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Against crimson theater drapes at a leading Oslo LGBTQ+ venue, the Norwegian Lutheran Church issued a formal apology for hurtful actions and exclusion perpetrated over the years.

“Norway's church has inflicted LGBTQ+ people shame, great harm and pain,” the presiding bishop, Olav Fykse Tveit, declared this Thursday. “This ought not to have occurred and which is the reason I apologise today.”

“Unequal treatment, harassment and discrimination” resulted in certain individuals abandoning their faith, the bishop admitted. A worship service at Oslo Cathedral was planned to come after the apology.

This formal apology took place at the London Pub, one of two bars attacked during the 2022 attack that killed two people and left nine seriously injured throughout the Oslo Pride festivities. An individual of Iranian descent living in Norway, who swore loyalty to Islamic State, was given a prison term to a minimum of three decades in prison for carrying out the attacks.

Like many religions around the world, the Church of Norway – a Lutheran evangelical community that is Norway’s largest faith community – for years sidelined LGBTQ+ people, preventing them to become pastors or to have church weddings. In the 1950s, church leaders described gay people as “a global-scale societal hazard”.

However, as Norway's society grew more liberal, emerging as the world's second to legalize same-sex partnerships during 1993 and in 2009 the first Scandinavian country to approve gay marriage, the religious institution eventually adapted.

In 2007, the Norwegian Lutheran Church began ordaining LGBTQ+ clergy, and same-sex couples were permitted to marry in church from 2017 onward. Last year, the bishop took part in the Pride march in Oslo in what was described as a first for the church.

The Thursday statement of regret elicited a mixed reaction. The leader of an organization representing Norwegian Christian lesbians, 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 church’s history”.

As stated by Stephen Adom, the leader of the Norwegian Association for Gender and Sexual Diversity, the statement was “powerful and significant” but had come “too late for those who passed away from AIDS … with deep sorrow in their hearts because the church considered the disease as punishment from God”.

Globally, a few churches have sought to make amends for historical treatment concerning the LGBTQ+ community. During 2023, the Church of England expressed regret for what it described as its “shameful” treatment, though it persists in refusing to allow same-sex marriages in religious settings.

In a similar vein, Ireland's Methodist Church in the past year apologised for “inadequate pastoral assistance and care” regarding the LGBTQ+ community and their families, but held fast in its conviction that matrimony must only constitute a partnership of one man and one woman.

In the early part of this year, the United Church based in Canada delivered a statement of regret toward Two-Spirit and LGBTQIA+ individuals, characterizing it as a reaffirmation of the church's “dedication to welcoming all and full inclusion” in all aspects of church life.

“We have not succeeded to celebrate and delight in all of your beautiful creation,” Rev Michael Blair, the general secretary of the church, said. “We caused pain to people rather than pursuing healing. We apologize.”