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Against crimson theater drapes at a leading Oslo LGBTQ+ venue, the Norwegian Lutheran Church issued a formal apology for discrimination and harm caused by the church.

“The church in Norway has brought LGBTQ+ people pain, shame and significant harm,” the lead bishop, Olav Fykse Tveit, announced during a Thursday event. “This ought not to have occurred and which is the reason I offer my apology now.”

“Harassment, discrimination and unfair treatment” had caused certain individuals abandoning their faith, Tveit recognized. A church service at Oslo Cathedral was planned to come after the apology.

The statement of regret took place at the London Pub establishment, a bar that was one of two attacked during the 2022 attack that took two lives and injured nine people severely during Oslo’s Pride celebrations. A Norwegian of Iranian origin, who swore loyalty to Islamic State, was given a prison term to a minimum of three decades in prison for carrying out the attacks.

In common with various worldwide religions, the Norwegian Lutheran Church – a Protestant Lutheran denomination that is the most extensive faith community in the country – for years sidelined LGBTQ+ people, refusing to allow them from serving as pastors or to have church weddings. Back in the 1950s, the church’s bishops characterized LGBTQ+ persons as “a global-scale societal hazard”.

Yet, with Norwegian society turning more progressive, becoming the second in the world to legalize same-sex partnerships during 1993 and in 2009 the first in Scandinavia to legalize same-sex marriage, the religious institution eventually adapted.

In 2007, Norway's church started appointing gay pastors, and gay and lesbian couples have been able to marry in church starting in 2017. During 2023, Tveit joined in the Pride march in Oslo in what was called a first for the church.

The apology on Thursday elicited varied responses. The director of a group for Christian lesbians in Norway, Pedersen-Eriksen, herself a gay pastor, called it “a crucial act of amends” and a moment that “represented the closure of a dark chapter 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 was delivered “not in time for those among us who died of Aids … carrying heavy hearts because the church considered the epidemic as divine punishment”.

Internationally, several faith-based organizations have attempted to offer apologies for historical treatment regarding LGBTQ+ individuals. Last year, England's church expressed regret for what it referred to as “shameful” actions, though it continues to refuse to allow same-sex marriages in church.

In a similar vein, the Methodist Church located in Ireland last year expressed regret for “inadequate pastoral assistance and care” to LGBTQ+ people and family members, but held fast in its belief that matrimony must only constitute a union between a man and a woman.

In the early part of this year, Canada's United Church delivered a statement of regret toward Two-Spirit and LGBTQIA+ individuals, labeling it a confirmation of its “pledge to complete acceptance and open hospitality” throughout every area of church life.

“We have not succeeded to rejoice and take pleasure in all of your beautiful creation,” Reverend Blair, the general secretary of the church, said. “We have wounded people in place of fostering completeness. We apologize.”