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

“The church in Norway has inflicted LGBTQ+ people pain, shame and significant harm,” bishop Olav Fykse Tveit, the church leader, announced this Thursday. “This should never have happened and that is why I offer my apology now.”

“Unequal treatment, harassment and discrimination” led to certain individuals abandoning their faith, Tveit acknowledged. A religious service at the cathedral in Oslo was arranged to follow his apology.

The statement of regret was delivered at the London Pub establishment, a bar that was one of two involved in the 2022 shooting that resulted in two deaths and injured nine people severely during Oslo’s Pride celebrations. A Norwegian citizen originally from Iran, who swore loyalty to Islamic State, was sentenced to at least 30 years in incarceration for carrying out the attacks.

Similar to numerous global faiths, Norway's church – a Lutheran evangelical community that is Norway’s largest faith community – had long marginalised LGBTQ+ people, refusing to allow them from serving as pastors or from marrying in religious ceremonies. In the 1950s, the church’s bishops referred to homosexual individuals as “a global-scale societal hazard”.

However, as Norway's society grew more liberal, ranking as the second globally to legalize same-sex partnerships back in 1993 and during 2009 the first in Scandinavia to legalize same-sex marriage, the church slowly followed.

In 2007, the Norwegian Lutheran Church began ordaining homosexual ministers, and LGBTQ+ partners have been able to marry in church from 2017 onward. In 2023, Tveit participated in Oslo’s Pride parade in what was called a first for the church.

Thursday’s apology elicited differing opinions. The leader of an organization for Christian lesbians in Norway, Hanne Marie, who is also a gay pastor, described it as “a crucial act of amends” and an occasion that “signaled the conclusion of a dark chapter in the church’s history”.

For Stephen Adom, the director of the Norwegian Association for Gender and Sexual Diversity, the statement was “meaningful and vital” but had come “too late for those among us who died of Aids … with deep sorrow in their hearts as the church regarded the disease to be God’s punishment”.

Globally, several faith-based organizations have attempted to offer apologies for historical treatment regarding LGBTQ+ individuals. In 2023, England's church expressed regret for what it referred to as its “shameful” treatment, even as it persists in refusing to allow same-sex marriages within the church.

In a similar vein, the Methodist Church in Ireland the previous year expressed regret for “inadequate pastoral assistance and care” regarding the LGBTQ+ community and their families, but held fast in the view that matrimony must only constitute a union between a man and a woman.

Several months ago, the United Church of Canada delivered a statement of regret to two spirit and LGBTQIA+ communities, characterizing it as a confirmation of the church's “dedication to welcoming all and full inclusion” in all aspects of church life.

“We did not manage to rejoice and take pleasure in all of your beautiful creation,” Rev Michael Blair, the church's general secretary, remarked. “We have wounded people instead of seeking wholeness. We apologize.”