🔗 Share this article

Set against red stage curtains at a leading Oslo LGBTQ+ venue, the Norwegian Lutheran Church issued a formal apology for harm and unequal treatment it had inflicted.

“The national church has caused LGBTQ+ individuals pain, shame and significant harm,” the presiding bishop, Olav Fykse Tveit, stated during a Thursday event. “This should never have happened and this is why I offer my apology now.”

The “discrimination, unequal treatment and harassment” resulted in certain individuals abandoning their faith, Tveit acknowledged. A church service at Oslo Cathedral was arranged to come after the apology.

The apology took place at the London Pub, a bar that was one of two attacked during the 2022 attack that took two lives and left nine seriously injured during Oslo’s Pride celebrations. An individual of Iranian descent living in Norway, who had pledged allegiance to Islamic State, was sentenced to a minimum of three decades in incarceration for the killings.

Like many religions around the world, the Norwegian Lutheran Church – a Lutheran evangelical community that is the most extensive faith community in the country – historically excluded LGBTQ+ people, denying them the opportunity from serving as pastors or from marrying in religious ceremonies. In the 1950s, bishops of the church described gay people as “a worldwide social threat”.

Yet, with Norwegian society turning more progressive, ranking as the second globally to legalize same-sex partnerships during 1993 and during 2009 the first in Scandinavia to allow same-sex marriage, the church gradually changed.

Back in 2007, the Norwegian Lutheran Church commenced the ordination of LGBTQ+ clergy, and gay and lesbian couples were permitted to have church weddings starting in 2017. Last year, Tveit joined in the Pride march in Oslo in what was noted as a historic moment for the religious institution.

The Thursday statement of regret received differing opinions. The head of a network of Christian lesbians in Norway, Hanne Marie Pedersen-Eriksen, who is also a gay pastor, referred to it as “a significant step toward healing” and a moment that “finally marked the end of a dark chapter within the church's past”.

According to Stephen Adom, the head of the Association for Gender and Sexual Diversity in Norway, the apology was “strong and important” but arrived “too late for those who lost their lives to AIDS … carrying heavy hearts since the church viewed the epidemic as punishment from God”.

Internationally, several faith-based organizations have attempted to make amends for their actions towards LGBTQ+ people. Last year, the Anglican Church expressed regret for what it characterized as “disgraceful” conduct, although it continues to refuse to allow same-sex marriages in church.

Likewise, the Methodist Church located in Ireland the previous year issued an apology for “shortcomings in pastoral care and support” regarding the LGBTQ+ community and their families, but stayed firm in its conviction that matrimony must only constitute a union between a man and a woman.

Earlier this year, the United Church of Canada offered an apology toward Two-Spirit and LGBTQIA+ individuals, describing it as a renewed commitment of its “pledge to complete acceptance and open hospitality” in every part of the church's activities.

“We have not succeeded to celebrate and delight in the beauty of all creation,” Rev Michael Blair, the church's general secretary, said. “We caused pain to people in place of fostering completeness. We are sorry.”