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Amid red stage curtains at a well-known Oslo location for LGBTQ+ gatherings, the Norwegian Lutheran Church offered an apology for hurtful actions and exclusion caused by the church.

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

“Unequal treatment, harassment and discrimination” resulted in certain individuals abandoning their faith, Tveit recognized. A church service at the cathedral in Oslo was planned to come after the apology.

The apology took place at the London Pub, a bar that was one of two targeted in the 2022 shooting that resulted in two deaths and caused serious injuries to nine throughout the Oslo Pride festivities. A Norwegian of Iranian origin, who expressed support for ISIS, was sentenced to a minimum of three decades behind bars for carrying out the attacks.

Like many religions around the world, Norway's church – a Lutheran evangelical community that is the biggest religious group in Norway – historically excluded LGBTQ+ individuals, preventing them to become pastors or to marry in church. Back in the 1950s, the church’s bishops characterized LGBTQ+ persons as “a global-scale societal hazard”.

However, as Norway's society grew more liberal, becoming the second in the world to allow same-sex registered partnerships back in 1993 and during 2009 the initial Nordic nation to allow same-sex marriage, the church slowly followed.

Back in 2007, the Norwegian Lutheran Church started appointing homosexual ministers, and LGBTQ+ partners could have church weddings since 2017. Last year, Tveit participated in the Pride march in Oslo in what was called a historic moment for the religious institution.

The Thursday statement of regret was met with varied responses. The head of a network for Christian lesbians in Norway, Pedersen-Eriksen, herself a gay pastor, called it “an important reparation” and a moment that “signaled the conclusion of a painful era within the church's past”.

According to Stephen Adom, the director of the Norwegian Association for Gender and Sexual Diversity, the apology was “powerful and significant” but arrived “not in time for those who passed away from AIDS … carrying heavy hearts since the church viewed the crisis as punishment from God”.

Globally, a few churches have tried to offer apologies for their actions towards LGBTQ+ people. During 2023, England's church expressed regret for what it characterized as its “shameful” treatment, even as it still declines to allow same-sex marriages in church.

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 remained staunch in the view that marriage could only be a union between a man and a woman.

Earlier this year, the United Church of Canada delivered a statement of regret toward Two-Spirit and LGBTQIA+ individuals, describing it as a renewed commitment of the church's “dedication to welcoming all and full inclusion” in all aspects of church life.

“We did not manage to honor and appreciate the beauty of all creation,” Michael Blair, the church's general secretary, remarked. “We caused pain to people rather than pursuing healing. We express our regret.”