🔗 Share this article

Amid deep red curtains at a well-known Oslo location for LGBTQ+ gatherings, the Norwegian Lutheran Church offered an apology for discrimination and harm caused by the church.

“The national church has inflicted LGBTQ+ people harm, suffering and humiliation,” the presiding bishop, Bishop Tveit, stated this Thursday. “This ought not to have occurred and this is why I offer my apology now.”

The “discrimination, unequal treatment and harassment” had caused a loss of faith for some, Tveit acknowledged. A church service at the cathedral in Oslo was planned to follow his apology.

This formal apology occurred at a venue called London Pub, one of two bars attacked during the 2022 attack that resulted in two deaths and caused serious injuries to nine at Oslo's Pride event. A Norwegian citizen originally from Iran, who swore loyalty to Islamic State, received a sentence to a minimum of three decades behind bars for carrying out the attacks.

In common with various worldwide religions, the Church of Norway – a Lutheran evangelical community that is Norway’s largest faith community – had long marginalised LGBTQ+ people, preventing them from serving as pastors or from marrying in religious ceremonies. In the 1950s, church leaders described gay people as a “social danger of global proportions”.

Yet, with Norwegian society turning more progressive, emerging as the world's second to permit registered partnerships for same-sex couples during 1993 and by 2009 the first in Scandinavia to allow same-sex marriage, the religious institution eventually adapted.

During 2007, Norway's church commenced the ordination of LGBTQ+ clergy, and same-sex couples were permitted to have church weddings since 2017. During 2023, Tveit joined in the Oslo Pride event in what was noted as an unprecedented step for the church.

The apology on Thursday received differing opinions. The leader of an organization for Christian lesbians in Norway, Hanne Marie Pedersen-Eriksen, herself a gay pastor, described it as “a significant step toward healing” and an occasion that “finally marked the end of a dark chapter in the history of the church”.

For Stephen Adom, the leader of the Norwegian Association for Gender and Sexual Diversity, the apology was “strong and important” but had come “not in time for those who passed away from AIDS … with deep sorrow in their hearts because the church considered the crisis to be God’s punishment”.

Globally, a few churches have tried to reconcile for their actions concerning the LGBTQ+ community. During 2023, the Church of England apologised for what it characterized as “disgraceful” conduct, though it continues to refuse to allow same-sex marriages within the church.

In a similar vein, the Methodist Church located in Ireland in the past year issued an apology for “inadequate pastoral assistance and care” toward LGBTQ+ individuals and their relatives, but held fast in its conviction that marriage could only be a union between a man and a woman.

In the early part of this year, the United Church of Canada offered an apology to Two-Spirit and LGBTQIA+ groups, characterizing it as a reaffirmation of its “pledge to complete acceptance and open hospitality” in all aspects of church life.

“We did not manage to honor and appreciate the wonderful diversity of creation,” Reverend Blair, the general secretary of the church, said. “We have wounded people rather than pursuing healing. We express our regret.”