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Set against red stage curtains at a leading Oslo LGBTQ+ venue, Norway's national church offered an apology for harm and unequal treatment caused by the church.

“The church in Norway has caused LGBTQ+ individuals harm, suffering and humiliation,” bishop Olav Fykse Tveit, Olav Fykse Tveit, stated during a Thursday event. “This ought not to have occurred and which is the reason I apologise today.”

“Unequal treatment, harassment and discrimination” resulted in certain individuals abandoning their faith, Tveit recognized. A worship service at the cathedral in Oslo was planned to take place after his statement.

The statement of regret occurred at the London Pub, one among two bars targeted in the 2022 attack that resulted in two deaths and left nine seriously injured during Oslo’s Pride celebrations. A Norwegian citizen originally from Iran, who expressed support for ISIS, received a sentence to no less than 30 years in incarceration for the murders.

In common with various worldwide religions, the Norwegian Lutheran Church – a Protestant Lutheran denomination that is Norway’s largest faith community – for years sidelined LGBTQ+ people, denying them the opportunity from serving as pastors or from marrying in religious ceremonies. During the 1950s, church leaders characterized LGBTQ+ persons as “a worldwide social threat”.

But as Norwegian society became increasingly liberal, ranking as the second globally to legalize same-sex partnerships in 1993 and by 2009 the first Scandinavian country to allow same-sex marriage, the religious institution eventually adapted.

During 2007, the Norwegian Lutheran Church commenced the ordination of homosexual ministers, and same-sex couples have been able to marry in church from 2017 onward. During 2023, Tveit joined in Oslo’s Pride parade in what was described as an unprecedented step for the church.

Thursday’s apology received varied responses. The director of a group representing Norwegian Christian lesbians, Hanne Marie Pedersen-Eriksen, herself a gay pastor, called it “an important reparation” and a point in time that “represented the closure of a difficult period in the church’s history”.

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

Globally, a few churches have attempted to offer apologies for their past behavior towards LGBTQ+ people. During 2023, the Church of England expressed regret for what it referred to as its “shameful” treatment, though it still declines to authorize same-sex weddings in church.

In a similar vein, the Methodist Church in Ireland the previous year expressed regret for “inadequate pastoral assistance and care” to LGBTQ+ people and their relatives, but held fast in the view that matrimony must only constitute a bond between male and female.

In the early part of this year, the United Church of Canada delivered a statement of regret to Two-Spirit and LGBTQIA+ groups, 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 general secretary of the church, stated. “We have hurt individuals rather than pursuing healing. We are sorry.”