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Amid deep red curtains at one of Oslo’s most prominent LGBTQ+ spaces, the Norwegian Lutheran Church issued a formal apology for harm and unequal treatment caused by the church.

“The national church has inflicted LGBTQ+ people pain, shame and significant harm,” the presiding bishop, Bishop Tveit, announced during a Thursday event. “This ought not to have occurred and this is why today I say sorry.”

The “discrimination, unequal treatment and harassment” resulted in certain individuals abandoning their faith, Tveit recognized. A worship service at Oslo Cathedral was scheduled to come after the apology.

The apology occurred at the London Pub establishment, one among two bars attacked during the 2022 violent incident that took two lives and injured nine people severely 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 killings.

Similar to numerous global faiths, the Norwegian Lutheran Church – a Protestant Lutheran denomination that is the most extensive faith community in the country – for years sidelined the LGBTQ+ community, refusing to allow them from joining the clergy or from marrying in religious ceremonies. In the 1950s, church leaders characterized LGBTQ+ persons as “a worldwide social threat”.

Yet, with Norwegian society turning more progressive, becoming the second in the world to legalize same-sex partnerships during 1993 and in 2009 the first in Scandinavia to legalize same-sex marriage, the religious institution eventually adapted.

In 2007, the Norwegian Lutheran Church started appointing gay pastors, and LGBTQ+ partners were permitted to have church weddings from 2017 onward. In 2023, the bishop took part in Oslo’s Pride parade in what was called an unprecedented step for the church.

The Thursday statement of regret was met with varied responses. The leader of an organization representing Norwegian Christian lesbians, Pedersen-Eriksen, a lesbian minister herself, referred to it as “an important reparation” and a point in time that “represented the closure of a painful era within the church's past”.

As stated by Stephen Adom, the head of Norway’s Association for Gender and Sexual Diversity, the apology was “powerful and significant” but arrived “overdue for individuals who lost their lives to AIDS … with deep sorrow in their hearts since the church viewed the epidemic as divine punishment”.

Globally, a handful of religious institutions have tried to reconcile for historical treatment towards LGBTQ+ people. In 2023, England's church said sorry for what it described as its “shameful” treatment, although it still declines to permit gay marriages in church.

In a similar vein, the Methodist Church in Ireland last year expressed regret for “inadequate pastoral assistance and care” toward LGBTQ+ individuals and family members, but remained staunch in its conviction that matrimony must only constitute a partnership of one man and one woman.

Several months ago, the United Church based in Canada delivered a statement of regret toward Two-Spirit and LGBTQIA+ individuals, describing it as a renewed commitment of its “pledge to complete acceptance and open hospitality” throughout every area of church life.

“We have failed to celebrate and delight in all of your beautiful creation,” Reverend Blair, the general secretary of the church, remarked. “We have hurt individuals in place of fostering completeness. We express our regret.”