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Against crimson theater drapes at a well-known Oslo location for LGBTQ+ gatherings, the Norwegian Lutheran Church offered an apology for hurtful actions and exclusion it had inflicted.

“Norway's church has inflicted the LGBTQ+ community pain, shame and significant harm,” the presiding bishop, Olav Fykse Tveit, declared on Thursday. “It was wrong for this to take place and which is the reason today I say sorry.”

The “discrimination, unequal treatment and harassment” led to certain individuals abandoning their faith, Tveit recognized. A religious service at the cathedral in Oslo was arranged to come after the apology.

This formal apology took place at a venue called London Pub, a bar that was one of two targeted in the 2022 attack that killed two people and injured nine people severely during Oslo’s Pride celebrations. A Norwegian citizen originally from Iran, who swore loyalty to Islamic State, was given a prison term to a minimum of three decades behind bars for carrying out the attacks.

Similar to numerous global faiths, the Church of Norway – a Lutheran evangelical community that is the biggest religious group in Norway – had long marginalised the LGBTQ+ community, denying them the opportunity from joining the clergy or from marrying in religious ceremonies. 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 allow same-sex registered partnerships back in 1993 and by 2009 the first Scandinavian country to allow same-sex marriage, the church gradually changed.

During 2007, Norway's church started appointing homosexual ministers, and gay and lesbian couples were permitted to get married in religious ceremonies since 2017. During 2023, Tveit participated in Oslo’s Pride parade in what was described as an unprecedented step for the church.

The Thursday statement of regret received a mixed reaction. The head of a network representing Norwegian Christian lesbians, Hanne Marie Pedersen-Eriksen, who is also a gay pastor, described it as “a significant step toward healing” and an occasion that “signaled the conclusion of a difficult period in the history of the church”.

For Stephen Adom, the head of Norway’s Association for Gender and Sexual Diversity, the apology was “meaningful and vital” but was delivered “not in time for those who lost their lives to AIDS … with hearts filled with anguish as the church regarded the crisis to be God’s punishment”.

Internationally, a few churches have tried to reconcile for their past behavior towards LGBTQ+ people. During 2023, the Church of England apologised for what it characterized as “shameful” actions, though it still declines to allow same-sex marriages in religious settings.

Similarly, the Methodist Church located in Ireland the previous year expressed regret for its “failures in pastoral support and care” to LGBTQ+ people and family members, but stayed firm in the view that matrimony must only constitute a bond between male and female.

In the early part of this year, Canada's United Church offered an apology to Two-Spirit and LGBTQIA+ groups, characterizing it as 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,” Michael Blair, the top administrative leader of the church, stated. “We have hurt individuals rather than pursuing healing. We express our regret.”