Posted on 09/08/2007 10:18:04 AM PDT by SmithL
Vicki Curtis has been a member of St. Benjamin's Evangelical Lutheran Church in Westminster since 1981, but when her denomination appeared to be softening its stance on homosexuality, she didn't hesitate to act.
She left her church.
Now she's doing what she calls "search the church Sundays" by visiting congregations with convictions closer to her own."The Bible says in Leviticus 18:22 that homosexuality is a sin and its penalty is death. My faith is built on what the Bible teaches, and I will not go where it isn't being followed," she wrote in an e-mail.
She was responding to the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America's adoption of a resolution at its 10th Biennial Churchwide Assembly in Chicago on Aug. 11 recommending that bishops and synods not discipline clergy or lay professionals in committed same-sex relationships.
This decision left the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod, a conservative Lutheran denomination of 2.6 million members, equally perplexed about the actions of its larger relative, according to its president, Gerald Kieschnick.
"News of this action troubles me greatly," he wrote in a statement last month. "We are deeply disappointed that the ELCA, by its decision, has failed to act in keeping with the historic and universal understanding of the Christian church regarding what the Holy Scripture teaches about homosexual behavior as contrary to God's will and about the biblical qualifications for holding the pastoral office."
In passing this resolution, ELCA seems to be following a path already forged by The Episcopal Church and the United Church of Christ, both of which affirm openly homosexual clergy.
But people are overreacting, said ELCA spokesman John Brooks.
"We haven't changed any policy," he said.
Brooks stressed that the resolution only recommended leniency and that bishops who felt moved to do so are not prohibited from disciplining gay clergy.
Brooks characterized the resolution as a cease-fire, a way of maintaining peace between factions who either support full acceptance of gay clergy now and those who oppose acceptance.
The denomination will further consider the subject in 2009.
At that time, a task force working on a social statement on human sexuality will present what it has prepared at the next church-wide assembly in Minneapolis.
The task force has been specifically charged with addressing current denomination policy that precludes lesbians or gays from working in clerical or professional lay positions in the church.
The recommendation is a way to keep people in same-sex relationships in the church, Brooks said.
He said the denomination is trying hard to stay together despite differences.
"Every 20 minutes during the discussion, all the voting members stopped, held hands and prayed together," he said.
The assembly passed the resolution by a vote of 538-431.
As for people like Curtis who are leaving the church, Brooks said he is not surprised but he also noted that most people thus far are staying with the denomination. Curtis, however, questioned how a few hundred people could make such a decision for a church with 4.8 million members.
"Nobody sent me a ballot and said, 'What do you think?'" she said. "I don't need a sexuality statement. I read the Bible."
In that we are already not in communion with the ELCA, there isn't much else to do but welcome in the new converts.
Prayers for you and your’s.
If I remember right, your options where you live are rather limited.
Which was a shock to me when I first started posting here on FR!
Well, Luther had no use for anabaptists. He footed Carlstadt out of town, him and his “prophets.”
“I would rather sip blood with a Papist than drink wine with a Zwingli!”
Yeah. It turns out that one reason for the new "bishop's" motivation is that he is a good friend of Bradley Schmeling.
If even Southwestern Pennsylvania (not just Sierra Pacific, Metro New York, etc.) becomes a hotbed of gaysbian pastors, we're in deep doo-doo, as Bush 41 used to say.
This is just one illustration of the fact that even an orthodox ELCA synod is just one bishop election from becoming revisionist. And even an orthodox ELCA congregation is just one pastoral transition away from becoming revisionist. At the congregational level, even a change in lay leadership can lead a congregation to revisionism, by making things uncomfortable for an orthodox pastor or even forcing him out.
Don McCoid led the international Lutheran-Orthodox dialogue, and is a very good friend of the Greek Orthodox bishop of Pittsburgh. Lord willing, perhaps Bishop McCoid can lead the way towards a mass homecoming of Lutherans to Orthodoxy, and set all of Satan's machinations in the ELCA to nought!!
“In some ways, the orthodox (lower case “o”) Lutherans have more in common with the Orthodox (upper case “O”) then with the rest of Western Christendom.
Which was a shock to me when I first started posting here on FR!”
Sorta shocked me too! :)
The ELCA is in dire need of a Luther.
I remember the discussions in what amounted to adult Sunday school about abortion. Only two people, myself and a nurse objected. It was stunning. The pastor was smart enough to keep his cards to himself. My break was more theological though, I wanted to find a pastor who believed in God.
I think it no coincidence that abortion comes to mind in this context. Looking back, the appeasement of the abortionists may have been, if not the first crack in the vessel of orthodoxy and traditional values, perhaps the most destructive.
Once you rationalize infanticide, you can pretty much rationalize anything.
I can attest to the fact that John Brooks is an honest man and what he said is the truth. There was no change in policy. I also know that Brooks does not do “spin” he simply reports what happens without editorializing and is one of the few journalists I know who does.
In response to another post I read here, according to a news release written by John Brooks there was a 56,000 decrease in ELCA membership reported in the 2006 congregational report, that is a far cry from a “slow trickle.”
Here is the REAL TRUTH, from a Lutheran CORE (orthodox ELCA reform) leader in a liberal synod, where the CHANGE IN POLICY is very real!!!! (I am also in an ultra-liberal, feminazi, “gay”, and heretic-ridden synod.)
This is from someone who kept telling me that “we have to stay in the ELCA”. But after the last disastrous CWA, even he is changing his tune, talking about “the new denomination”. (Of course, as you can see from my post that you cited, I am NOT talking about forming a new denomination. And I believe that the “ELW” is reason enough to leave the ELCA, whatever happens on the “gay” issue.)
The URL for this is:
http://www.commonconfession.blogspot.com/
_____________________
So What Are You Doing with the Rest of Your Life?
by Pastor Eric Swensson
LC3 Steering Committee
More and more, issues are argued from liberal and conservative positions. Lutheran ethicist Robert Benne wrote about this brilliantly in an essay, “Replacing the Center with the Periphery.” Benne’s statement that the ELCA, like the other liberal protestant denominations is more interested in social justice than the salvation of souls is borne out in the summaries of what was accomplished at the August, 2007 biennial Chicago Assembly. One journalist’s summary said, “The more than 1,000 people in Chicago voiced strong enthusiasm for the work of the ELCA, re-elected Presiding Bishop Mark Hanson by a large majority, approved a sweeping statement on the church’s role in education, endorsed a new initiative for Bible study and opposed expansion of the war in Iraq. We want to increase our program combating world hunger from $20 million annually to $25 million each year.” Since when did telling Congress how to prosecute a war become the church’s business? Sure we should be interested in health, education and welfare, but since the government can not preach the gospel, aren’t our priorities out of line?
It’s all symptomatic of our increasing transformation from a Confessional church to another liberal protestant denomination. In the opinion of this writer and many others, the ELCA was a premature merger of three denominations in the mid 1980’s. There were many laudable reasons motivating it, however one motivation was the desire to help out 200 congregations who departed from the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod over the use of the historical-critical method of interpreting Scripture. The last is a ventured guess to be sure, but there would seem to be little doubt that the ELCA is the only “liberal” Lutheran denomination in the USA and that the liberals have been in charge since its inception.
The Lutheran Coalition for Reform (CORE) has called a meeting to debrief the Chicago Assembly and to plan a strategy for the one in 2009. I expect it will be attended by leaders who are concerned that their denomination is close to entering a crisis. They need to realize that for congregations on both Coasts, the synods that have “Metro” in their name and the New England Synod as well, Confessionalists are already in a pickle. In some ways the vote to “show restraint” could not have been worse. The acceptance of “partnered” homosexual pastors and performing the ceremony of a “same sex union” is now entrenched and there will be no going back. Let that be absolutely, definitively clear there can be no going back. Can you imagine any Assembly voting for anything that could be interpreted as being unkind? That fact alone guarantees that the ELCA task force on sexuality will at least feel the pressure to say that sexuality is “adiaphora.”
On top of all this, it is noteworthy that the activists have abandoned trying to make a case from Scripture. So what is behind the five year strategy “Lutherans Read the Bible”? All along we’ve said the issue is not homosexuality but the authority of Scripture. Now that sexuality is nearly a foregone conclusion, the next thing to do is to normalize the “contextual theology” hermeneutic exemplified by Craig Nessan were each generation must decide what the Bible says. Who’s going to fight that out in five years after the conservatives leave?
Some feel called to that. Many don’t, including myself. There are plenty of people who will never make the move to the new denomination and they give that witness. I do not feel called to give a witness to the ELCA forever. That is not the way I want to spend the rest of my life, and I do not look at it as a cross that I have to carry forever. We have some choice as to where we give witness, don’t we?
This is just an analogy, but I did a research paper four years ago on “What Happened to the Lutheran Charismatic Movement?” I interviewed the half dozen main leaders from the beginning of the movement. I decided to interview a fellow who was younger than the others and was the only one who left the Lutheran church. He said that the movement had such great leaders that if they had decided to form a denomination after they had been rejected they would have easily been able to form a denomination of a similar size (ALC, LCA and LC-MS had about 3,000,000 members at the time). He said, “But all the leaders said no—they loved their church too much to step out”. From my research I would guess that there were a million people involved in the Lutheran Charismatic Movement. Where are they now? Scattered to the four winds of American denominations. Some are in Vineyard churches, some in Assemblies, and a few are part of ARC, but many are losing clear Lutheran identity and are even split on when children should be baptized.
I hope it is clear that I am not saying we need to become Pentecostal. I also want to be careful not to give the impression that there is a need to form a new denomination right now. What we should be saying to others in the ELCA is “Are you concerned? We are too. Infact we decided to do something Nov 2005.” We formed these two groups, one for political reform, one as a network for Evangelical Lutheran congregations who are going to remain Confessional and take clear stands.
I’ve been part of this since 2005 with an understanding from the beginning that what was in the back of our minds was what Dr. Benne said, ‘So that we have a place to go if things go bad.’ I have tried to say here clearly that we have to approach this situation with real humility and so we do not know how things are going to go, but we would be fools to not be getting ready for a split.
To me it’s pretty simple. As CORE leadership is saying, we need to organize the solid people in the ELCA, reach them, get them go to their synod assemblies and send solid people to the 2009 assembly. However, we need to see this as a process in which what well may be more important than getting candidates elected. The process is the key. What we may well be doing is calling together the future denomination. We need to be prayerful, therefore we need to be humble, and in all humility we cannot say what is going to happen to the ELCA. Only God knows that. However, what we must also see ourselves as is stewards, and what kind of stewardship would it be to put all our work into reforming a denomination that clearly does not want to be reformed along our model? The ELCA is a denomination that wants to conform, not reform.
It may well be that we know when the time to leave because we are told to do just that. Therefore we do the reform work as part of a two prong strategy. The second part is to try and gather enough congregations that the future of a new Evangelical Lutheran Church which will fall in the middle between the ELCA and the LC-MS. In actuality it is where the laity of both denominations is. And I don’t think I need to convince others to join me in this as much as convince you that this is already happening.
Is it necessary? I think so. Is it inevitable? I think so. Will it take the rest of our lives? I think so, but what else do you have to do with yours? As Bonhoeffer said, “When Christ calls a man, He bids him come and die.”
Eric Swensson
New Rochelle, NY
LC3 Steering Committee
Eric (a good friend) presents a false dichotomy in an otherwise fine reflection.
There is absolutely nothing improper--indeed, nothing could be more proper--with conformity to the one holy, catholic, and apostolic church, to the historic creeds and Councils, and to the witness of the early Fathers.
Of course, that is not the conformity which he has in mind. Nevertheless, may the ELCA REFORM in order to CONFORM to the apostolic faith!
Are you or were you ELCA? I was a member of ELCA churches since the merger of 1989. Because of this year’s gay vote, I started attending a Missouri Synod church. My dad is a retired ELCA pastor, and my parents will probably join a Missouri Synod church.
Welcome home.
I was at the 2007 CWA, I can assure you that the there was no change in policy. I can also tell you that the media are the ones who make it sound like there was - sexuality is a good headline. As Pastor Swensson writes, the vote for a change in policy will most likely come at the 2009 assembly.
You may have been at the CWA. But Pastor Eric Swensson, and I--and many others on this forum--are in the trenches in our congregations and synods, every day. We know--that even though technically there may have been "no change in policy", especially in liberal synods, there has been a DE FACTO change in policy for a long time, which was RATIFIED by that most dishonest vote at the CWA!!!!
If there has been "no change in policy", why is that sick, foppishly homosexual pastor our new conference dean? Why do we have a "bishop" who fawns all over him, to carry out whatever policies or resolutions he wants? And why do we have that anaxios "bishop" who says that we can have no dialogue with the Orthodox because "we don't agree with them about sexuality"? (My other parish is a Serbian Orthodox church, which is where my screen-name comes from. This ELCA "bishop" said that to my face, so I know that it is true!! And I understand very well what anaxios means!!!!)
You ELCA apologists can't get it through your thick, complacent skulls that we don't give a hoot if there technically has been "no change in policy", as long as gaysbians, feminazis, heretics, Biblical "contextualists", muslim-kissers, and Orthodox bashers are running all over us in our synods. And above all, I CAN'T STAND THE FEMINAZI/PEACENIK/HERETIC "ELW"!!!! In my area, there is no ELCA congregation that does not use it--or a homemade liturgy that is even worse!
Get it through your thick, complacent ELCA-apologist skull that people like Pastor Eric are talking about a new denomination. Look at that same URL, and see that he is not the only one. All these people were saying "you gotta stay in the ELCA" just a few months ago. And read his post--he says the same things that I do about the distress of being orthodox in liberal synods, like his and like mine.
I thought Jesus was the Truth. Silly me.
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