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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 perpetrated over the years.

“Norway's church has caused LGBTQ+ people pain, shame and significant harm,” the presiding bishop, Olav Fykse Tveit, stated this Thursday. “This should never have happened and that is why today I say sorry.”

“Unequal treatment, harassment and discrimination” had caused certain individuals abandoning their faith, Tveit recognized. A worship service at Oslo Cathedral was arranged to come after the apology.

The apology occurred at the London Pub, a bar that was one of two involved in the 2022 violent incident that took two lives and injured nine people severely during Oslo’s Pride celebrations. An individual of Iranian descent living in Norway, who swore loyalty to Islamic State, received a sentence to at least 30 years behind bars for the murders.

In common with various worldwide religions, the Norwegian Lutheran Church – a Lutheran evangelical community that is the most extensive faith community in the country – historically excluded LGBTQ+ individuals, denying them the opportunity from serving as pastors or from marrying in religious ceremonies. During the 1950s, the church’s bishops described gay people as “a worldwide social threat”.

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

In 2007, the Church of Norway began ordaining LGBTQ+ clergy, and gay and lesbian couples could marry in church from 2017 onward. Last year, Tveit participated in the Pride march in Oslo in what was noted as a historic moment for the religious institution.

The Thursday statement of regret was met with varied responses. The head of a network representing Norwegian Christian lesbians, Pedersen-Eriksen, a lesbian minister herself, called it “an important reparation” and a point in time that “represented the closure of a painful era in the church’s history”.

For Stephen Adom, the director of the Association for Gender and Sexual Diversity in Norway, the apology represented “strong and important” but was delivered “overdue for individuals who passed away from AIDS … with hearts filled with anguish since the church viewed the disease to be God’s punishment”.

Worldwide, a few churches have sought to reconcile for historical treatment concerning the LGBTQ+ community. During 2023, England's church said sorry for what it characterized as “shameful” actions, even as it continues to refuse to permit gay marriages in religious settings.

Similarly, Ireland's Methodist Church last year apologised for its “failures in pastoral support and care” regarding the LGBTQ+ community and family members, but held fast in its belief that marriage should only represent a union between a man and a woman.

In the early part of this year, Canada's United Church offered an apology toward Two-Spirit and LGBTQIA+ individuals, describing it as a reaffirmation of its “pledge to complete acceptance and open hospitality” throughout every area of church life.

“We have not succeeded to rejoice and take pleasure in the beauty of all creation,” Rev Michael Blair, the church's general secretary, said. “We caused pain to people rather than pursuing healing. We express our regret.”