The World's Most Unnecessary Apology

I learned a long time ago that when you are wrong, the best course of action is to say you’re sorry, take corrective action if possible, and move on. Only the most hard-hearted people will refuse to accept a sincere apology.

However, I was never taught to apologize for something I didn’t do… or for something I did do that wasn’t wrong. That’s just plain stupid.

Well, the presiding bishop of the Church of Norway is just plain stupid.

Last week, Bishop Olav Fykse Tveit entered a gay bar in Oslo and publicly apologized to the LGBTQ+ community for the “shame, great harm, and pain” caused to it by the Church of Norway. “This should never have happened, and that is why I apologize today,” Bishop Tveit said.

The “discrimination, unequal treatment and harassment” had caused some to lose their faith, Bishop Tveit added before leaving to conduct a service at Oslo Cathedral, where I am sure more self-flagellating apologies were offered.

Just how did the Church of Norway cause such irreparable damage to gays and lesbians? By telling them that the Bible considers homosexuality to be a sin… just like heterosexual fornication, adultery, and bestiality among other sexual sins.

So what if the Bible actually says that those deviant sexual practices are sinful in nature? According to Bishop Tveit, we as a people – and the Church of Norway in particular – have evolved since those dark ages when the Bible was meant to be taken literally. Now, because we are far more enlightened, we openly embrace behaviors that the Bible clearly refers to as “abominations”, “unclean”, “dishonorable”, “vile”, “unnatural”, and “shameful” (see Leviticus 18:22 & 20:13; and Romans 1:24-27).

According to the Guardian, a liberal website posing as a pseudo news outlet, “Like many religions around the world, the Church of Norway – an evangelical Lutheran church that is Norway’s largest faith community – had long marginalized LGBTQ+ people by refusing to allow them to become pastors or to marry in the church.”

What a ridiculously inaccurate and grossly unbiblical statement! What the Church of Norway was actually doing – until it caved into political pressure – was to uphold the scriptural standards for both marriage and the priesthood.

Genesis 1:27 reads, “So God created man in His own image; in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them.” Two genders and two genders only. And then, in Genesis 2:24, God created the institution of marriage with the following words: “Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and they shall become one flesh.”

A man and his wife… not a man and his husband or a woman and her wife.

As for gays and lesbians serving as pastors, in both I Timothy 3:2 and Titus 1:6, one of the qualifications to serve as a pastor/bishop/elder is to be “the husband of one wife”. Once again, don’t blame the Church of Norway, blame the authoritative and infallible Word of God… or better yet, the Author Himself (2 Timothy 3:16-17).

Once Norway became the second country in the world to allow same-sex registered partnerships in 1993 and the first Scandinavian country to legalize same-sex marriage in 2009, the Church of Norway had two choices: stand upon God’s Holy Word and defend its centuries-old positions… or fold like a house of cards.

Guess which option Bishop Tveit and his ilk chose? That’s right… the one that didn’t require a spine.
The Church of Norway began ordaining gay pastors in 2007 and marrying same-sex couples in 2017. Bishop Tveit did them one better by marching in Oslo’s Pride parade in 2023.

How was Bishop Tveit’s mea culpa received? Well, Hanne Marie Pedersen-Eriksen, a lesbian pastor, described it as “an important reparation” and a moment that “finally marked the end of a dark chapter in the church’s history.”

Meanwhile, Stephen Adom, the head of Norway’s Association for Gender and Sexual Diversity, said that Tveit’s apology was “strong and important” but had come “too late for those among us who died of AIDS… with hearts filled with anguish because the church considered the epidemic to be God’s punishment.”

Sadly, Tveit’s apology wasn’t the only instance of a supposedly Christian denomination succumbing to societal mores. In 2023, the Church of England issued its own apology to the LGBTQ+ community as did the Methodist Church in Ireland in 2024. However, to their credit, both denominations continue (for now) to disallow same-sex marriages to be performed in their churches.

Taking it to the heretical extreme, the United Church of Canada offered an apology not only to the LGBTQ+ community but also to the “two spirit” community, reaffirming the church’s “commitment to radical hospitality and full inclusion”.

“We have failed to celebrate and delight in all your beautiful creation,” said Rev. Michael Blair, general secretary of the UCC. “We have wounded people instead of seeking wholeness. We are sorry.”

With all due respect, Rev. Blair, you will even more sorry on Judgment Day when you stand before the Lord Jesus Christ and try to explain why you kowtowed to man’s ever-changing ideology instead of holding fast and firm to the unchanging Word of God.

And that goes for you too, Bishop Tveit.

(The only apology that needed to be offered to the LGBTQ+ community in Norway was by the man responsible for a mass shooting at the gay pub in Oslo in 2022 that killed two people and seriously injured nine others during Oslo's Pride celebrations. No, he wasn't a member of the Church of Norway. Instead, the killer was a "Norwegian of Iranian origin who had pledged allegiance to the Islamic State.")