Norway's Church Makes Sincere Apology to LGBTQ+ Community for ‘Harm, Shame and Suffering’

Set against red stage curtains at one of Oslo’s most prominent LGBTQ+ spaces, the Church of Norway expressed regret for harm and unequal treatment caused by the church.

“The church in Norway has inflicted LGBTQ+ individuals pain, shame and significant harm,” the presiding bishop, the church leader, stated this Thursday. “This should never have happened and which is the reason I apologise today.”

The “discrimination, unequal treatment and harassment” resulted in certain individuals abandoning their faith, the bishop admitted. A religious service at the cathedral in Oslo was arranged to follow his apology.

This formal apology was delivered at the London Pub establishment, a bar that was one of two involved in the 2022 attack that resulted in two deaths and left nine seriously injured at Oslo's Pride event. A Norwegian citizen originally from Iran, who expressed support for ISIS, was given a prison term to a minimum of three decades in prison for the killings.

Like many religions around the world, the Church of Norway – a Protestant Lutheran denomination that is Norway’s largest faith community – had long marginalised the LGBTQ+ community, denying them the opportunity from joining the clergy or to have church weddings. During the 1950s, bishops of the church described gay people as “a worldwide social threat”.

However, as Norway's society grew more liberal, becoming the second in the world to permit registered partnerships for same-sex couples back in 1993 and during 2009 the first in Scandinavia to allow same-sex marriage, the church slowly followed.

In 2007, Norway's church started appointing gay pastors, and LGBTQ+ partners could get married in religious ceremonies from 2017 onward. Last year, Tveit participated in the Pride march in Oslo in what was noted as a first for the church.

The apology on Thursday was met with differing opinions. The director of a group for Christian lesbians in Norway, Hanne Marie, a lesbian minister herself, called it “a crucial act of amends” and a moment that “represented the closure of a painful era in the church’s history”.

For Stephen Adom, the head of the Association for Gender and Sexual Diversity in Norway, the apology represented “strong and important” but had come “overdue for individuals who lost their lives to AIDS … with deep sorrow in their hearts since the church viewed the crisis as divine punishment”.

Internationally, several faith-based organizations have sought to reconcile for their actions towards LGBTQ+ people. In 2023, England's church expressed regret for what it referred to as “disgraceful” conduct, though it still declines to authorize same-sex weddings within the church.

In a similar vein, the Methodist Church located in Ireland the previous year expressed regret for “shortcomings in pastoral care and support” regarding the LGBTQ+ community and family members, but held fast in its conviction that matrimony must only constitute a partnership of one man and one woman.

In the early part of this year, the United Church based in Canada offered an apology to two spirit and LGBTQIA+ communities, characterizing it as a reaffirmation of the church's “dedication to welcoming all and full inclusion” in every part of the church's activities.

“We have failed to celebrate and delight in the wonderful diversity of creation,” Michael Blair, the general secretary of the church, stated. “We have wounded people instead of seeking wholeness. We are sorry.”