🔗 Share this article

Against crimson theater drapes at a leading Oslo LGBTQ+ venue, Norway's national church expressed regret for harm and unequal treatment it had inflicted.

“The church in Norway has caused the LGBTQ+ community pain, shame and significant harm,” bishop Olav Fykse Tveit, Bishop Tveit, announced during a Thursday event. “It was wrong for this to take place and this is why I offer my apology now.”

“Harassment, discrimination and unfair treatment” resulted in a loss of faith for some, Tveit acknowledged. A religious service at Oslo Cathedral was scheduled to take place after his statement.

The statement of regret was delivered at a venue called London Pub, a bar that was one of two involved in the 2022 shooting 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 no less than 30 years in incarceration for the murders.

Like many religions around the world, the Church of Norway – a Protestant Lutheran denomination that is the most extensive faith community in the country – for years sidelined the LGBTQ+ community, refusing to allow them to become pastors or from marrying in religious ceremonies. In the 1950s, bishops of the church characterized LGBTQ+ persons 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 in 1993 and by 2009 the initial Nordic nation to allow same-sex marriage, the church slowly followed.

Back in 2007, Norway's church commenced the ordination of LGBTQ+ clergy, and same-sex couples could get married in religious ceremonies from 2017 onward. Last year, Tveit joined in the Oslo Pride event in what was noted as a first for the church.

The Thursday statement of regret received a mixed reaction. The director of a group representing Norwegian Christian lesbians, Hanne Marie Pedersen-Eriksen, herself a gay pastor, called it “a significant step toward healing” and an occasion that “represented the closure of a dark chapter within the church's past”.

For Stephen Adom, the head of the Association for Gender and Sexual Diversity in Norway, the apology represented “strong and important” but had come “too late for those who lost their lives to AIDS … carrying heavy hearts because the church considered the disease to be God’s punishment”.

Worldwide, a handful of religious institutions have tried to offer apologies for their past behavior towards LGBTQ+ people. In 2023, the Church of England apologised for what it described as “disgraceful” conduct, even as it persists in refusing to allow same-sex marriages in church.

In a similar vein, the Methodist Church located in Ireland the previous year expressed regret for “inadequate pastoral assistance and care” toward LGBTQ+ individuals and their relatives, but remained staunch in its belief that marriage should only represent a bond between male and female.

Earlier this year, the United Church of Canada issued an apology to two spirit and LGBTQIA+ communities, describing it as a reaffirmation of the church's “dedication to welcoming all and full inclusion” throughout every area of church life.

“We did not manage to rejoice and take pleasure in all of your beautiful creation,” Reverend Blair, the general secretary of the church, remarked. “We have hurt individuals instead of seeking wholeness. We are sorry.”