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Amid crimson theater drapes at a leading Oslo LGBTQ+ venue, the Norwegian Lutheran Church offered an apology for harm and unequal treatment it had inflicted.

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

The “discrimination, unequal treatment and harassment” had caused some to lose their faith, Tveit recognized. A church service at Oslo Cathedral was arranged to take place after his statement.

The statement of regret was delivered at the London Pub, one of two bars attacked during the 2022 violent incident that took two lives and injured nine people severely at Oslo's Pride event. A Norwegian of Iranian origin, who swore loyalty to Islamic State, was sentenced to a minimum of three decades in incarceration for carrying out the attacks.

In common with various worldwide religions, Norway's church – a Protestant Lutheran denomination that is the biggest religious group in Norway – historically excluded LGBTQ+ people, preventing them from joining the clergy or to have church weddings. Back in the 1950s, bishops of the church described gay people as “a worldwide social threat”.

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

In 2007, Norway's church began ordaining homosexual ministers, and LGBTQ+ partners have been able to have church weddings starting in 2017. During 2023, Tveit participated in the Oslo Pride event in what was noted as a first for the church.

Thursday’s apology received varied responses. The director of a group of Christian lesbians in Norway, Pedersen-Eriksen, a lesbian minister herself, referred to it as “an important reparation” and a point in time that “signaled the conclusion of a difficult period within the church's past”.

As stated by Stephen Adom, the head of the Association for Gender and Sexual Diversity in Norway, the apology was “meaningful and vital” but had come “not in time for those who lost their lives to AIDS … carrying heavy hearts because the church considered the disease as divine punishment”.

Internationally, several faith-based organizations have attempted to make amends for historical treatment concerning the LGBTQ+ community. Last year, the Anglican Church said sorry for what it referred to as “shameful” actions, though it continues to refuse to authorize same-sex weddings in religious settings.

Likewise, the Methodist Church located in Ireland the previous year issued an apology for “shortcomings in pastoral care and support” to LGBTQ+ people and their relatives, but remained staunch in its conviction that marriage should only represent a bond between male and female.

In the early part of this year, the United Church based in Canada delivered a statement of regret toward Two-Spirit and LGBTQIA+ individuals, characterizing it as a reaffirmation of the church’s “commitment to radical hospitality 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 top administrative leader of the church, remarked. “We have wounded people instead of seeking wholeness. We are sorry.”