🔗 Share this article

Set against red stage curtains at a well-known Oslo location for LGBTQ+ gatherings, the Norwegian Lutheran Church offered an apology for hurtful actions and exclusion perpetrated over the years.

“The church in Norway has brought LGBTQ+ individuals shame, great harm and pain,” the presiding bishop, the church leader, stated during a Thursday event. “This ought not to have occurred and that is why today I say sorry.”

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

The statement of regret was delivered at the London Pub, one among two bars involved in the 2022 violent incident that killed two people and left nine seriously injured at Oslo's Pride event. A Norwegian of Iranian origin, who expressed support for ISIS, was sentenced to at least 30 years in prison for the killings.

Like many religions around the world, Norway's church – a Lutheran evangelical community that is the most extensive faith community in the country – historically excluded LGBTQ+ individuals, preventing them to become pastors or from marrying in religious ceremonies. Back in the 1950s, bishops of the church characterized LGBTQ+ persons as “a worldwide social threat”.

However, as Norway's society grew more liberal, emerging as the world's second to legalize same-sex partnerships back in 1993 and in 2009 the first Scandinavian country to legalize same-sex marriage, the church gradually changed.

In 2007, Norway's church began ordaining gay pastors, and same-sex couples have been able to marry in church starting in 2017. In 2023, Tveit participated in the Pride march in Oslo in what was called a first for the church.

The Thursday statement of regret received differing opinions. The head of a network for Christian lesbians in Norway, Hanne Marie Pedersen-Eriksen, who is also a gay pastor, called it “a significant step toward healing” and a point in time that “finally marked the end of a difficult period in the church’s history”.

For Stephen Adom, the director of the Norwegian Association for Gender and Sexual Diversity, the apology represented “strong and important” but arrived “too late for those who lost their lives to AIDS … with deep sorrow in their hearts since the church viewed the epidemic as punishment from God”.

Internationally, several faith-based organizations have tried to offer apologies for their past behavior concerning the LGBTQ+ community. Last year, England's church apologised for what it referred to as its “shameful” treatment, though it continues to refuse to allow same-sex marriages in church.

Similarly, the Methodist Church in Ireland in the past year issued an apology for its “failures in pastoral support and care” regarding the LGBTQ+ community and family members, but remained staunch in the view that matrimony must only constitute a union between a man and a woman.

Several months ago, Canada's United Church issued an apology to Two-Spirit and LGBTQIA+ groups, describing it as a reaffirmation of its “pledge to complete acceptance and open hospitality” throughout every area of church life.

“We have failed to celebrate and delight in the wonderful diversity of creation,” Michael Blair, the top administrative leader of the church, stated. “We have hurt individuals rather than pursuing healing. We are sorry.”