🔗 Share this article

Against deep red curtains at a leading Oslo LGBTQ+ venue, the Church of Norway offered an apology for discrimination and harm perpetrated over the years.

“The church in Norway has brought LGBTQ+ people shame, great harm and pain,” the lead bishop, Bishop Tveit, stated this Thursday. “This ought not to have occurred and this is why I apologise today.”

The “discrimination, unequal treatment and harassment” resulted in some to lose their faith, the bishop admitted. A church service at the cathedral in Oslo was arranged to come after the apology.

The apology occurred at a venue called London Pub, one among two bars attacked during the 2022 shooting that took two lives and injured nine people severely during Oslo’s Pride celebrations. A Norwegian of Iranian origin, who expressed support for ISIS, received a sentence to a minimum of three decades in prison for the murders.

In common with various worldwide religions, the Church of Norway – an evangelical Lutheran church that is the most extensive faith community in the country – had long marginalised the LGBTQ+ community, preventing them from serving as pastors or to marry in church. Back in the 1950s, the church’s bishops characterized LGBTQ+ persons as “a worldwide social threat”.

However, as Norway's society grew more liberal, emerging as the world's second to allow same-sex registered partnerships back in 1993 and during 2009 the first Scandinavian country to approve gay marriage, the church slowly followed.

During 2007, Norway's church began ordaining gay pastors, and LGBTQ+ partners could marry in church since 2017. During 2023, the bishop took part in the Oslo Pride event in what was noted as an unprecedented step for the church.

Thursday’s apology received differing opinions. The director of a group of Christian lesbians in Norway, Pedersen-Eriksen, a lesbian minister herself, referred to it as “a crucial act of amends” and a moment that “represented the closure of a difficult period in the history of the church”.

According to Stephen Adom, the head of the Association for Gender and Sexual Diversity in Norway, the apology represented “powerful and significant” but had come “overdue for individuals who lost their lives to AIDS … with deep sorrow in their hearts as the church regarded the crisis as divine punishment”.

Globally, several faith-based organizations have sought to reconcile for their past behavior concerning the LGBTQ+ community. Last year, England's church apologised for what it characterized as its “shameful” treatment, although it still declines to permit gay marriages within the church.

Likewise, the Methodist Church in Ireland last year issued an apology for “shortcomings in pastoral care and support” regarding the LGBTQ+ community and family members, but stayed firm in the view that marriage should only represent a bond between male and female.

Earlier this year, the United Church based in Canada offered an apology toward Two-Spirit and LGBTQIA+ individuals, describing it as a confirmation of its “pledge to complete acceptance and open hospitality” in all aspects of church life.

“We did not manage to honor and appreciate the wonderful diversity of creation,” Reverend Blair, the general secretary of the church, said. “We have wounded people rather than pursuing healing. We apologize.”