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Set against red stage curtains at a leading Oslo LGBTQ+ venue, the Norwegian Lutheran Church expressed regret for discrimination and harm caused by the church.

“Norway's church has inflicted LGBTQ+ people shame, great harm and pain,” the presiding bishop, Olav Fykse Tveit, stated during a Thursday event. “It was wrong for this to take place and this is why I offer my apology now.”

“Unequal treatment, harassment and discrimination” resulted in certain individuals abandoning their faith, Tveit acknowledged. A religious service at the cathedral in Oslo was planned 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 violent incident that took two lives and injured nine people severely throughout the Oslo Pride festivities. An individual of Iranian descent living in Norway, who had pledged allegiance to Islamic State, received a sentence to at least 30 years behind bars for carrying out the attacks.

Similar to numerous global faiths, the Norwegian Lutheran Church – a Protestant Lutheran denomination that is the most extensive faith community in the country – historically excluded LGBTQ+ people, refusing to allow them from joining the clergy or from marrying in religious ceremonies. During the 1950s, church leaders characterized LGBTQ+ persons as “a worldwide social threat”.

Yet, with Norwegian society turning more progressive, ranking as the second globally to legalize same-sex partnerships during 1993 and in 2009 the first Scandinavian country to allow same-sex marriage, the religious institution eventually adapted.

In 2007, the Church of Norway commenced the ordination of LGBTQ+ clergy, and LGBTQ+ partners were permitted to marry in church since 2017. During 2023, Tveit participated in Oslo’s Pride parade in what was called a historic moment for the religious institution.

The Thursday statement of regret received varied responses. The director of a group representing Norwegian Christian lesbians, Hanne Marie Pedersen-Eriksen, a lesbian minister herself, called it “a significant step toward healing” and a point in time that “represented the closure of a dark chapter in the church’s history”.

According to Stephen Adom, the leader of the Norwegian Association for Gender and Sexual Diversity, the statement was “powerful and significant” but arrived “not in time for those among us who died of Aids … carrying heavy hearts as the church regarded the crisis as punishment from God”.

Globally, several faith-based organizations have attempted to offer apologies for their past behavior concerning the LGBTQ+ community. In 2023, the Church of England apologised for what it described as “shameful” actions, though it still declines to permit gay marriages in church.

In a similar vein, 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 remained staunch in its belief that matrimony must only constitute a union between a man and a woman.

In the early part of this year, Canada's United Church offered an apology to two spirit and LGBTQIA+ communities, labeling it a renewed commitment of the church’s “commitment to radical hospitality and full inclusion” in every part of the church's activities.

“We have not succeeded to celebrate and delight in the wonderful diversity of creation,” Rev Michael Blair, the church's general secretary, remarked. “We caused pain to people instead of seeking wholeness. We are sorry.”