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Against red stage curtains at a leading Oslo LGBTQ+ venue, the Norwegian Lutheran Church expressed regret for discrimination and harm perpetrated over the years.

“The church in Norway has inflicted LGBTQ+ people harm, suffering and humiliation,” bishop Olav Fykse Tveit, Olav Fykse Tveit, declared on Thursday. “It was wrong for this to take place and which is the reason I offer my apology now.”

The “discrimination, unequal treatment and harassment” led to certain individuals abandoning their faith, Tveit acknowledged. A church service at Oslo Cathedral was planned to take place after his statement.

The statement of regret was delivered at the London Pub establishment, one among two bars involved in the 2022 shooting that resulted in two deaths and caused serious injuries to nine at Oslo's Pride event. An individual of Iranian descent living in Norway, who expressed support for ISIS, received a sentence to a minimum of three decades in incarceration for the killings.

Like many religions around the world, the Norwegian Lutheran Church – a Lutheran evangelical community that is the most extensive faith community in the country – had long marginalised LGBTQ+ individuals, preventing them from serving as pastors or from marrying in religious ceremonies. Back in the 1950s, bishops of the church described gay people as a “social danger of global proportions”.

Yet, with Norwegian society turning more progressive, emerging as the world's second to permit registered partnerships for same-sex couples during 1993 and during 2009 the first in Scandinavia to legalize same-sex marriage, the religious institution eventually adapted.

In 2007, the Church of Norway commenced the ordination of homosexual ministers, and gay and lesbian couples could have church weddings since 2017. Last year, the bishop took part in the Pride march in Oslo in what was noted as an unprecedented step for the church.

The Thursday statement of regret was met with varied responses. The leader of an organization of Christian lesbians in Norway, Hanne Marie, a lesbian minister herself, referred to it as “a significant step toward healing” and an occasion that “signaled the conclusion of a dark chapter in the church’s history”.

According to Stephen Adom, the head of the Norwegian Association for Gender and Sexual Diversity, the apology was “meaningful and vital” but had come “not in time for those who passed away from AIDS … carrying heavy hearts because the church considered the epidemic as punishment from God”.

Internationally, a few churches have sought to make amends for historical treatment towards LGBTQ+ people. During 2023, the Anglican Church apologised for what it referred to as its “shameful” treatment, even as it still declines to permit gay marriages in religious settings.

Likewise, the Methodist Church located in Ireland the previous year issued an apology for its “failures in pastoral support and care” toward LGBTQ+ individuals and their families, but stayed firm in the view that marriage could only be a bond between male and female.

Earlier this year, Canada's United Church delivered a statement of regret to Two-Spirit and LGBTQIA+ groups, describing it as 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 rejoice and take pleasure in the wonderful diversity of creation,” Rev Michael Blair, the general secretary of the church, stated. “We have hurt individuals rather than pursuing healing. We apologize.”