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Amid deep red curtains at a leading Oslo LGBTQ+ venue, the Norwegian Lutheran Church expressed regret for harm and unequal treatment caused by the church.

“The national church has caused LGBTQ+ people shame, great harm and pain,” bishop Olav Fykse Tveit, Olav Fykse Tveit, stated during a Thursday event. “This should never have happened and which is the reason I offer my apology now.”

“Unequal treatment, harassment and discrimination” led to some to lose their faith, the bishop admitted. A religious service at Oslo Cathedral was arranged to take place after his statement.

This formal apology took place at the London Pub establishment, one among two bars involved in the 2022 violent incident that killed two people and caused serious injuries to nine during Oslo’s Pride celebrations. A Norwegian citizen originally from Iran, who expressed support for ISIS, received a sentence to at least 30 years in incarceration for the murders.

Similar to numerous global faiths, the Norwegian Lutheran Church – a Protestant Lutheran denomination that is Norway’s largest faith community – had long marginalised LGBTQ+ people, refusing to allow them from joining the clergy or from marrying in religious ceremonies. Back in the 1950s, the church’s bishops referred to homosexual individuals as “a worldwide social threat”.

But as Norwegian society became increasingly liberal, becoming the second in the world to allow same-sex registered partnerships in 1993 and during 2009 the initial Nordic nation to legalize same-sex marriage, the church gradually changed.

In 2007, the Church of Norway started appointing homosexual ministers, and same-sex couples could get married in religious ceremonies starting in 2017. Last year, Tveit participated in Oslo’s Pride parade in what was noted as a historic moment for the religious institution.

The apology on Thursday received differing opinions. The head of a network representing Norwegian Christian lesbians, Hanne Marie, a lesbian minister herself, called it “a crucial act of amends” and an occasion that “finally marked the end of a dark chapter in the history of the church”.

According to Stephen Adom, the head of the Norwegian Association for Gender and Sexual Diversity, the apology represented “meaningful and vital” but arrived “too late for those who passed away from AIDS … with deep sorrow in their hearts because the church considered the crisis to be God’s punishment”.

Globally, a few churches have tried to offer apologies for their past behavior concerning the LGBTQ+ community. During 2023, England's church expressed regret for what it described as “disgraceful” conduct, though it persists in refusing to allow same-sex marriages in religious settings.

In a similar vein, the Methodist Church in Ireland in the past year issued an apology for “shortcomings in pastoral care and support” to LGBTQ+ people and their families, but held fast in its conviction that marriage should only represent a partnership of one man and one woman.

In the early part of this year, the United Church of Canada issued an apology toward Two-Spirit and LGBTQIA+ individuals, describing it as a reaffirmation of the church’s “commitment to radical hospitality and full inclusion” throughout every area of church life.

“We have not succeeded to rejoice and take pleasure in all of your beautiful creation,” Rev Michael Blair, the general secretary of the church, stated. “We have wounded people in place of fostering completeness. We express our regret.”