Post-Mortem: Separation, Not Divorce

The shipwreck in Minneapolis has now taken place. The ELCA was organized twenty years ago with this outcome in mind, as we warned at that time at the Call to Faithfulness conferences. It took longer than the religious Left expected, indeed ten years of hard battering on the gates (with the collusion of the church bureaucracy) before exhausted and out-spent defenders collapsed. There are still some in the agonized middle of this dispute who cling to the thought that “structured flexibility” and “bound conscience” represent a workable “live and let live” solution. A valid sentiment, but, unhappily, wishful thinking...

We know as a matter of fact that the religious Left regards its victory at the ELCA’s churchwide assembly as the beginning of a purge. The widely reported statement of Goodsoil says it all: “If our gifts are not accepted, justice demands that we burn it to the ground.” Now at least we have clarity, for those with ears to hear and eyes to see. “Respecting bound consciences” means nothing.

The plain, inescapable truth is we have two contradictory doctrinal propositions side by side in this failed institution. The one says: God loves gays gay and God desires homoerotic desire. The other says: God mercifully accepts the broken, gays and lesbians too, just as any others who likewise suffer the disorder consequent upon humanity’s universal sin. The life and mission of the church is organized in one way by the first proposition and another by the second. These two lives and missions are practically incompatible. Since we can see no further at this time, separation if not divorce becomes inevitable.

There are good Christians, good people, and good theologians who have sided with the religious Left in this controversy. I am sorry that I have not been able to persuade them of their error. That is my failure and the failure of my side. The people I am talking about believe that they can steer the religious Left back to some form of a “generous Christian orthodoxy.” I wish them well. I hope they succeed and prove me wrong. But I doubt it. Why?

The issue of homosexuality will not now go away. It will keep coming back more and more stridently. The revisionist religious Left will not be satisfied with the Social Statement’s ambiguous compromise. No one can break from the solid consensus of catholic Christianity on an issue so profound to human beings and their well-being as sexuality without also buying into a revisionist narrative of injustice and exclusion at the heart of Christianity. The dynamism of this narrative by necessity becomes ever more radical.

The assurance that LSTC professor Ralph Klein offered in response to a blog post on this website some months ago that no “coercion” will be involved will, therefore, almost certainly prove false. This is already clear on a moment’s reflection. Think of what is taught in the seminaries, who gets through candidacy committees, what pastoral candidates are made available to congregations, which pastors are considered for prestigious positions, etc. The use of such mechanisms to reinforce the blessing of same-sex unions and reception of pastors in such unions cannot but force schism, de facto already, but eventually de jure. Indeed, every single congregation in the ELCA now has to have a wrenching debate and vote about how it will respond to these changes in doctrine. One can readily imagine the shifts in membership between congregations for and against, the demoralization of those who remain, and the steady bleed of aggrieved members.

The tradition of Lutheran theology is already sufficiently eroded in the ELCA, and with the departure of conservatives and traditionalists will be all the more so. Thus the victory of the religious Left is both assured and, equally predictably, it will be a pyrrhic one. They will rule over an increasingly empty house.

So it is perhaps worth saying one last time, even if as a form of “wiping the dust from our feet”: the ELCA Task Force process failed to resolve the theological questions at the heart of our conflict about homosexuality. One cannot do better here than attend to Archbishop Rowan Williams’s rebuke to the actions of The Episcopal Church this summer.

First of all reminding all members of his communion that “no Anglican has any business reinforcing prejudice against LGBT people, questioning their human dignity and civil liberties or their place within the Body of Christ,” Williams immediately added, “[h]owever, the issue is not simply about civil liberties or human dignity or even about pastoral sensitivity to the freedom of individual Christians to form their consciences on this matter. It is about whether the Church is free to recognise same-sex unions by means of public blessings that are seen as being, at the very least, analogous to Christian marriage.” This is a precise statement of the theological question also tearing us apart in the ELCA. So Williams concludes, “In the light of the way in which the Church has consistently read the Bible for the last two thousand years, it is clear that a positive answer to this question would have to be based on the most painstaking biblical exegesis and on a wide acceptance of the results within the Communion, with due account taken of the teachings of ecumenical partners also. A major change naturally needs a strong level of consensus and solid theological grounding.”

This case has not been made. It has been forced. Now we must all live with the consequences. At the present I see the consequence for myself as something like “separation, but not divorce.” There are too many in the confused middle, too many trapped in synods and congregations captured by the religious Left, indeed too many good Christians on the opposing side of this issue simply to walk away. The error, serious as it is, does not rise to level of apostasy or heresy. The classical term for an erring Church is heterodoxy. The ELCA is now teaching, or sponsoring teaching, that is other than teaching true to the gospel according to the catholic consensus through the ages. In a variety of ways, individuals, congregations, and perhaps even synods will now have to redirect benevolence, reconfigure education and mission, and exercise a selective fellowship.

Out this human confusion, however, God may be raising up something new: a realignment in American Protestantism, bringing together those of catholic and orthodox tendency in all the liberal Protestant North American demonimations and uniting them with evangelicals, Catholics, and Orthodox. Freed by the ELCA's shipwreck from denominationalism, those in Luther's tradition who remember the ecumenical intention of the Augsburg Confession could play a catalytic role in a powerful new convergence and reassertion of Christian life and mission from the ruins. There is no going back. No ignoring the consequences. But the God who gives life to the dead may have something far better in mind.

Paul R. Hinlicky is the Tise Professor Lutheran Studies at Roanoke College in Salem, Virginia.

I’m joining the Missouri Synod, a church that cannot, in its current form, be corrupted by the religious left.

One is reminded of the invitation of the bar-keep in saloons of yesteryear to his latest customer to come in through the bat wing doors: "Name yer pizon, son."

Over time, all man-made religious affiliations suffer the effects of entropy. Under differing pressures, different end results.

I pray you are right. But the forces that destroyed the ELCA have turned their sights to the LCMS.

We shall see. The seeds of destruction are already there, and at best there will be a split.

While the characterization of “communion” or, better, “movement” can be useful, I find it more productive to use the phrase “separated religious order” for such ecclesial structures.

“There are good Christians, good people, and good theologians who have sided with the religious Left in this controversy.”

Perhaps there are good, if misguided laymen, but there are NO good theologians who have chosen the Zeitgeist over the Holy Spirit in this one.

“Out this human confusion, however, God may be raising up something new: a realignment in American Protestantism, bringing together those of catholic and orthodox tendency in all the liberal Protestant North American demonimations and uniting them with evangelicals, Catholics, and Orthodox.”

Not with Holy Orthodoxy.

Again, pastor, I turn to you. I’m preparing to discuss the issue with my congregation’s pastor’s, and would benefit from a concise refutation of the entire matter, with sites from Luther if possible.

I don’t mind doing this from scratch, but if this has already been done, and done well, then I don’t see the point in duplicating the effort.

Many thanks,

Please see my post #9.

I still have contact with many in my former ELCA parish, which has been going more and more untraliberal since I left. My friends at least know where they can go to find the Church founded by Christ and the Apostles, once they realize that all the nonsense they are bathed in every Sunday is making them sicker and sicker!!!!

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