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Set against crimson theater drapes at a well-known Oslo location for LGBTQ+ gatherings, the Norwegian Lutheran Church expressed regret for discrimination and harm caused by the church.

“The church in Norway has brought the LGBTQ+ community shame, great harm and pain,” the presiding bishop, Olav Fykse Tveit, announced during a Thursday event. “This ought not to have occurred and this is why I apologise today.”

“Harassment, discrimination and unfair treatment” resulted in certain individuals abandoning their faith, Tveit acknowledged. A religious service at Oslo Cathedral was scheduled to take place after his statement.

This formal apology occurred at the London Pub, one of two bars targeted in the 2022 attack that took two lives and left nine seriously injured throughout the Oslo Pride festivities. An individual of Iranian descent living in Norway, who had pledged allegiance to Islamic State, was sentenced to a minimum of three decades behind bars for carrying out the attacks.

Like many religions around the world, Norway's church – a Protestant Lutheran denomination that is the most extensive faith community in the country – historically excluded LGBTQ+ individuals, refusing to allow them from serving as pastors or to marry in church. During the 1950s, bishops of the church characterized LGBTQ+ persons as a “social danger of global proportions”.

However, as Norway's society grew more liberal, becoming the second in the world to allow same-sex registered partnerships back in 1993 and in 2009 the initial Nordic nation to approve gay marriage, the church gradually changed.

Back in 2007, the Church of Norway started appointing gay pastors, and gay and lesbian couples could marry in church starting in 2017. During 2023, Tveit joined in Oslo’s Pride parade in what was noted as an unprecedented step for the church.

The Thursday statement of regret was met with differing opinions. The leader of an organization for Christian lesbians in Norway, Hanne Marie, herself a gay pastor, described it as “a significant step toward healing” and an occasion that “represented the closure of a painful era within the church's past”.

According to Stephen Adom, the head of the Association for Gender and Sexual Diversity in Norway, the apology was “powerful and significant” but arrived “too late for those who passed away from AIDS … with deep sorrow in their hearts as the church regarded the crisis to be God’s punishment”.

Globally, several faith-based organizations have tried to make amends for historical treatment regarding LGBTQ+ individuals. Last year, the Anglican Church expressed regret for what it described as its “shameful” treatment, even as it still declines to allow same-sex marriages in religious settings.

Likewise, Ireland's Methodist Church in the past year apologised for “inadequate pastoral assistance and care” to LGBTQ+ people and their relatives, but remained staunch in the view that marriage could only be a union between a man and a woman.

Several months ago, the United Church based in Canada offered an apology to two spirit and LGBTQIA+ communities, describing it as a renewed commitment of the church's “dedication to welcoming all and full inclusion” in every part of the church's activities.

“We have failed to honor and appreciate the wonderful diversity of creation,” Reverend Blair, the general secretary of the church, remarked. “We caused pain to people in place of fostering completeness. We are sorry.”