🔗 Share this article

Against red stage curtains at one of Oslo’s most prominent LGBTQ+ spaces, the Norwegian Lutheran Church offered an apology for discrimination and harm caused by the church.

“The national church has inflicted the LGBTQ+ community harm, suffering and humiliation,” the lead bishop, Olav Fykse Tveit, stated during a Thursday event. “It was wrong for this to take place 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 Oslo's main cathedral was scheduled to come after the apology.

This formal apology took place at the London Pub, one among two bars targeted in the 2022 attack that resulted in two deaths and caused serious injuries to nine at Oslo's Pride event. An individual of Iranian descent living in Norway, who expressed support for ISIS, was sentenced to no less than 30 years in incarceration for the murders.

In common with various worldwide religions, Norway's church – a Protestant Lutheran denomination that is the biggest religious group in Norway – had long marginalised the LGBTQ+ community, denying them the opportunity from serving as pastors or to have church weddings. In the 1950s, bishops of the church characterized LGBTQ+ persons as “a worldwide social threat”.

However, as Norway's society grew more liberal, becoming the second in the world to allow same-sex registered partnerships back in 1993 and by 2009 the first in Scandinavia to allow same-sex marriage, the religious institution eventually adapted.

In 2007, the Norwegian Lutheran Church started appointing LGBTQ+ clergy, and LGBTQ+ partners have been able to get married in religious ceremonies since 2017. In 2023, Tveit participated in the Oslo Pride event in what was noted as a historic moment for the religious institution.

The apology on Thursday elicited differing opinions. The head of a network of Christian lesbians in Norway, Pedersen-Eriksen, who is also a gay pastor, called it “an important reparation” and a point in time that “finally marked the end of a dark chapter within the church's past”.

As stated by Stephen Adom, the leader of Norway’s Association for Gender and Sexual Diversity, the statement was “meaningful and vital” but had come “not in time for those who passed away from AIDS … with hearts filled with anguish because the church considered the crisis as divine punishment”.

Internationally, a handful of religious institutions have attempted to offer apologies for their actions concerning the LGBTQ+ community. During 2023, the Anglican Church said sorry for what it characterized as “shameful” actions, although it still declines to permit gay marriages in religious settings.

Similarly, the Methodist Church in Ireland in the past year issued an apology for its “failures in pastoral support and care” to LGBTQ+ people and family members, but remained staunch in its belief that marriage should only represent a bond between male and female.

Several months ago, Canada's United Church issued an apology to two spirit and LGBTQIA+ communities, describing it as a renewed commitment of its “pledge to complete acceptance and open hospitality” in all aspects of church life.

“We have failed to honor and appreciate the wonderful diversity of creation,” Rev Michael Blair, the top administrative leader of the church, remarked. “We have wounded people instead of seeking wholeness. We apologize.”