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Set against red stage curtains at a well-known Oslo location for LGBTQ+ gatherings, the Norwegian Lutheran Church offered an apology for discrimination and harm it had inflicted.

“The national church has brought the LGBTQ+ community pain, shame and significant harm,” the presiding bishop, Olav Fykse Tveit, stated on Thursday. “It was wrong for this to take place and that is why I apologise today.”

The “discrimination, unequal treatment and harassment” had caused some to lose their faith, Tveit recognized. A church service at the cathedral in Oslo was planned to follow his apology.

This formal apology was delivered at the London Pub establishment, one among two bars targeted in the 2022 attack that killed two people and left nine seriously injured throughout the Oslo Pride festivities. A Norwegian citizen originally from Iran, who had pledged allegiance to Islamic State, was sentenced to a minimum of three decades behind bars for the killings.

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

Yet, with Norwegian society turning more progressive, emerging as the world's second to allow same-sex registered partnerships during 1993 and by 2009 the first in Scandinavia to allow same-sex marriage, the religious institution eventually adapted.

Back in 2007, the Norwegian Lutheran Church began ordaining gay pastors, and same-sex couples could have church weddings from 2017 onward. Last year, the bishop took part in the Pride march in Oslo in what was described as a first for the church.

The Thursday statement of regret was met with a mixed reaction. The director of a group of Christian lesbians in Norway, Pedersen-Eriksen, who is also a gay pastor, referred to it as “an important reparation” and an occasion that “finally marked the end of a dark chapter within the church's past”.

As stated by Stephen Adom, the leader of the Norwegian Association for Gender and Sexual Diversity, the statement was “powerful and significant” but had come “not in time for those who lost their lives to AIDS … with deep sorrow in their hearts since the church viewed the crisis to be God’s punishment”.

Internationally, a handful of religious institutions have attempted to offer apologies for their past behavior regarding LGBTQ+ individuals. In 2023, the Church of England expressed regret for what it described as its “shameful” treatment, although it persists in refusing to authorize same-sex weddings within the church.

Likewise, the Methodist Church in Ireland in the past year apologised for “shortcomings in pastoral care and support” to LGBTQ+ people and family members, but stayed firm in the view that marriage should only represent a partnership of one man and one woman.

Several months ago, the United Church based in Canada delivered a statement of regret to two spirit and LGBTQIA+ communities, describing it as a confirmation of the church's “dedication to welcoming all and full inclusion” throughout every area of church life.

“We have not succeeded to honor and appreciate the beauty of all creation,” Rev Michael Blair, the church's general secretary, remarked. “We have wounded people rather than pursuing healing. We apologize.”