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Against crimson theater drapes at a well-known Oslo location for LGBTQ+ gatherings, Norway's national church offered an apology for discrimination and harm it had inflicted.

“The national church has caused LGBTQ+ individuals shame, great harm and pain,” the presiding bishop, Bishop Tveit, declared this Thursday. “This should never have happened and this is why I offer my apology now.”

“Unequal treatment, harassment and discrimination” led to a loss of faith for some, Tveit acknowledged. A religious service at Oslo's main cathedral was scheduled to follow his apology.

This formal apology took place at a venue called London Pub, a bar that was one of two attacked during the 2022 shooting that resulted in two deaths and injured nine people severely during Oslo’s Pride celebrations. A Norwegian citizen originally from Iran, who swore loyalty to Islamic State, was given a prison term to no less than 30 years in incarceration for the murders.

Similar to numerous global faiths, the Norwegian Lutheran Church – an evangelical Lutheran church that is the most extensive faith community in the country – historically excluded LGBTQ+ individuals, refusing to allow them to become pastors or to marry in church. In the 1950s, the church’s bishops referred to homosexual individuals as “a global-scale societal hazard”.

However, as Norway's society grew more liberal, emerging as the world's second to permit registered partnerships for same-sex couples in 1993 and by 2009 the first in Scandinavia to legalize same-sex marriage, the church slowly followed.

Back in 2007, the Church of Norway began ordaining LGBTQ+ clergy, and gay and lesbian couples were permitted to have church weddings from 2017 onward. Last year, the bishop took part in Oslo’s Pride parade in what was noted as a first for the church.

The apology on Thursday was met with differing opinions. The director of a group representing Norwegian Christian lesbians, Pedersen-Eriksen, a lesbian minister herself, referred to it as “an important reparation” and a moment that “signaled the conclusion of a painful era in the church’s history”.

As stated by Stephen Adom, the leader of the Association for Gender and Sexual Diversity in Norway, the apology was “strong and important” but was delivered “overdue for individuals among us who died of Aids … with deep sorrow in their hearts since the church viewed the epidemic to be God’s punishment”.

Globally, several faith-based organizations have attempted to offer apologies for their actions towards LGBTQ+ people. Last year, the Church of England said sorry for what it referred to as its “shameful” treatment, though it still declines to allow same-sex marriages within the church.

In a similar vein, the Methodist Church in Ireland last year apologised for “inadequate pastoral assistance and care” to LGBTQ+ people and their families, but remained staunch in its belief that marriage could only be a partnership of one man and one woman.

In the early part of this year, Canada's United Church offered an apology to two spirit and LGBTQIA+ communities, labeling it a reaffirmation of the church’s “commitment to radical hospitality and full inclusion” in every part of the church's activities.

“We have not succeeded to celebrate and delight in the beauty of all creation,” Rev Michael Blair, the general secretary of the church, remarked. “We have wounded people instead of seeking wholeness. We apologize.”