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Set against red stage curtains at one of Oslo’s most prominent LGBTQ+ spaces, the Norwegian Lutheran Church offered an apology for hurtful actions and exclusion caused by the church.

“Norway's church has brought the LGBTQ+ community shame, great harm and pain,” bishop Olav Fykse Tveit, Bishop Tveit, stated during a Thursday event. “This ought not to have occurred and that is why I apologise today.”

“Unequal treatment, harassment and discrimination” had caused some to lose their faith, Tveit acknowledged. A church service at Oslo Cathedral was arranged to take place after his statement.

This formal apology occurred at the London Pub, one among two bars involved in the 2022 attack that took two lives and left nine seriously injured throughout the Oslo Pride festivities. A Norwegian citizen originally from Iran, who expressed support for ISIS, was sentenced to no less than 30 years in incarceration for carrying out the attacks.

Like many religions around the world, the Norwegian Lutheran Church – an evangelical Lutheran church that is Norway’s largest faith community – had long marginalised LGBTQ+ individuals, denying them the opportunity from serving as pastors or to have church weddings. During the 1950s, church leaders referred to homosexual individuals as “a worldwide social threat”.

But as Norwegian society became increasingly liberal, emerging as the world's second to legalize same-sex partnerships back in 1993 and by 2009 the first Scandinavian country to allow same-sex marriage, the religious institution eventually adapted.

During 2007, the Norwegian Lutheran Church started appointing LGBTQ+ clergy, and same-sex couples could have church weddings since 2017. Last year, Tveit participated in the Pride march in Oslo in what was called an unprecedented step for the church.

The Thursday statement of regret elicited a mixed reaction. The head of a network for Christian lesbians in Norway, Hanne Marie, who is also a gay pastor, called it “a crucial act of amends” and an occasion that “represented the closure of a painful era in the history of the church”.

For Stephen Adom, the director of the Association for Gender and Sexual Diversity in Norway, the apology represented “meaningful and vital” but was delivered “not in time for those who lost their lives to AIDS … carrying heavy hearts because the church considered the disease to be God’s punishment”.

Globally, a handful of religious institutions have sought to make amends for their actions concerning the LGBTQ+ community. During 2023, the Church of England apologised for what it characterized as its “shameful” treatment, although it still declines to permit gay marriages within the church.

Likewise, the Methodist Church in Ireland last year expressed regret for “inadequate pastoral assistance and care” toward LGBTQ+ individuals and family members, but held fast in the view that marriage could only be a bond between male and female.

Earlier this year, the United Church of Canada delivered a statement of regret to two spirit and LGBTQIA+ communities, labeling it a reaffirmation of the church’s “commitment to radical hospitality and full inclusion” throughout every area of church life.

“We have not succeeded to celebrate and delight in the wonderful diversity of creation,” Rev Michael Blair, the church's general secretary, said. “We caused pain to people instead of seeking wholeness. We express our regret.”