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Against red stage curtains at a leading Oslo LGBTQ+ venue, the Norwegian Lutheran Church offered an apology for discrimination and harm caused by the church.

“The church in Norway has brought LGBTQ+ individuals harm, suffering and humiliation,” the lead bishop, Olav Fykse Tveit, declared during a Thursday event. “This should never have happened and this is why today I say sorry.”

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

This formal apology occurred at a venue called London Pub, one of two bars attacked during the 2022 shooting that killed two people and injured nine people severely throughout the Oslo Pride festivities. A Norwegian of Iranian origin, who had pledged allegiance to Islamic State, received a sentence to at least 30 years in incarceration for carrying out the attacks.

Similar to numerous global faiths, the Norwegian Lutheran Church – an evangelical Lutheran church that is Norway’s largest faith community – had long marginalised LGBTQ+ individuals, denying them the opportunity from serving as pastors or to have church weddings. During the 1950s, church leaders referred to homosexual individuals as a “social danger of global proportions”.

Yet, with Norwegian society turning more progressive, becoming the second in the world to allow same-sex registered partnerships in 1993 and during 2009 the first Scandinavian country to allow same-sex marriage, the church slowly followed.

In 2007, the Church of Norway began ordaining LGBTQ+ clergy, and same-sex couples were permitted to marry in church since 2017. In 2023, the bishop took part in the Pride march in Oslo in what was described as an unprecedented step for the church.

The Thursday statement of regret was met with a mixed reaction. The director of a group of Christian lesbians in Norway, Hanne Marie Pedersen-Eriksen, who is also a gay pastor, called it “a significant step toward healing” and a moment that “represented the closure of a dark chapter in the history of the church”.

As stated by Stephen Adom, the head of the Association for Gender and Sexual Diversity in Norway, the apology was “strong and important” but arrived “overdue for individuals who passed away from AIDS … carrying heavy hearts as the church regarded the disease as punishment from God”.

Worldwide, several faith-based organizations have sought to make amends for their actions regarding LGBTQ+ individuals. During 2023, England's church apologised for what it characterized as “disgraceful” conduct, though it persists in refusing to allow same-sex marriages within the church.

Similarly, the Methodist Church located in Ireland in the past year apologised for its “failures in pastoral support and care” to LGBTQ+ people and their relatives, but remained staunch in its belief that marriage could only be 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, describing it as a reaffirmation of the church’s “commitment to radical hospitality and full inclusion” in every part of the church's activities.

“We did not manage to celebrate and delight in the wonderful diversity of creation,” Rev Michael Blair, the general secretary of the church, said. “We have hurt individuals rather than pursuing healing. We apologize.”