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Set against red stage curtains at one of Oslo’s most prominent LGBTQ+ spaces, the Norwegian Lutheran Church offered an apology for discrimination and harm perpetrated over the years.

“The church in Norway has caused the LGBTQ+ community shame, great harm and pain,” the lead bishop, Olav Fykse Tveit, stated this Thursday. “It was wrong for this to take place and this is why today I say sorry.”

“Harassment, discrimination and unfair treatment” led to certain individuals abandoning their faith, Tveit recognized. A worship service at Oslo Cathedral was scheduled to come after the apology.

The statement of regret occurred at the London Pub, one among two bars attacked during the 2022 shooting that took two lives and injured nine people severely throughout the Oslo Pride festivities. A Norwegian of Iranian origin, who had pledged allegiance to Islamic State, was sentenced to at least 30 years in incarceration for carrying out the attacks.

Like many religions around the world, Norway's church – a Lutheran evangelical community that is the biggest religious group in Norway – had long marginalised LGBTQ+ individuals, preventing them to become pastors or to marry in church. In the 1950s, bishops of the church described gay people as “a global-scale societal hazard”.

Yet, with Norwegian society turning more progressive, becoming the second in the world to permit registered partnerships for same-sex couples during 1993 and by 2009 the first in Scandinavia to approve gay marriage, the church slowly followed.

In 2007, the Church of Norway commenced the ordination of homosexual ministers, and same-sex couples have been able to marry in church from 2017 onward. In 2023, Tveit joined in the Oslo Pride event in what was called an unprecedented step for the church.

The Thursday statement of regret elicited varied responses. The leader of an organization representing Norwegian Christian lesbians, Hanne Marie, who is also a gay pastor, called it “an important reparation” and an occasion that “finally marked the end of a dark chapter in the history of the church”.

As stated by Stephen Adom, the leader of the Norwegian Association for Gender and Sexual Diversity, the apology was “meaningful and vital” but had come “overdue for individuals among us who died of Aids … with hearts filled with anguish because the church considered the disease to be God’s punishment”.

Worldwide, a handful of religious institutions have attempted to offer apologies for their actions towards LGBTQ+ people. In 2023, the Church of England said sorry for what it characterized as “disgraceful” conduct, though it continues to refuse to allow same-sex marriages in church.

Likewise, the Methodist Church located in Ireland the previous year expressed regret for its “failures in pastoral support and care” toward LGBTQ+ individuals and their families, but remained staunch in the view that matrimony must only constitute a union between a man and a woman.

Earlier this year, Canada's United Church offered an apology to Two-Spirit and LGBTQIA+ groups, describing it as a renewed commitment of its “pledge to complete acceptance and open hospitality” in every part of the church's activities.

“We have not succeeded to honor and appreciate the wonderful diversity of creation,” Rev Michael Blair, the top administrative leader of the church, stated. “We have hurt individuals instead of seeking wholeness. We apologize.”