Decision on Gays Roils Lutherans

A decision at the highest level of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America about homosexuality has sent discontented ripples into Polk County, and a local church is holding discussions with a potential splinter group.

At Abiding Savior Lutheran Church in Winter Haven on Sunday, a representative of Lutheran Coalition for Renewal, or CORE, met with about 80 parishioners to answer questions, said the Rev. Alan Ford, pastor of Abiding Savior. The Rev. Rebecca Heber of Lake Mary told those present the Evangelical Lutheran Church is moving away from its historic standards of scriptural authority by loosening restrictions on gays in the ministry, Ford said.

Abiding Savior will not make any decision hastily, Ford said, but at some point Evangelical Lutheran congregations unhappy with their church's policy may be forced to decide whether to remain in the denomination or join another. Heber's organization is trying to make it easier for discontented churches to leave.

In August, at the Evangelical Lutheran Church's biannual Churchwide Assembly, which sets policy, delegates voted by a 55 percent-to-45 percent margin to allow gays and lesbians to serve as pastors, reversing a standard that had required them to remain celibate if they wished to serve in the ministry. The assembly also voted to endorse gay marriage.

The votes prompted conservatives to shift their tactics from working within the Evangelical Lutheran Church to considering ways to distance themselves from it. For now, Lutheran CORE is a conservative network in the 4.6 million-member denomination, but its steering committee announced Nov. 18 that it would begin working toward creating a new Lutheran body independent of the ELCA.

Heber, a former pastor, along with her husband, of an ELCA congregation in Winter Park, is a regional coordinator of Lutheran CORE and a member of the steering committee. Speaking by phone on Tuesday, she said "this crisis has been thrust upon us."

"We're characterized as the ones creating the problem, but it's the decision of the Churchwide Assembly that's the problem. The issue is not about sex but what the authority of the Bible will be," she said. "We're trying to make a place for people who want to stay in the ELCA or leave. We feel both can be faithful responses," Heber said.

There are five ELCA congregations in Polk County, and Ford said as far as he knows, Abiding Savior is the only one that has considered joining Lutheran CORE. Bishop Edward Benoway of the Florida-Bahamas Synod, based in Tampa, said only three congregations out of 204 in his synod have taken initial votes indicating a desire to leave the ELCA. "Three or four others" have held discussions like the one at Abiding Savior, he said.

The Florida-Bahamas Synod has posted videos explaining the new ELCA policy on its Web site and is trying to accommodate those that are upset with it, Benoway said.

For now, congregations could join Lutheran CORE and remain in good standing in the ELCA, Benoway said. But if Lutheran CORE does form a new denomination, churches would be forced to decide whether to leave the ELCA or remain in it, because the church's constitution does not allow for dual membership, he said.

Abiding Savior and other churches may face a decision within a year. Heber said Lutheran CORE will have an assembly in August at which a proposal to make CORE "a new Lutheran church body" will be presented.

Ford said Abiding Savior will probably vote on whether to join Lutheran CORE at a congregational meeting in January.

"People say they don't like what the ELCA did, but they're not going to go overboard. ... I'm sympathetic to what (CORE) is doing, but I'm being cautious. I feel uncomfortable that people against the (new policy) are leaving because then there's no voice," he said.

[Luther must have seen today's universalist, apostate ELCA coming.]

"First Sunday in Advent Sermon"

. . .I have often said that there are two kinds of faith. First, a faith in which you indeed believe that Christ is such a man as he is described and proclaimed here and in all the Gospels, but do not believe that he is such a man for you, and are in doubt whetheryou have any part in him and think: Yes, he is such a man to others, to Peter, Paul, and the blessed saints; but who knows that he is such to me and that I may expect the same from him and may confide in it, as those saints did?

Behold, this faith is nothing, it does not receive Christ nor enjoy him, neither can it feel any love and affection for him or from him. It is a faith about Christ and not in or of Christ, a faith which the devils also have as well as evil men . . . .

. . .That alone can be called Christian faith, which believes without wavering that Christ is the Saviour not only to Peter and to the saints but also to you. Your salvation does not depend on the fact that you believe Christ to be the Saviour of the godly, but that he is a Saviour to you and has become your own.

Such a faith will work in you love for Christ and joy in him, and good works will naturally follow. If they do not, faith is surely not present; for where faith is, there the Holy Ghost is and must work love and good works.

[from Lenker, J.N., ed. Luther's Church Postil. 1. Baker Books, 1995. 21-22.]

"Christmas Day Sermon"

. . . The preachers are to be angels, that is, God's messengers, who are to lead a heavenly life, are to be constantly engaged with God's Word that they under no circumstances preach the doctrine of men. It is a most incongruous thing to be God's messenger and not to further God's message. . . .The message also is of more importance than the messenger's life. If he leads a wicked life he only injures himself, but if he brings a false message in the place of God's message, he leads astray and injures every one that hears him, and causes idolatry among the people in that they accept lies for the truth, honor men instead of God . . . .

There is no more terrible plague or cause for distress upon earth than a preacher who does not preach God's Word; of whom, alas, the world today is full; and yet they think they are pious and do good when indeed their whole work is nothing but murdering souls, blaspheming God and setting up idolatry, so that it would be much better for them if they were robbers, murderers, and the worst scoundrels, for then they would know that they are doing wickedly. But now they go along under spiritual names and show, as priest, bishop . . . and are at the same time ravening wolves in sheeps' clothing, and it would be well if no one ever heard their preaching.

[from Lenker, J.N., ed. Luther's Church Postil. 1. Baker Books, 1995. 153-54.]

The lessons of what happened in the Catholic church have fallen on some deaf ears....

“The priesthood scandal is a stunningly clear case in which the opening of an institution to large numbers of homosexuals, far from strengthening norms of sexual restraint, has instead resulted in the conscious and successful subversion of the norms themselves.....

After Vatican II, and in conformity with the broader cultural changes of the Sixties, the U.S. Catholic Church allowed homosexuals to enter the priesthood in increasing numbers. The homosexual orientation itself, it was stressed, was not sinful. So as long as a homosexual adhered to the very same vow of celibacy taken by his heterosexual counterpart, there was no reason to deprive him of a priestly vocation. This was a compassionate stance, and one that promised to incorporate a heretofore stigmatized minority into a venerable institution, thereby strengthening the institution itself.

Yet imagine that an opponent of this new openness to homosexuals in the priesthood had uttered a warning cry. Imagine that someone had said, back in the 1970s, when homosexuals were flooding into Catholic seminaries all over the U.S., that substantial numbers of gay priests, far from accepting the rule of celibacy, would deliberately flout that rule, both in theory and in practice. Suppose that someone had argued that homosexual priests would gain control of many seminaries, that many would openly “date,” that many would actively cultivate an ethos of gay solidarity and promote a homosexual culture that would drive away heterosexuals — especially theologically orthodox heterosexuals — from the priesthood. Suppose this person went on to argue that, at its extreme, the growing gay subculture of the priesthood would tolerate and protect not only flagrant violations of celibacy, but even the abuse of minors. Then suppose that this person predicted eventual public exposure of the whole sordid mess, an exposure that would precipitate a crisis within the Church itself.

Naturally, anyone prescient — and foolish — enough to say all of these things in the wake of the Sixties would have been excoriated and ostracized as a hysterical gay-hater. It is simply bigoted, he would have been lectured, to claim that large numbers of homosexuals would take the vow of celibacy without making a good-faith effort to adhere to it; and even more so to claim that gay priests would embark on a campaign to deliberately subvert the Church’s sexual teachings. And surely our foolish (and hysterically homophobic) friend would have been assured that an institution like the Catholic priesthood would attract only the most conservative homosexuals, not a bunch of “queer” radicals. Besides, even if a very few homosexuals did go so far as to actually abuse the children who had been given into their care, surely the number of such cases could never rise to the point where the stature and credibility of the Church itself would be put into doubt.

Yet all of these things have happened.

As the proportion of homosexuals in the priesthood increased dramatically in the 1970s and 1980s, many gay priests were visiting the seminary “on the make,” frequenting gay bars, and “befriending” high-school students. Berry reports a study of 50 gay Catholic priests, only two of whom said that they were abstaining from sexual activity: “Sixty percent said they felt no guilt about breaking their vows. Ninety percent strongly rejected mandatory celibacy . . . and slightly less than half reported that they engaged in sex in public toilets or parks.”Richard Wagner, author of the original study of these gay priests, found that 34 percent of his interviewees called their sexual partners “distinctly younger.” (Wagner did not say how young.) What’s clear is that sexual abuse of boys by homosexual priests (the typical form of abuse in the current scandal) was part and parcel of a larger gay subculture within the priesthood, a subculture that effectively enabled the abuse of minors by encouraging flagrant homosexuality, and openly flouting the rule of celibacy itself. Indeed, in a now infamous case, a priest who has been the subject of abuse allegations over a period of three decades, the Reverend Paul Shanley, went so far as to advocate abuse in an address to the convention that led to the founding of the North American Man-Boy Love Association (NAMBLA). Here, the connection between sexual abuse and an openly “queer” culture was frighteningly direct.

The priest scandal also teaches a critical lesson about the time that it takes to undermine an institution. Defenders of civil unions in Vermont, for example, are fond of saying that since the advent of civil unions, “the sky has not fallen.” The answer is that the effect of civil unions and gay marriage on the ethos of marriage will likely percolate for years before the harm becomes evident — after which time it will be too late to turn back.

This is exactly what has happened to the Church. It has been at least 30 years since the homosexual presence in the priesthood began to increase markedly. All along there were signs of trouble, yet no profound institutional crisis. Only now, after three decades, is the Church experiencing an authentic emergency, one that has provoked calls for at least two sorts of solutions — removing or reducing the presence of homosexuals in the priesthood, or the abolition of celibacy itself. The first solution would drive away liberal Catholics, and devastate a priesthood that is now substantially homosexual; the other would represent a tremendous blow to traditional Catholics. After 30 years of gay marriage, it would be equally difficult to go back — yet the subversive effects of gay marriage on the ethos of marital monogamy could, by then, have reached a similar stage of emergency.

http://www.nationalreview.com/03june02/kurtz060302.asp

Numbers in the Clergy

SSA is tearing apart a record number of churches worldwide. The US Episcopalian church has provoked a
strong rupture with the Third World church by appointing an openly gay bishop, who had divorced his wife
and was living with a partner. This is probably because the electing bodies, particularly the clergy, contain
many with SSA. Kinsey’s 10% is an underestimate of the percentage within the clergy, particularly the
Catholic and Anglican churches.

Malcom Boyd, US Episcopal priest said he met more gays in seminary than he ever met in Hollywood.
An anonymous US Catholic priest said, “At no time did I ever live in a community where gays did not make up at least half of the community.”

In the year 2000 it was revealed in
The Times of the UK that the AIDS
deaths in Anglican clergy were 10
times higher than the percentage in
the whole population. Many report
very high percentages of gay people in
many theological colleges in the UK.-
a typical figure is 30%. These figures
are anecdotal, but Heckler-Feltz
reports approximately a 3 times higher
percentage of AIDS deaths for the US
RC clergy as well, compared with the
rest of the population though based on
a rather incomplete survey. Fifteen per
cent said they were homosexual and
5% bisexual.

Incomplete as these figures are
they seem very high compared with those for the general population. Why are people with SSA attracted
to being clergy? For Catholics it could be a haven. Priests are never asked why they are not married!

Of course there are many anecdotes about such situations within the clergy. The Roman Catholic
priest who had a fatal heart attack in a gay sauna was in good company – two fellow priests who happened
to be there were able to give him the last rites. It is leading to quite farcical situations. After the election of
Episcopalian Bishop Gene Robinson, at a press conference, a journalist, quick to spot inconsistencies,
asked the spokesman “So if I am heterosexual, divorced, and living unmarried with a partner, I can now be
an Anglican bishop?” The spokesman demurred, saying that they would want to look at that situation very
closely. As the journalists began to laugh the press conference was closed.

Before the Reformation Luther reported that one Roman cardinal was considered a great saint because
he confined his sexual attentions to women, rather than including boys as all the others did. In 2006 however
the Roman Catholic church was in the process of tightening standards to prevent continuing homosexual
abuse of young male teenagers, and finding the Anglican actions a barrier to further ecumenical talks. From
their point of view about percentages in
the clergy, any is too many.

http://www.mygenes.co.nz/Ch2.pdf

http://www.mygenes.co.nz/index.html

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