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Set against red stage curtains at a leading Oslo LGBTQ+ venue, the Norwegian Lutheran Church offered an apology for harm and unequal treatment caused by the church.

“The national church has caused the LGBTQ+ community harm, suffering and humiliation,” bishop Olav Fykse Tveit, Olav Fykse Tveit, declared during a Thursday event. “This ought not to have occurred and this is why I offer my apology now.”

The “discrimination, unequal treatment and harassment” led to certain individuals abandoning their faith, the bishop admitted. A religious service at Oslo Cathedral was scheduled to take place after his statement.

The statement of regret occurred at the London Pub establishment, a bar that was one of two involved in the 2022 attack that took two lives and caused serious injuries to nine at Oslo's Pride event. A Norwegian citizen originally from Iran, who had pledged allegiance to Islamic State, was given a prison term to no less than 30 years in prison for carrying out the attacks.

Similar to numerous global faiths, the Norwegian Lutheran Church – a Protestant Lutheran denomination that is the biggest religious group in Norway – for years sidelined LGBTQ+ individuals, denying them the opportunity from joining the clergy or to marry in church. In the 1950s, bishops of the church characterized LGBTQ+ persons as “a worldwide social threat”.

However, as Norway's society grew more liberal, emerging as the world's second to legalize same-sex partnerships in 1993 and by 2009 the initial Nordic nation to approve gay marriage, the church gradually changed.

During 2007, Norway's church started appointing homosexual ministers, and gay and lesbian couples have been able to have church weddings from 2017 onward. In 2023, the bishop took part in the Pride march in Oslo in what was noted as a first for the church.

Thursday’s apology was met with differing opinions. The head of a network for Christian lesbians in Norway, Hanne Marie Pedersen-Eriksen, a lesbian minister herself, referred to it as “an important reparation” and a point in time that “signaled the conclusion of a difficult period in the church’s history”.

As stated by Stephen Adom, the director of Norway’s Association for Gender and Sexual Diversity, the apology was “powerful and significant” but had come “overdue for individuals who lost their lives to AIDS … with deep sorrow in their hearts because the church considered the crisis as punishment from God”.

Globally, a handful of religious institutions have tried to make amends for their past behavior concerning the LGBTQ+ community. In 2023, the Anglican Church apologised for what it referred to as its “shameful” treatment, even as it continues to refuse to authorize same-sex weddings in church.

In a similar vein, the Methodist Church in Ireland last year issued an apology for “inadequate pastoral assistance and care” regarding the LGBTQ+ community and their relatives, but remained staunch in its conviction that marriage should only represent a bond between male and female.

Several months ago, Canada's United Church delivered a statement of regret to Two-Spirit and LGBTQIA+ groups, describing it as a renewed commitment of its “pledge to complete acceptance and open hospitality” in every part of the church's activities.

“We have failed to celebrate and delight in the beauty of all creation,” Rev Michael Blair, the top administrative leader of the church, remarked. “We caused pain to people instead of seeking wholeness. We are sorry.”