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Amid crimson theater drapes at a well-known Oslo location for LGBTQ+ gatherings, the Norwegian Lutheran Church issued a formal apology for harm and unequal treatment perpetrated over the years.

“The church in Norway has caused the LGBTQ+ community harm, suffering and humiliation,” bishop Olav Fykse Tveit, Bishop Tveit, announced this Thursday. “This should never have happened and that is why today I say sorry.”

The “discrimination, unequal treatment and harassment” resulted in a loss of faith for some, Tveit acknowledged. A church service at Oslo Cathedral was arranged to come after the apology.

This formal apology took place at the London Pub, a bar that was one of two attacked during the 2022 attack that took two lives and caused serious injuries to nine at Oslo's Pride event. A Norwegian citizen originally from Iran, who expressed support for ISIS, was given a prison term to a minimum of three decades behind bars for the killings.

Like many religions around the world, the Norwegian Lutheran Church – an evangelical Lutheran church that is the biggest religious group in Norway – for years sidelined LGBTQ+ individuals, refusing to allow them from joining the clergy or to have church weddings. In the 1950s, church leaders characterized LGBTQ+ persons as a “social danger of global proportions”.

But as Norwegian society became increasingly liberal, emerging as the world's second to legalize same-sex partnerships during 1993 and in 2009 the initial Nordic nation to approve gay marriage, the church slowly followed.

Back in 2007, Norway's church commenced the ordination of homosexual ministers, and same-sex couples have been able to have church weddings from 2017 onward. During 2023, Tveit joined in the Pride march in Oslo in what was noted as a first for the church.

The Thursday statement of regret received varied responses. The director of a group of Christian lesbians in Norway, Pedersen-Eriksen, a lesbian minister herself, called it “an important reparation” and a point in time that “represented the closure of a dark chapter within the church's past”.

According to Stephen Adom, the leader of Norway’s Association for Gender and Sexual Diversity, the apology was “meaningful and vital” but had come “not in time for those among us who died of Aids … with hearts filled with anguish because the church considered the crisis as divine punishment”.

Globally, a few churches have attempted to reconcile for their past behavior regarding LGBTQ+ individuals. During 2023, the Church of England said sorry for what it referred to as its “shameful” treatment, though it persists in refusing to permit gay marriages within the church.

Likewise, the Methodist Church located in Ireland last year apologised for “shortcomings in pastoral care and support” toward LGBTQ+ individuals and family members, but stayed firm in its belief that marriage should only represent a partnership of one man and one woman.

Several months ago, the United Church based in Canada issued an apology toward Two-Spirit and LGBTQIA+ individuals, labeling it a renewed commitment of its “pledge to complete acceptance and open hospitality” in every part of the church's activities.

“We have failed to celebrate and delight in the beauty of all creation,” Reverend Blair, the church's general secretary, stated. “We have hurt individuals instead of seeking wholeness. We apologize.”