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Amid crimson theater drapes at a leading Oslo LGBTQ+ venue, the Norwegian Lutheran Church expressed regret for harm and unequal treatment it had inflicted.

“The national church has caused LGBTQ+ individuals shame, great harm and pain,” the presiding bishop, Bishop Tveit, announced on Thursday. “This should never have happened and this is why I offer my apology now.”

“Unequal treatment, harassment and discrimination” led to some to lose their faith, Tveit acknowledged. A worship service at Oslo's main cathedral was planned to come after the apology.

The statement of regret was delivered at a venue called London Pub, one of two bars attacked during the 2022 shooting that took two lives and left nine seriously injured during Oslo’s Pride celebrations. A Norwegian citizen originally from Iran, who had pledged allegiance to Islamic State, was given a prison term to a minimum of three decades behind bars for the killings.

In common with various worldwide religions, the Norwegian Lutheran Church – a Lutheran evangelical community that is the most extensive faith community in the country – for years sidelined LGBTQ+ individuals, refusing to allow them from serving as pastors or to have church weddings. In the 1950s, church leaders referred to homosexual individuals as “a global-scale societal hazard”.

Yet, with Norwegian society turning more progressive, becoming the second in the world to permit registered partnerships for same-sex couples back in 1993 and during 2009 the initial Nordic nation to approve gay marriage, the religious institution eventually adapted.

Back in 2007, the Norwegian Lutheran Church started appointing LGBTQ+ clergy, and gay and lesbian couples were permitted to have church weddings since 2017. In 2023, Tveit joined in Oslo’s Pride parade in what was noted as an unprecedented step for the church.

The Thursday statement of regret was met with a mixed reaction. The leader of an organization representing Norwegian Christian lesbians, Pedersen-Eriksen, herself a gay pastor, referred to it as “a significant step toward healing” and a point in time that “finally marked the end of a dark chapter within the church's past”.

For Stephen Adom, the head of the Association for Gender and Sexual Diversity in Norway, the apology represented “strong and important” but had come “not in time for those who lost their lives to AIDS … with deep sorrow in their hearts because the church considered the disease as punishment from God”.

Worldwide, a handful of religious institutions have tried to offer apologies for historical treatment towards LGBTQ+ people. In 2023, the Church of England apologised for what it referred to as its “shameful” treatment, even as it continues to refuse to permit gay marriages within the church.

Similarly, Ireland's Methodist Church the previous year apologised for its “failures in pastoral support and care” toward LGBTQ+ individuals and their relatives, but stayed firm in its conviction that marriage could only be a bond between male and female.

Earlier this year, the United Church of Canada offered an apology to Two-Spirit and LGBTQIA+ groups, characterizing it as a reaffirmation of the church's “dedication to welcoming all and full inclusion” in every part of the church's activities.

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