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Amid red stage curtains at a leading Oslo LGBTQ+ venue, the Norwegian Lutheran Church issued a formal apology for harm and unequal treatment perpetrated over the years.

“The national church has caused LGBTQ+ people shame, great harm and pain,” the presiding bishop, Bishop Tveit, announced during a Thursday event. “It was wrong for this to take place and that is why today I say sorry.”

“Harassment, discrimination and unfair treatment” resulted in some to lose their faith, Tveit acknowledged. A church service at Oslo's main cathedral was planned to take place after his statement.

The statement of regret occurred at the London Pub establishment, one among two bars attacked during the 2022 violent incident that killed two people and left nine seriously injured at Oslo's Pride event. A Norwegian citizen originally from Iran, who expressed support for ISIS, was given a prison term to a minimum of three decades behind bars for carrying out the attacks.

Similar to numerous global faiths, the Norwegian Lutheran Church – a Lutheran evangelical community that is the biggest religious group in Norway – historically excluded LGBTQ+ individuals, refusing to allow them from serving as pastors or to have church weddings. In the 1950s, bishops of the church referred to homosexual individuals as a “social danger of global proportions”.

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

During 2007, Norway's church began ordaining LGBTQ+ clergy, and gay and lesbian couples were permitted to get married in religious ceremonies since 2017. In 2023, Tveit joined in the Pride march in Oslo in what was described as an unprecedented step for the church.

The Thursday statement of regret received differing opinions. The leader of an organization for Christian lesbians in Norway, Hanne Marie Pedersen-Eriksen, who is also a gay pastor, called it “a significant step toward healing” and a moment that “represented the closure of a dark chapter in the history of the church”.

For Stephen Adom, the leader of the Association for Gender and Sexual Diversity in Norway, the statement was “strong and important” but had come “too late for those who passed away from AIDS … carrying heavy hearts since the church viewed the epidemic as punishment from God”.

Globally, several faith-based organizations have tried to offer apologies for their past behavior regarding LGBTQ+ individuals. In 2023, the Anglican Church apologised for what it described as “disgraceful” conduct, although it persists in refusing to authorize same-sex weddings in church.

Likewise, the Methodist Church located in Ireland last year apologised for “shortcomings in pastoral care and support” to LGBTQ+ people and their families, but remained staunch in its conviction that marriage could only be a union between a man and a woman.

Earlier this year, Canada's United Church delivered a statement of regret to Two-Spirit and LGBTQIA+ groups, describing it as a reaffirmation of the church’s “commitment to radical hospitality and full inclusion” in all aspects of church life.

“We have not succeeded to rejoice and take pleasure in the beauty of all creation,” Michael Blair, the general secretary of the church, stated. “We have hurt individuals in place of fostering completeness. We are sorry.”