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Set against deep red curtains at one of Oslo’s most prominent LGBTQ+ spaces, the Norwegian Lutheran Church expressed regret for discrimination and harm caused by the church.

“The national church has brought LGBTQ+ people harm, suffering and humiliation,” the presiding bishop, Olav Fykse Tveit, stated during a Thursday event. “This should never have happened and that is why today I say sorry.”

“Harassment, discrimination and unfair treatment” led to certain individuals abandoning their faith, the bishop admitted. A church service at Oslo Cathedral was arranged to take place after his statement.

The apology occurred at a venue called London Pub, one among two bars involved in the 2022 shooting that killed two people and injured nine people severely at Oslo's Pride event. An individual of Iranian descent living in Norway, who had pledged allegiance to Islamic State, received a sentence to at least 30 years in incarceration for the murders.

Like many religions around the world, the Norwegian Lutheran Church – a Lutheran evangelical community that is the biggest religious group in Norway – had long marginalised LGBTQ+ people, preventing them from joining the clergy or from marrying in religious ceremonies. In the 1950s, church leaders described gay people as a “social danger of global proportions”.

However, as Norway's society grew more liberal, becoming the second in the world to legalize same-sex partnerships in 1993 and during 2009 the first Scandinavian country to legalize same-sex marriage, the church slowly followed.

During 2007, the Norwegian Lutheran Church commenced the ordination of LGBTQ+ clergy, and gay and lesbian couples were permitted to marry in church from 2017 onward. In 2023, Tveit joined in the Pride march in Oslo in what was called a historic moment for the religious institution.

The Thursday statement of regret was met with differing opinions. The head of a network representing Norwegian Christian lesbians, Pedersen-Eriksen, a lesbian minister herself, referred to it as “an important reparation” and an occasion that “finally marked the end of a painful era in the church’s history”.

For Stephen Adom, the leader of the Norwegian Association for Gender and Sexual Diversity, the statement was “powerful and significant” but was delivered “not in time for those among us who died of Aids … with hearts filled with anguish since the church viewed the epidemic to be God’s punishment”.

Globally, a few churches have sought to make amends for historical treatment concerning the LGBTQ+ community. In 2023, the Church of England expressed regret for what it described as “disgraceful” conduct, though it continues to refuse to allow same-sex marriages in religious settings.

In a similar vein, Ireland's Methodist Church last year expressed regret for “inadequate pastoral assistance and care” regarding the LGBTQ+ community and their relatives, but stayed firm in the view that marriage could only be a partnership of one man and one woman.

In the early part of this year, Canada's United Church issued an apology to two spirit and LGBTQIA+ communities, characterizing it as a confirmation of the church’s “commitment to radical hospitality and full inclusion” in all aspects of church life.

“We have not succeeded to rejoice and take pleasure in all of your beautiful creation,” Reverend Blair, the general secretary of the church, stated. “We caused pain to people instead of seeking wholeness. We express our regret.”