Norway's Church Delivers Formal Apology to LGBTQ+ Individuals for ‘Shame, Great Harm and Pain’

Set against crimson theater drapes at one of Oslo’s most prominent LGBTQ+ spaces, the Church of Norway issued a formal apology for discrimination and harm perpetrated over the years.

“The national church has inflicted LGBTQ+ individuals harm, suffering and humiliation,” the presiding bishop, the church leader, declared on Thursday. “This should never have happened and that is why today I say sorry.”

“Harassment, discrimination and unfair treatment” led to a loss of faith for some, the bishop admitted. A worship service at Oslo Cathedral was planned to follow his apology.

This formal apology occurred at the London Pub, one among two bars targeted in the 2022 violent incident that took two lives and injured nine people severely during Oslo’s Pride celebrations. A Norwegian of Iranian origin, who expressed support for ISIS, was given a prison term to a minimum of three decades in incarceration for the killings.

In common with various worldwide religions, the Church of Norway – a Protestant Lutheran denomination that is Norway’s largest faith community – had long marginalised the LGBTQ+ community, refusing to allow them from joining the clergy or to marry in church. During the 1950s, the church’s bishops referred to homosexual individuals as “a worldwide social threat”.

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

In 2007, the Church of Norway commenced the ordination of LGBTQ+ clergy, and gay and lesbian couples have been able to marry in church from 2017 onward. During 2023, the bishop took part in the Pride march in Oslo in what was called an unprecedented step for the church.

The apology on Thursday received differing opinions. The leader of an organization representing Norwegian Christian lesbians, Hanne Marie Pedersen-Eriksen, who is also a gay pastor, called it “a significant step toward healing” and an occasion that “represented the closure of a painful era in the church’s history”.

For Stephen Adom, the head of the Norwegian Association for Gender and Sexual Diversity, the apology represented “strong and important” but arrived “not in time for those who passed away from AIDS … with deep sorrow in their hearts since the church viewed the crisis to be God’s punishment”.

Globally, several faith-based organizations have tried to offer apologies for their past behavior regarding LGBTQ+ individuals. Last year, England's church apologised for what it described as “disgraceful” conduct, though it persists in refusing to allow same-sex marriages within the church.

In a similar vein, the Methodist Church located in Ireland last year issued an apology for its “failures in pastoral support and care” regarding the LGBTQ+ community and their relatives, but stayed firm in its belief that matrimony must only constitute a union between a man and a woman.

In the early part of this year, the United Church based in Canada issued an apology to Two-Spirit and LGBTQIA+ groups, labeling it a renewed commitment of its “pledge to complete acceptance and open hospitality” in all aspects of church life.

“We did not manage to rejoice and take pleasure in the beauty of all creation,” Rev Michael Blair, the general secretary of the church, remarked. “We caused pain to people instead of seeking wholeness. We are sorry.”