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Set against deep red curtains at a leading Oslo LGBTQ+ venue, Norway's national church issued a formal apology for hurtful actions and exclusion it had inflicted.

“The national church has brought the LGBTQ+ community shame, great harm and pain,” bishop Olav Fykse Tveit, Olav Fykse Tveit, declared this Thursday. “This should never have happened and this is why I offer my apology now.”

“Harassment, discrimination and unfair treatment” led to some to lose their faith, the bishop admitted. A religious service at Oslo's main cathedral was planned to follow his apology.

This formal apology occurred at a venue called London Pub, a bar that was one of two involved in the 2022 attack that killed two people and caused serious injuries to nine at Oslo's Pride event. An individual of Iranian descent living in Norway, who had pledged allegiance to Islamic State, was given a prison term to no less than 30 years behind bars for the killings.

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, preventing them to become pastors or from marrying in religious ceremonies. During the 1950s, bishops of the church referred to homosexual individuals as “a worldwide social threat”.

Yet, with Norwegian society turning more progressive, emerging as the world's second to allow same-sex registered partnerships in 1993 and by 2009 the first in Scandinavia to allow same-sex marriage, the church slowly followed.

In 2007, the Norwegian Lutheran Church began ordaining homosexual ministers, and same-sex couples could get married in religious ceremonies from 2017 onward. During 2023, Tveit joined in the Oslo Pride event in what was described as an unprecedented step for the church.

The Thursday statement of regret elicited differing opinions. The director of a group of Christian lesbians in Norway, Pedersen-Eriksen, who is also a gay pastor, called it “a significant step toward healing” and an occasion that “signaled the conclusion of a painful era in the church’s history”.

According to Stephen Adom, the director of the Association for Gender and Sexual Diversity in Norway, the apology was “strong and important” but had come “too late for those who lost their lives to AIDS … with deep sorrow in their hearts since the church viewed the disease as divine punishment”.

Internationally, a few churches have tried to offer apologies for historical treatment concerning the LGBTQ+ community. In 2023, the Church of England expressed regret for what it referred to as “disgraceful” conduct, although it persists in refusing to permit gay marriages in church.

Likewise, the Methodist Church in Ireland last year issued an apology for “shortcomings in pastoral care and support” regarding the LGBTQ+ community and their families, but stayed firm in its belief that marriage could only be a partnership of one man and one woman.

Several months ago, the United Church based in Canada offered an apology toward Two-Spirit and LGBTQIA+ individuals, characterizing it as a renewed commitment of its “pledge to complete acceptance and open hospitality” in all aspects of church life.

“We have failed to celebrate and delight in the beauty of all creation,” Michael Blair, the top administrative leader of the church, remarked. “We have wounded people instead of seeking wholeness. We express our regret.”