Set against red stage curtains 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 inflicted LGBTQ+ people shame, great harm and pain,” bishop Olav Fykse Tveit, the church leader, announced this Thursday. “This ought not to have occurred and this is why I apologise today.”
The “discrimination, unequal treatment and harassment” had caused certain individuals abandoning their faith, Tveit acknowledged. A religious service at Oslo's main cathedral was scheduled to come after the apology.
This formal apology was delivered at the London Pub, a bar that was one of two attacked during the 2022 attack that resulted in two deaths and injured nine people severely throughout the Oslo Pride festivities. A Norwegian citizen originally from Iran, who had pledged allegiance to Islamic State, was given a prison term to at least 30 years behind bars for carrying out the attacks.
Like many religions around the world, Norway's church – a Protestant Lutheran denomination that is the most extensive faith community in the country – for years sidelined LGBTQ+ people, denying them the opportunity from joining the clergy or to marry in church. Back in the 1950s, the church’s bishops referred to homosexual individuals as “a worldwide social threat”.
But as Norwegian society became increasingly liberal, emerging as the world's second to permit registered partnerships for same-sex couples back in 1993 and during 2009 the first in Scandinavia to legalize same-sex marriage, the religious institution eventually adapted.
In 2007, Norway's church commenced the ordination of homosexual ministers, and same-sex couples have been able to marry in church starting in 2017. In 2023, Tveit joined in the Pride march in Oslo in what was described as a historic moment for the religious institution.
The apology on Thursday received differing opinions. The director of a group representing Norwegian Christian lesbians, Pedersen-Eriksen, a lesbian minister herself, called it “a significant step toward healing” and a point in time that “signaled the conclusion of a painful era within the church's past”.
As stated by Stephen Adom, the head of the Norwegian Association for Gender and Sexual Diversity, the apology was “strong and important” but had come “overdue for individuals among us who died of Aids … carrying heavy hearts as the church regarded the epidemic as punishment from God”.
Internationally, several faith-based organizations have attempted to make amends for historical treatment towards LGBTQ+ people. During 2023, the Anglican Church apologised for what it characterized as “disgraceful” conduct, although it still declines to allow same-sex marriages in church.
In a similar vein, the Methodist Church in Ireland the previous year issued an apology for “shortcomings in pastoral care and support” regarding the LGBTQ+ community and their relatives, but held fast in the view that marriage should only represent a union between a man and a woman.
In the early part of this year, the United Church of Canada issued an apology to Two-Spirit and LGBTQIA+ groups, describing it as a renewed commitment of the church’s “commitment to radical hospitality and full inclusion” in every part of the church's activities.
“We did not manage to honor and appreciate all of your beautiful creation,” Rev Michael Blair, the top administrative leader of the church, remarked. “We have wounded people instead of seeking wholeness. We express our regret.”
