Posted on 02/09/2010 5:55:38 PM PST by SmithL
Nebraska and Iowa are feeling the fallout from a decision by the nation’s largest Lutheran denomination to allow non-celibate gay clergy and church leaders, as well as recognition of same-sex couples.
Thanksgiving! Lutheran Church in Bellevue voted Jan. 31 to leave the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, or ELCA. It takes two votes with at least a two-thirds majority, taken at least 90 days apart, for a congregation to split from the national church.
The Jan. 31 vote was Thanksgiving!’s second vote, so it appears to make the church the first Nebraska congregation to break from the ELCA since a controversial churchwide assembly in August.
At that assembly, ELCA delegates voted to lift a prohibition against sexually active gay and lesbian pastors from serving as clergy. The new policy, which has not yet taken effect, would allow ELCA congregations to hire such individuals as pastors if they show they are in committed, lifelong relationships.
One congregation in the Western Iowa Synod of the ELCA, Skien Lutheran Church in Sloan, also has voted twice to leave the ELCA.
Other Midlands congregations are considering whether to leave, and some are withholding their support of the national church.
At least one Nebraska church, Hope Evangelical in rural Smithfield, is known to have voted once to leave and is pondering the required second vote. And at least one Iowa congregation, Eagle Grove Evangelical in Eagle Grove, has taken a first vote, but chose not to split from the ELCA.
By Thursday, 220 congregations had taken a first vote since August on resolutions to leave the ELCA, said Melissa Ramirez Cooper, an ELCA spokeswoman. Sixty-four rejected it, she said.
Twenty-eight congregations have taken a second vote. Ramirez Cooper said she didn’t know how many of those had passed. But she said seven congregations have been removed from the denomination.
The ELCA has about 10,400 congregations in the United States and the Caribbean. It’s the nation’s largest Lutheran denomination, with more than 4.6 million members.
Bishop David deFreese, leader of the ELCA Nebraska Synod, noted that those voting to leave were a small percentage of the state’s 260 congregations with 119,000 members.
Still, he said, it hurts.
“Our goal is always to enlarge the circle, to touch more people with God’s love and hope,” deFreese said.
He said he was saddened not only by the congregations’ departures, but also by the message they could send to society.
“This is maybe just another statement to society that the church is judgmental,” he said. “We want to have the church seen with arms out, longing to care.”
In Iowa, Bishop Michael A. Last said there is “significant unsettlement” in the Western Iowa Synod he leads.
“Probably half of our congregations are not so happy with our (August) decisions, but believe that the ELCA is a church they still feel good about, and for them it’s not really an issue,” Last said.
He estimated another 25 percent of congregations supported the decisions. The remaining 25 percent, Last said, are in the process of discerning what to do, including whether to leave the ELCA.
Last said some in his synod are urging the national church to delay implementing the decisions until the ELCA’s 2011 churchwide assembly.
In Bellevue, Thanksgiving! Lutheran members who attended meetings in October and last week voted about 90 percent in favor of leaving the ELCA, Pastor Glenn Harless said. The second vote was 283 to 32. About 900 people attend services weekly at Thanksgiving!.
“The decisions of the ELCA Churchwide Assembly in Minneapolis last August regarding issues of human sexuality were simply a catalyst for T!LC to begin the discernment process to leave,” Harless said by e-mail.
“We believe that Jesus Christ calls us to love and to care for all people, including those with same sex attraction; but we have a profound difference of opinion with the ELCA regarding how we are to carry out that ministry.”
He said the ELCA’s new position “ignores a clear reading of the scriptures, including God’s created order and design for human sexuality.”
That stance appears to be a common theme among those leaving the ELCA.
“The (August) decisions cannot be squared with the biblical and historical teachings of the Christian faith,” said the Rev. Cathi Braasch, pastor of Hope Evangelical, a growing rural church near Smithfield, Neb.
“For our congregation, and for so many, we recognize we’re all sinners and that we are called to love all sinners — without blessing or endorsing sin.”
Those are hotly debated points in Nebraska and Iowa, as across the nation.
The Rev. Lilette Johnston left as pastor of Skien Lutheran after the Sloan church voted to leave the ELCA.
“I’m very supportive of the actions that were taken at the (August) churchwide assembly,” Johnston said. “I believe in the mission and the ministry of what it means to be Lutheran, and the fact that we are called to mission and outreach in our country and throughout the world, and I believe the ELCA does that very well.”
Like many congregations that are leaving the ELCA, Thanksgiving! will affiliate with Lutheran Congregations in Mission for Christ, an association with deep Nebraska roots.
Exactly! My Church has it’s first vote the 28th. It will be close. If the Church does not leave, my family is.
You ought to try being a member of a church in the Atlanta area. We have members from all over the country.
The Moravians were added in 1999 but since so much attention was given to the "Called To Common Mission" with TEC it sort of flew "under the radar". That should NOT have happened because the Moravians use the Altered Augsburg Confession denying the presence of Christ in the Eucharist.
The UMC agreement was approved in Minneapolis last August and again, was "under the rader" because homosex and toppled steeples made the headlines.
This is very true. I served an orthodox Lutheran parish in rural northern Minnesota some years ago. One of the things that was done from time to time in the cold weather months was to have purely social gatherings in the church fellowship hall. Sometimes we would play cards, whist, pinochle, etc.
Some weeks after one such event I happened to be at our regional pastoral conference in a town about hour’s drive away or a little more and, after the conference, going into a store in town, heard the locals talking about some Lutheran church north or there, that is, up in our area that sanctioned - gasp! - card playing in the church fellowship hall. How scandalous! I chatted with them for a while to see how they felt about other, ah, issues.
Drinking (in any amount, however moderate), dancing, and card playing were the works of the devil. Never mind that they had a female preacher, prayers for the dead, fellowship with those who denied the real presence of Christ in the sacrament, and were not too sure it was such a serious matter to concern oneself with as to whether God was Triune or not.
It was, needless to say, an eye-opening experience to hear such from average folk of an ELCA parish.
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