The Norwegian Church Makes Apology to LGBTQ+ Community for ‘Harm, Shame and Suffering’
Amid deep red curtains at a well-known Oslo location for LGBTQ+ gatherings, Norway's national church issued a formal apology for discrimination and harm perpetrated over the years.
“The church in Norway has inflicted the LGBTQ+ community pain, shame and significant harm,” the presiding bishop, Olav Fykse Tveit, declared on Thursday. “It was wrong for this to take place and this is why today I say sorry.”
“Unequal treatment, harassment and discrimination” led to certain individuals abandoning their faith, the bishop admitted. A church service at Oslo's main cathedral was arranged to follow his apology.
This formal apology was delivered at the London Pub establishment, one among two bars attacked during the 2022 violent incident 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 had pledged allegiance to Islamic State, received a sentence to at least 30 years behind bars for the killings.
Similar to numerous global faiths, the Church of Norway – an evangelical Lutheran church that is the biggest religious group in Norway – for years sidelined LGBTQ+ individuals, refusing to allow them from serving as pastors or from marrying in religious ceremonies. In the 1950s, the church’s bishops referred to homosexual individuals as “a worldwide social threat”.
Yet, with Norwegian society turning more progressive, becoming the second in the world to allow same-sex registered partnerships in 1993 and in 2009 the first Scandinavian country to approve gay marriage, the church slowly followed.
During 2007, Norway's church commenced the ordination of gay pastors, and same-sex couples have been able to get married in religious ceremonies from 2017 onward. In 2023, Tveit participated in the Oslo Pride event in what was called a first for the church.
The Thursday statement of regret elicited a mixed reaction. The director of a group representing Norwegian Christian lesbians, Hanne Marie, a lesbian minister herself, called it “a crucial act of amends” and a moment that “finally marked the end of a difficult period in the church’s history”.
For Stephen Adom, the head of the Norwegian Association for Gender and Sexual Diversity, the apology represented “strong and important” but arrived “overdue for individuals who lost their lives to AIDS … carrying heavy hearts as the church regarded the crisis to be God’s punishment”.
Internationally, a handful of religious institutions have tried to offer apologies for historical treatment regarding LGBTQ+ individuals. Last year, the Church of England expressed regret for what it characterized as “shameful” actions, even as it still declines to authorize same-sex weddings in church.
Similarly, the Methodist Church in Ireland the previous year expressed regret for “shortcomings in pastoral care and support” to LGBTQ+ people and their relatives, but remained staunch in its conviction that matrimony must only constitute a bond between male and female.
Several months ago, the United Church of Canada issued an apology to two spirit and LGBTQIA+ communities, characterizing it as a renewed commitment of its “pledge to complete acceptance and open hospitality” throughout every area of church life.
“We have not succeeded to celebrate and delight in the beauty of all creation,” Rev Michael Blair, the church's general secretary, remarked. “We caused pain to people rather than pursuing healing. We are sorry.”
