🔗 Share this article

Against crimson theater drapes at one of Oslo’s most prominent LGBTQ+ spaces, the Norwegian Lutheran Church expressed regret for harm and unequal treatment it had inflicted.

“The national church has caused LGBTQ+ people pain, shame and significant harm,” bishop Olav Fykse Tveit, Bishop Tveit, declared this Thursday. “This should never have happened and that is why I offer my apology now.”

“Unequal treatment, harassment and discrimination” led to some to lose their faith, the bishop admitted. A church service at Oslo's main cathedral was scheduled to come after the apology.

The statement of regret was delivered at the London Pub establishment, a bar that was one of two involved in the 2022 violent incident that killed two people and caused serious injuries to nine during Oslo’s Pride celebrations. A Norwegian citizen originally from Iran, who swore loyalty to Islamic State, was given a prison term to no less than 30 years in prison for carrying out the attacks.

Similar to numerous global faiths, the Norwegian Lutheran Church – a Protestant Lutheran denomination that is the most extensive faith community in the country – had long marginalised LGBTQ+ individuals, preventing them from joining the clergy or to marry in church. In the 1950s, bishops of the church 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 legalize same-sex partnerships in 1993 and by 2009 the first Scandinavian country to approve gay marriage, the church gradually changed.

During 2007, the Norwegian Lutheran Church started appointing homosexual ministers, and same-sex couples were permitted to have church weddings since 2017. In 2023, Tveit joined in the Oslo Pride event in what was described as a historic moment for the religious institution.

Thursday’s apology was met with a mixed reaction. The head of a network for Christian lesbians in Norway, Hanne Marie Pedersen-Eriksen, a lesbian minister herself, described it as “a significant step toward healing” and a moment that “signaled the conclusion of a painful era in the church’s history”.

According to Stephen Adom, the director of the Association for Gender and Sexual Diversity in Norway, the apology was “meaningful and vital” but arrived “not in time for those who passed away from AIDS … with hearts filled with anguish as the church regarded the epidemic as divine punishment”.

Internationally, several faith-based organizations have sought to make amends for their past behavior regarding LGBTQ+ individuals. Last year, England's church said sorry for what it described as its “shameful” treatment, even as it continues to refuse to authorize same-sex weddings within the church.

In a similar vein, Ireland's Methodist Church in the past year issued an apology for “shortcomings in pastoral care and support” toward LGBTQ+ individuals and their relatives, but stayed firm in the view that marriage should only represent a union between a man and a woman.

In the early part of this year, the United Church based in Canada offered an apology toward Two-Spirit and LGBTQIA+ individuals, labeling it 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 beauty of all creation,” Rev Michael Blair, the general secretary of the church, remarked. “We caused pain to people instead of seeking wholeness. We are sorry.”