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Against deep red curtains at a leading Oslo LGBTQ+ venue, the Norwegian Lutheran Church issued a formal apology for harm and unequal treatment caused by the church.

“The national church has brought LGBTQ+ people pain, shame and significant harm,” the lead bishop, Olav Fykse Tveit, announced on Thursday. “This should never have happened and which is the reason I offer my apology now.”

“Unequal treatment, harassment and discrimination” led to certain individuals abandoning their faith, Tveit acknowledged. A religious service at Oslo Cathedral was arranged to come after the apology.

This formal apology was delivered at the London Pub establishment, one among two bars involved in the 2022 violent incident that took two lives and injured nine people severely at Oslo's Pride event. A Norwegian citizen originally from Iran, who swore loyalty to Islamic State, was sentenced to at least 30 years in prison for carrying out the attacks.

Similar to numerous global faiths, Norway's 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 marry in church. Back in the 1950s, church leaders characterized LGBTQ+ persons as a “social danger of global proportions”.

But as Norwegian society became increasingly liberal, becoming the second in the world to allow same-sex registered partnerships in 1993 and by 2009 the initial Nordic nation to allow same-sex marriage, the religious institution eventually adapted.

During 2007, the Church of Norway began ordaining gay pastors, and gay and lesbian couples have been able to have church weddings from 2017 onward. In 2023, the bishop took part in the Oslo Pride event in what was described as a historic moment for the religious institution.

Thursday’s apology elicited varied responses. The head of a network of Christian lesbians in Norway, Pedersen-Eriksen, herself 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 leader of Norway’s Association for Gender and Sexual Diversity, the statement was “strong and important” but was delivered “not in time for those who lost their lives to AIDS … with deep sorrow in their hearts because the church considered the crisis as punishment from God”.

Internationally, a few churches have tried to offer apologies for historical treatment towards LGBTQ+ people. During 2023, the Church of England expressed regret for what it described as “disgraceful” conduct, though it still declines to authorize same-sex weddings in religious settings.

Similarly, the Methodist Church in Ireland last year issued an apology for “shortcomings in pastoral care and support” regarding the LGBTQ+ community and family members, but stayed firm in its conviction that marriage should only represent a bond between male and female.

Earlier this year, the United Church based in Canada offered an apology toward Two-Spirit and LGBTQIA+ individuals, describing 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 not succeeded to honor and appreciate the wonderful diversity of creation,” Rev Michael Blair, the general secretary of the church, stated. “We caused pain to people in place of fostering completeness. We apologize.”