🔗 Share this article

Amid crimson theater drapes at a well-known Oslo location for LGBTQ+ gatherings, the Norwegian Lutheran Church offered an apology for discrimination and harm it had inflicted.

“The national church has caused the LGBTQ+ community shame, great harm and pain,” the presiding bishop, Bishop Tveit, stated on Thursday. “It was wrong for this to take place and which is the reason I apologise today.”

“Harassment, discrimination and unfair treatment” resulted in some to lose their faith, Tveit acknowledged. A church service at the cathedral in Oslo was planned to take place after his statement.

The statement of regret was delivered at the London Pub establishment, one among two bars attacked during the 2022 violent incident that resulted in two deaths and left nine seriously injured at Oslo's Pride event. An individual of Iranian descent living in Norway, who had pledged allegiance to Islamic State, was given a prison term to at least 30 years in incarceration for the killings.

Like many religions around the world, the Church of Norway – an evangelical Lutheran church that is the biggest religious group in Norway – historically excluded the LGBTQ+ community, preventing them from joining the clergy or to have church weddings. Back in the 1950s, the church’s bishops described gay people as a “social danger of global proportions”.

However, as Norway's society grew more liberal, emerging as the world's second to permit registered partnerships for same-sex couples in 1993 and in 2009 the initial Nordic nation to approve gay marriage, the church gradually changed.

In 2007, the Norwegian Lutheran Church began ordaining LGBTQ+ clergy, and gay and lesbian couples could get married in religious ceremonies starting in 2017. During 2023, Tveit joined in the Pride march in Oslo in what was noted as a first for the church.

The Thursday statement of regret elicited varied responses. The head of a network of Christian lesbians in Norway, Hanne Marie Pedersen-Eriksen, a lesbian minister herself, described it as “a significant step toward healing” and a point in time that “signaled the conclusion of a painful era within the church's past”.

As stated by Stephen Adom, the head of the Association for Gender and Sexual Diversity in Norway, the apology was “strong and important” but was delivered “overdue for individuals among us who died of Aids … carrying heavy hearts since the church viewed the disease as punishment from God”.

Internationally, a few churches have tried to reconcile for their actions concerning the LGBTQ+ community. Last year, the Anglican Church apologised for what it described as “disgraceful” conduct, although it continues to refuse to allow same-sex marriages in church.

Likewise, the Methodist Church located in Ireland in the past year apologised for “shortcomings in pastoral care and support” toward LGBTQ+ individuals and family members, but held fast in its belief that marriage should only represent 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+ groups, characterizing it as a reaffirmation of the church’s “commitment to radical hospitality and full inclusion” in every part of the church's activities.

“We have failed to honor and appreciate the beauty of all creation,” Michael Blair, the top administrative leader of the church, remarked. “We have wounded people rather than pursuing healing. We are sorry.”