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Set against deep red curtains at a well-known Oslo location for LGBTQ+ gatherings, the Norwegian Lutheran Church issued a formal apology for hurtful actions and exclusion perpetrated over the years.

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

“Harassment, discrimination and unfair treatment” led to certain individuals abandoning their faith, the bishop admitted. A church service at Oslo's main cathedral was arranged to come after the apology.

This formal apology occurred at the London Pub, a bar that was one of two targeted in the 2022 violent incident that took two lives and injured nine people severely throughout the Oslo Pride festivities. A Norwegian of Iranian origin, who swore loyalty to Islamic State, was given a prison term to no less than 30 years behind bars 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 joining the clergy or to marry in church. In the 1950s, the church’s bishops referred to homosexual individuals as “a worldwide social threat”.

Yet, with Norwegian society turning more progressive, emerging as the world's second to allow same-sex registered partnerships during 1993 and during 2009 the first in Scandinavia to approve gay marriage, the church gradually changed.

During 2007, the Norwegian Lutheran Church commenced the ordination of LGBTQ+ clergy, and gay and lesbian couples have been able to marry in church starting in 2017. In 2023, Tveit participated in the Oslo Pride event in what was described as an unprecedented step for the church.

Thursday’s apology received a mixed reaction. The leader of an organization for Christian lesbians in Norway, Pedersen-Eriksen, who is also a gay pastor, referred to it as “a crucial act of amends” and an occasion that “finally marked the end of a painful era within the church's past”.

According to Stephen Adom, the leader of the Norwegian Association for Gender and Sexual Diversity, the apology represented “powerful and significant” but arrived “too late for those who passed away from AIDS … carrying heavy hearts because the church considered the epidemic as punishment from God”.

Globally, several faith-based organizations have tried to offer apologies for historical treatment regarding LGBTQ+ individuals. During 2023, the Anglican Church apologised for what it described as its “shameful” treatment, although it persists in refusing to permit gay marriages in church.

Similarly, the Methodist Church located in Ireland the previous year issued an apology for “shortcomings in pastoral care and support” regarding the LGBTQ+ community and their families, but stayed firm in its conviction that marriage should only represent a partnership of one man and one woman.

In the early part of this year, the United Church of Canada offered an apology to two spirit and LGBTQIA+ communities, characterizing it as a renewed commitment of its “pledge to complete acceptance and open hospitality” in all aspects of church life.

“We have failed to honor and appreciate the wonderful diversity of creation,” Reverend Blair, the general secretary of the church, said. “We have wounded people in place of fostering completeness. We express our regret.”