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Amid crimson theater drapes at a leading Oslo LGBTQ+ venue, the Norwegian Lutheran Church expressed regret for hurtful actions and exclusion caused by the church.

“The national church has inflicted the LGBTQ+ community pain, shame and significant harm,” the lead bishop, Olav Fykse Tveit, announced this Thursday. “This ought not to have occurred and that is why I offer my apology now.”

The “discrimination, unequal treatment and harassment” led to a loss of faith for some, Tveit recognized. A worship service at the cathedral in Oslo was scheduled to take place after his statement.

This formal apology was delivered at the London Pub, one among two bars targeted in 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, was given a prison term to at least 30 years in prison for the killings.

In common with various worldwide religions, the Norwegian Lutheran Church – a Lutheran evangelical community that is Norway’s largest faith community – historically excluded LGBTQ+ people, preventing them from serving as pastors or to marry in church. Back in the 1950s, church leaders referred to homosexual individuals as a “social danger of global proportions”.

Yet, with Norwegian society turning more progressive, becoming the second in the world to allow same-sex registered partnerships back in 1993 and in 2009 the first in Scandinavia to allow same-sex marriage, the church gradually changed.

Back in 2007, the Church of Norway started appointing homosexual ministers, and same-sex couples could marry in church from 2017 onward. In 2023, Tveit participated in the Oslo Pride event in what was noted as an unprecedented step for the church.

Thursday’s apology received a mixed reaction. The head of a network representing Norwegian Christian lesbians, Hanne Marie, who is also a gay pastor, called it “a crucial act of amends” and an occasion that “represented the closure of a painful era in the history of the church”.

For Stephen Adom, the leader of the Association for Gender and Sexual Diversity in Norway, the apology represented “strong and important” but was delivered “too late for those who passed away from AIDS … with hearts filled with anguish as the church regarded the epidemic to be God’s punishment”.

Worldwide, a handful of religious institutions have tried to make amends for their actions regarding LGBTQ+ individuals. During 2023, the Church of England expressed regret for what it characterized as “disgraceful” conduct, even as it persists in refusing to permit gay marriages within the church.

Likewise, Ireland's Methodist Church last year expressed regret for its “failures in pastoral support and care” regarding the LGBTQ+ community and family members, but stayed firm in its conviction that matrimony must only constitute a partnership of one man and one woman.

Earlier this year, the United Church based in Canada delivered a statement of regret to Two-Spirit and LGBTQIA+ groups, characterizing it as a renewed commitment of the church's “dedication to welcoming all and full inclusion” throughout every area of church life.

“We did not manage to honor and appreciate the wonderful diversity of creation,” Reverend Blair, the general secretary of the church, said. “We have wounded people rather than pursuing healing. We are sorry.”