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Set against crimson theater drapes at a well-known Oslo location for LGBTQ+ gatherings, Norway's national church expressed regret for hurtful actions and exclusion it had inflicted.

“Norway's church has brought the LGBTQ+ community harm, suffering and humiliation,” the lead bishop, the church leader, declared this Thursday. “This should never have happened and that is why I apologise today.”

“Unequal treatment, harassment and discrimination” had caused certain individuals abandoning their faith, Tveit acknowledged. A church service at the cathedral in Oslo was scheduled to follow his apology.

The statement of regret took place at a venue called London Pub, one among two bars attacked during the 2022 shooting that took two lives and injured nine people severely at Oslo's Pride event. A Norwegian citizen originally from Iran, who had pledged allegiance to Islamic State, was given a prison term to at least 30 years in incarceration for the murders.

Like many religions around the world, Norway's church – a Lutheran evangelical community that is the biggest religious group in Norway – historically excluded LGBTQ+ individuals, refusing to allow them from serving as pastors or to marry in church. During the 1950s, the church’s bishops described gay people as a “social danger of global proportions”.

Yet, with Norwegian society turning more progressive, ranking as the second globally to legalize same-sex partnerships during 1993 and in 2009 the first in Scandinavia to allow same-sex marriage, the church gradually changed.

In 2007, the Church of Norway started appointing homosexual ministers, and gay and lesbian couples have been able to get married in religious ceremonies since 2017. In 2023, the bishop took part in Oslo’s Pride parade in what was described as a first for the church.

The Thursday statement of regret was met with differing opinions. The head of a network for Christian lesbians in Norway, Pedersen-Eriksen, herself a gay pastor, called it “an important reparation” and a point in time that “finally marked the end of a painful era in the church’s history”.

According to Stephen Adom, the head of the Association for Gender and Sexual Diversity in Norway, the statement was “meaningful and vital” but arrived “not in time for those who passed away from AIDS … carrying heavy hearts because the church considered the epidemic as divine punishment”.

Globally, several faith-based organizations have attempted to offer apologies for their past behavior concerning the LGBTQ+ community. In 2023, the Church of England expressed regret for what it referred to as “disgraceful” conduct, though it still declines to allow same-sex marriages in church.

In a similar vein, the Methodist Church in Ireland last year expressed regret for its “failures in pastoral support and care” regarding the LGBTQ+ community and family members, but stayed firm in the view that marriage should only represent a bond between male and female.

Earlier this year, Canada's United Church issued an apology to Two-Spirit and LGBTQIA+ groups, describing it as a reaffirmation of the church's “dedication to welcoming all and full inclusion” in all aspects of church life.

“We did not manage to honor and appreciate the wonderful diversity of creation,” Rev Michael Blair, the church's general secretary, remarked. “We have hurt individuals instead of seeking wholeness. We are sorry.”