🔗 Share this article

Amid crimson theater drapes at one of Oslo’s most prominent LGBTQ+ spaces, the Norwegian Lutheran Church issued a formal apology for discrimination and harm it had inflicted.

“The national church has inflicted LGBTQ+ people shame, great harm and pain,” the lead bishop, the church leader, stated during a Thursday event. “It was wrong for this to take place and that is why I apologise today.”

“Unequal treatment, harassment and discrimination” had caused some to lose their faith, Tveit recognized. A worship service at the cathedral in Oslo was planned to come after the apology.

This formal apology was delivered at the London Pub establishment, one among two bars attacked during the 2022 shooting that took two lives and caused serious injuries to nine throughout the Oslo Pride festivities. A Norwegian of Iranian origin, who expressed support for ISIS, was sentenced to at least 30 years in prison for the murders.

Like many religions around the world, the Norwegian Lutheran Church – a Lutheran evangelical community that is Norway’s largest faith community – historically excluded LGBTQ+ individuals, denying them the opportunity from serving as pastors or to marry in church. During the 1950s, bishops of the church described gay people as a “social danger of global proportions”.

Yet, with Norwegian society turning more progressive, ranking as the second globally to legalize same-sex partnerships during 1993 and by 2009 the first in Scandinavia to legalize same-sex marriage, the church gradually changed.

During 2007, Norway's church started appointing homosexual ministers, and same-sex couples were permitted to have church weddings from 2017 onward. In 2023, Tveit participated in the Oslo Pride event in what was called a historic moment for the religious institution.

The apology on Thursday was met with a mixed reaction. The head of a network representing Norwegian Christian lesbians, Hanne Marie Pedersen-Eriksen, who is also a gay pastor, called it “an important reparation” and a point in time that “signaled the conclusion of a difficult period within the church's past”.

According to Stephen Adom, the head of Norway’s Association for Gender and Sexual Diversity, the statement was “powerful and significant” but was delivered “not in time for those who passed away from AIDS … with deep sorrow in their hearts because the church considered the epidemic as punishment from God”.

Globally, several faith-based organizations have attempted to make amends for their past behavior concerning the LGBTQ+ community. During 2023, the Church of England apologised for what it described as its “shameful” treatment, although it continues to refuse to allow same-sex marriages within the church.

In a similar vein, Ireland's Methodist Church in the past year expressed regret for “inadequate pastoral assistance and care” regarding the LGBTQ+ community and their relatives, but stayed firm in its belief that marriage should only represent a partnership of one man and one woman.

In the early part of this year, Canada's United Church delivered a statement of regret to two spirit and LGBTQIA+ communities, labeling it a confirmation of its “pledge to complete acceptance and open hospitality” in every part of the church's activities.

“We have not succeeded to celebrate and delight in the beauty of all creation,” Rev Michael Blair, the top administrative leader of the church, said. “We have hurt individuals in place of fostering completeness. We are sorry.”