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Against deep red curtains at a well-known Oslo location for LGBTQ+ gatherings, Norway's national church issued a formal apology for harm and unequal treatment perpetrated over the years.

“Norway's church has caused LGBTQ+ individuals shame, great harm and pain,” the presiding bishop, Bishop Tveit, stated this Thursday. “This ought not to have occurred and this is why today I say sorry.”

“Harassment, discrimination and unfair treatment” had caused a loss of faith for some, Tveit acknowledged. A church service at Oslo's main cathedral was arranged to take place after his statement.

The statement of regret took place at the London Pub establishment, one among two bars attacked during the 2022 attack that took two lives and left nine seriously injured at Oslo's Pride event. An individual of Iranian descent living in Norway, who expressed support for ISIS, was given a prison term to a minimum of three decades in prison for the murders.

In common with various worldwide religions, the Norwegian Lutheran Church – an evangelical Lutheran church that is the biggest religious group in Norway – historically excluded LGBTQ+ individuals, refusing to allow them from serving as pastors or to marry in church. In the 1950s, the church’s bishops characterized LGBTQ+ persons as “a worldwide social threat”.

But as Norwegian society became increasingly liberal, emerging as the world's second to legalize same-sex partnerships back in 1993 and by 2009 the first in Scandinavia to allow same-sex marriage, the church slowly followed.

During 2007, the Norwegian Lutheran Church began ordaining LGBTQ+ clergy, and gay and lesbian couples have been able to marry in church from 2017 onward. In 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 a mixed reaction. The director of a group for Christian lesbians in Norway, Pedersen-Eriksen, who is also a gay pastor, described it as “an important reparation” and a point in time that “finally marked the end of a dark chapter within the church's past”.

According to Stephen Adom, the leader of the Norwegian Association for Gender and Sexual Diversity, the statement was “meaningful and vital” but arrived “not in time for those who lost their lives to AIDS … with hearts filled with anguish since the church viewed the disease as divine punishment”.

Internationally, several faith-based organizations have tried to make amends for their actions regarding LGBTQ+ individuals. During 2023, England's church expressed regret for what it characterized as “disgraceful” conduct, even as it still declines to allow same-sex marriages in religious settings.

Likewise, the Methodist Church located in Ireland the previous year apologised for its “failures in pastoral support and care” regarding the LGBTQ+ community and family members, but held fast in its belief that marriage could only be a partnership of one man and one woman.

Earlier this year, the United Church based in Canada issued an apology to two spirit and LGBTQIA+ communities, characterizing it as a renewed commitment of its “pledge to complete acceptance and open hospitality” in every part of the church's activities.

“We have failed to rejoice and take pleasure in all of your beautiful creation,” Rev Michael Blair, the church's general secretary, remarked. “We have wounded people in place of fostering completeness. We apologize.”