Church of Norway Issues Formal Apology to LGBTQ+ Community for ‘Harm, Shame and Suffering’
Amid deep red curtains at a leading Oslo LGBTQ+ venue, the Church of Norway expressed regret for hurtful actions and exclusion caused by the church.
“The national church has caused the LGBTQ+ community harm, suffering and humiliation,” bishop Olav Fykse Tveit, Bishop Tveit, announced this Thursday. “This ought not to have occurred and which is the reason I offer my apology now.”
The “discrimination, unequal treatment and harassment” resulted in a loss of faith for some, Tveit acknowledged. A church service at Oslo's main cathedral was arranged to come after the apology.
The apology was delivered at the London Pub, one among two bars targeted in the 2022 attack that resulted in two deaths and caused serious injuries to nine throughout the Oslo Pride festivities. A Norwegian citizen originally from Iran, who expressed support for ISIS, received a sentence 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 – had long marginalised LGBTQ+ people, preventing them to become pastors or to marry in church. In the 1950s, church leaders referred to homosexual individuals as “a global-scale societal hazard”.
Yet, with Norwegian society turning more progressive, becoming the second in the world to legalize same-sex partnerships back in 1993 and by 2009 the initial Nordic nation to allow same-sex marriage, the church gradually changed.
During 2007, Norway's church started appointing gay pastors, and gay and lesbian couples could marry in church starting in 2017. During 2023, Tveit joined in the Oslo Pride event in what was called a first for the church.
The Thursday statement of regret received varied responses. The leader of an organization representing Norwegian Christian lesbians, Hanne Marie Pedersen-Eriksen, who is also a gay pastor, described it as “an important reparation” and an occasion that “signaled the conclusion of a dark chapter in the history of the church”.
As stated by Stephen Adom, the director of Norway’s Association for Gender and Sexual Diversity, the apology was “powerful and significant” but arrived “not in time for those who lost their lives to AIDS … with deep sorrow in their hearts as the church regarded the disease as divine punishment”.
Globally, several faith-based organizations have attempted to make amends for their actions concerning the LGBTQ+ community. During 2023, England's church said sorry for what it described as “shameful” actions, although it persists in refusing to permit gay marriages in religious settings.
Similarly, Ireland's Methodist Church the previous year issued an apology for its “failures in pastoral support and care” toward LGBTQ+ individuals and their relatives, but held fast in the view that matrimony must only constitute a bond between male and female.
Earlier this year, the United Church of Canada delivered a statement of regret to Two-Spirit and LGBTQIA+ groups, describing it as a reaffirmation of the church’s “commitment to radical hospitality and full inclusion” throughout every area of church life.
“We have not succeeded to rejoice and take pleasure in all of your beautiful creation,” Reverend Blair, the church's general secretary, stated. “We have hurt individuals rather than pursuing healing. We are sorry.”