Church of Norway Makes Sincere Apology to LGBTQ+ Individuals for ‘Pain, Shame and Significant Harm’

Against crimson theater drapes at a leading Oslo LGBTQ+ venue, the Church of Norway issued a formal apology for harm and unequal treatment caused by the church.

“The church in Norway has brought LGBTQ+ people shame, great harm and pain,” the lead bishop, the church leader, announced this Thursday. “This ought not to have occurred and which is the reason today I say sorry.”

“Harassment, discrimination and unfair treatment” led to certain individuals abandoning their faith, the bishop admitted. A worship service at Oslo Cathedral was scheduled to follow his apology.

This formal apology was delivered at the London Pub establishment, one among two bars involved in the 2022 shooting that took two lives 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 no less than 30 years behind bars for the killings.

In common with various worldwide religions, the Norwegian Lutheran Church – a Protestant Lutheran denomination that is the most extensive faith community in the country – historically excluded the LGBTQ+ community, refusing to allow them from joining the clergy or from marrying in religious ceremonies. Back in the 1950s, bishops of the church referred to homosexual individuals as “a global-scale societal hazard”.

However, as Norway's society grew more liberal, becoming the second in the world to allow same-sex registered partnerships during 1993 and by 2009 the first in Scandinavia to allow same-sex marriage, the church gradually changed.

Back in 2007, the Church of Norway commenced the ordination of LGBTQ+ clergy, and same-sex couples could marry in church starting in 2017. During 2023, Tveit participated in Oslo’s Pride parade in what was called an unprecedented step for the church.

The Thursday statement of regret was met with a mixed reaction. The leader of an organization representing Norwegian Christian lesbians, Hanne Marie, who is also a gay pastor, called it “a crucial act of amends” and a point in time that “represented the closure of a difficult period within the church's past”.

For Stephen Adom, the leader of the Norwegian Association for Gender and Sexual Diversity, the apology was “meaningful and vital” but arrived “too late for those who lost their lives to AIDS … with hearts filled with anguish because the church considered the epidemic to be God’s punishment”.

Worldwide, a handful of religious institutions have tried to offer apologies for their past behavior concerning the LGBTQ+ community. During 2023, the Church of England expressed regret for what it described as “shameful” actions, although it continues to refuse to permit gay marriages within the church.

In a similar vein, the Methodist Church in Ireland last year expressed regret for its “failures in pastoral support and care” toward LGBTQ+ individuals and their relatives, but remained staunch in the view that marriage should only represent a union between a man and a woman.

Earlier this year, the United Church of Canada issued an apology to two spirit and LGBTQIA+ communities, labeling it a confirmation of the church’s “commitment to radical hospitality and full inclusion” throughout every area of church life.

“We have failed to celebrate and delight in all of your beautiful creation,” Reverend Blair, the church's general secretary, stated. “We caused pain to people in place of fostering completeness. We express our regret.”