Posted on 02/17/2007 1:44:13 PM PST by Mrs. Don-o
ATLANTA --... Members of St. John's Lutheran Church last weekend filed by their pastor, hugging him and exchanging jokes. Many in the 350-member Atlanta congregation say they don't plan to let the Rev. Bradley E. Schmeling leave the pulpit Aug. 15, as ordered last week by an Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA) disciplinary committee because he is in a gay relationship.
... "We are not an activist church, even though we can stand for issues of justice," said Charles Fox, who occasionally assists Schmeling at Sunday worship. "He exemplifies the kind of love and empathy I envision Christ to have had."
The committee, which basically served as the jury in a closed-door trial, found Schmeling guilty of breaking the denomination's rules for having a same-sex relationship. However, the committee also called those rules "at least bad policy" and recommended changing them, which the ELCA could consider doing at its biennial meeting.
...
"It hasn't been a problem to explain Brad or his relationship to our children as much as what the church wants to do," said Fox, a married father of a 10-year-old boy and an 8-year-old girl.
The ELCA, which has 4.9 million members, allows openly gay clergy... The same debate over how biblical verses on gay relationships should be interpreted is tearing at many mainline Protestant groups.
...Much like a trial, a closed-door disciplinary hearing committee of 12 ELCA members, both lay and clergy, heard evidence for nearly a week in January. Seven of them felt the rule as stated left them no choice but to defrock Schmeling. But the committee also wrote that, if not bound by the church's rules, they "would find almost unanimously that Pastor Schmeling is not engaged in conduct that is incompatible with the ministerial office" and would order no discipline.
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
That "relationship" talk is such a fudge. Nobody has any objection to a "relatiomnship" like brothers in a family or monastic brothers in a religious community. The whole objection is to perverted sex acts, which are (as none of these people say, but they all know) the quasi-sexual-union component of this quasi-marriage.
So what DOES this "typical" parishioner, Mr. Fox, tell his 10-year-old boy and 8-year-old girl about male-on-male anal penetration? Nothing, nothing, nothing. Nothing like that is happening. Everything is lovely, just lovely.
Ping
*************
Unbelievable.
I am a member of the Wisconsin Evangelical Lutheran Synod - the WELS. It is this kind of nonsense in the ELCA that prevents any association between our synod and theirs even though we both have Lutheran in our name. Members of the WELS and ELCA would not be allowed to receive communion at a service of the other synod.
The gay one wouldn't take losing his flock nearly as badly as the pastor who's into bestiality. BAAAaaaaaaa...
These are all just personal ways of having sex - genetic, no doubt. Who are we to judge? If the man wants to have sex with his German Shepard, in his bedroom, what are we doing invading that bedroom? (barf)
I thought the ELCA was more fundamentalist and conservative compared to the ALC and the LCA. Guess not.
Not everyone who says to Me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ shall enter the kingdom of heaven, but he who does the will of My Father in heaven. Many will say to Me in that day, ‘Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in Your name, cast out demons in Your name, and done many wonders in Your name?’ And then I will declare to them, ‘I never knew you; depart from Me, you who practice lawlessness!’ Matthew 7
“This is the work of God, that you believe in Him whom He sent.” John 6:29
According to Jesus, hell will be full of religious people who don't believe John 6:29 but are convinced that justification is by Christian character and works.
Never mind. I was thinking of the Missouri Synod.
It does? A bit premature, considering the ruling that the minister was to be defrocked, because he is openly gay.
That the congregents are willing to put up with this speaks volumes about their Biblical Basis.
"For it would be better for them if they tied a a great stone about their neck and threw themselves into the sea than to cause one of these little ones to go astray"
I think they may hve built their house on sand, instead of solid rock...
But...they're in luuuuuuuv
Freedom to pursue your own religion, or even lack thereof, is not even a contestable idea. So - let a thousand flowers bloom, as the good Chairman used to say. If they want to split off and define their own church - fine.
"So what DOES this 'typical' parishioner, Mr. Fox, tell his 10-year-old boy and 8-year-old girl about male-on-male anal penetration?"
Probably the same thing he tells them about male on female vaginal penetration: nothing.
ELCA is a merger of ALC and LCA making a nice(not) big liberal synod which gets all the media attention and gives the name "Lutheran" a bad connotation.
An ELCA pastor can be openly gay as long as he or she remains celibate.
I wondered if that was the standard after I wrote my response.
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