoning their faith, the bishop admitted. A worship service at Oslo's main cathedral was scheduled to follow his apology.

This formal apology took place at the London Pub, a bar that was one of two attacked during the 2022 attack that killed two people and left nine seriously injured during Oslo’s Pride celebrations. A Norwegian citizen originally from Iran, who swore loyalty to Islamic State, was given a prison term to a minimum of three decades behind bars for the murders.

Like many religions around the world, Norway's church – a Lutheran evangelical community that is the most extensive faith community in the country – had long marginalised the LGBTQ+ community, refusing to allow them from joining the clergy or to marry in church. Back in the 1950s, the church’s bishops described gay people as “a global-scale societal hazard”.

However, as Norway's society grew more liberal, ranking as the second globally to permit registered partnerships for same-sex couples in 1993 and by 2009 the first Scandinavian country to approve gay marriage, the church gradually changed.

In 2007, Norway's church started appointing gay pastors, and gay and lesbian couples could get married in religious ceremonies from 2017 onward. In 2023, Tveit participated in the Oslo Pride event in what was called a historic moment for the religious institution.

The Thursday statement of regret elicited a mixed reaction. The leader of an organization 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 painful era within the church's past”.

According to Stephen Adom, the director of the Association for Gender and Sexual Diversity in Norway, the statement was “powerful and significant” but was delivered “overdue for individuals among us who died of Aids … with deep sorrow in their hearts since the church viewed the crisis as punishment from God”.

Globally, several faith-based organizations have attempted to offer apologies for their actions concerning the LGBTQ+ community. Last year, the Church of England apologised for what it characterized as “shameful” actions, even as it continues to refuse to authorize same-sex weddings in church.

In a similar vein, the Methodist Church located in Ireland the previous year apologised for “inadequate pastoral assistance and care” regarding the LGBTQ+ community and their relatives, but remained staunch in its belief that marriage should only represent a bond between male and female.

Earlier this year, the United Church based in Canada issued an apology to Two-Spirit and LGBTQIA+ groups, describing it as a renewed commitment of the church’s “commitment to radical hospitality and full inclusion” in every part of the church's activities.

“We have not succeeded to celebrate and delight in the wonderful diversity of creation,” Michael Blair, the general secretary of the church, remarked. “We caused pain to people rather than pursuing healing. We are sorry.”