🔗 Share this article

Amid crimson theater drapes at a well-known Oslo location for LGBTQ+ gatherings, the Norwegian Lutheran Church offered an apology for harm and unequal treatment caused by the church.

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

“Unequal treatment, harassment and discrimination” resulted in certain individuals abandoning their faith, the bishop admitted. A worship service at the cathedral in Oslo was scheduled to follow his apology.

The apology occurred at a venue called London Pub, one of two bars attacked during the 2022 attack that killed two people and caused serious injuries to nine at Oslo's Pride event. A Norwegian citizen originally from Iran, who expressed support for ISIS, was given a prison term to at least 30 years behind bars for the murders.

Similar to numerous global faiths, Norway's church – an evangelical Lutheran church that is the most extensive faith community in the country – for years sidelined LGBTQ+ people, denying them the opportunity to become pastors or to have church weddings. In the 1950s, the church’s bishops characterized LGBTQ+ persons as “a global-scale societal hazard”.

But as Norwegian society became increasingly liberal, becoming the second in the world to permit registered partnerships for same-sex couples during 1993 and by 2009 the initial Nordic nation to legalize same-sex marriage, the church gradually changed.

During 2007, the Church of Norway commenced the ordination of homosexual ministers, and gay and lesbian couples have been able to have church weddings starting in 2017. During 2023, the bishop took part in the Oslo Pride event in what was described as a first for the church.

The apology on Thursday received a mixed reaction. The head of a network of Christian lesbians in Norway, Hanne Marie, a lesbian minister herself, called it “a significant step toward healing” and a moment that “represented the closure of a painful era in the church’s history”.

According to Stephen Adom, the leader of Norway’s Association for Gender and Sexual Diversity, the apology was “strong and important” but had come “not in time for those who lost their lives to AIDS … with deep sorrow in their hearts because the church considered the disease to be God’s punishment”.

Worldwide, a handful of religious institutions have attempted to offer apologies for historical treatment regarding LGBTQ+ individuals. In 2023, the Church of England apologised for what it referred to as “disgraceful” conduct, even as it still declines 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 held fast in the view that marriage should only represent a bond between male and female.

In the early part of this year, the United Church of Canada issued an apology to Two-Spirit and LGBTQIA+ groups, labeling it a confirmation of the church’s “commitment to radical hospitality and full inclusion” in all aspects of church life.

“We have failed to rejoice and take pleasure in the wonderful diversity of creation,” Reverend Blair, the top administrative leader of the church, remarked. “We have wounded people rather than pursuing healing. We are sorry.”