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Church divisions sadden bishop { ELCA Exodus }
Toledo Blade ^ | 5/14/10 | David Yonke

Posted on 05/14/2010 8:21:31 AM PDT by SmithL

BOWLING GREEN - Presiding Bishop Mark S. Hanson, leader of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, said it saddens him when a congregation quits the denomination over its policies on homosexuality, as St. Paul's Lutheran in Maumee did last month.

"I express my deep sadness because we are diminished as a church body with every loss," Bishop Hanson said in an interview in Bowling Green yesterday.

At the same time, he said he thinks the churches are diminished in their effectiveness to minister when they split from the denomination.

The head of the 4.6 million-member ELCA and the 70 million-member Lutheran World Federation, Bishop Hanson was in the Wood County city yesterday for the Northwest Ohio Synod's 2010 Assembly.

The 63-year-old bishop, who has led the Chicago-based denomination since 2001, jokingly said he "keeps a stopwatch handy" during media interviews to see how long it takes before the topic of sexuality is brought up. It rarely takes more than a few minutes since the ELCA's decision at its Churchwide Assembly in August to revise its policies on gay clergy and same-gender unions.

Since the votes to allow ordination of clergy in same-gender, lifelong, committed relationships and to offer support and recognition of monogamous same-sex unions, 308 of the 10,400 ELCA congregations have taken a first vote toward quitting and 90 have approved a second vote to officially cut their ties with the ELCA.

(Excerpt) Read more at toledoblade.com ...


TOPICS: Current Events; Mainline Protestant; Moral Issues; Religion & Culture
KEYWORDS: elca; exodus; homosexualagenda
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1 posted on 05/14/2010 8:21:31 AM PDT by SmithL
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To: lightman; rhema

He is actively promoting sinful behavior and is killing off a church.

But at least he’s sad about it.


2 posted on 05/14/2010 8:22:52 AM PDT by SmithL
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To: SmithL
He is sad because they leave the ELC, huh? They are probably sad to be leaving because the ELC has left Biblical principles.
3 posted on 05/14/2010 8:27:33 AM PDT by svcw (Habakkuk 2:3)
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To: SmithL

Churches who preach Biblical principles are not losing membership.


4 posted on 05/14/2010 8:28:34 AM PDT by svcw (Habakkuk 2:3)
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To: SmithL

Beware of Wolves in sheep’s clothing... and they’re especially plentiful in the ELCA, apparently. Can’t blame people for splitting off one bit.


5 posted on 05/14/2010 8:28:34 AM PDT by DesScorp
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To: SmithL

Well, Bishop, when you abandon the Biblical values upon which the Christian church is based, the congregants are going to abandon YOU. Really not that hard to figure out.


6 posted on 05/14/2010 8:43:54 AM PDT by ScottinVA (RIP to the country I love...)
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To: SmithL
Statement: "Since the votes to allow ordination of clergy in same-gender, lifelong, committed relationships and to offer support and recognition of monogamous same-sex unions, 308 of the 10,400 ELCA congregations have taken a first vote toward quitting and 90 have approved a second vote to officially cut their ties with the ELCA."

Response: "Come out from among them."- St. Paul

7 posted on 05/14/2010 9:09:36 AM PDT by AEMILIUS PAULUS (It is a shame that when these people give a riot)
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To: aberaussie; Aeronaut; aliquando; AlternateViewpoint; AnalogReigns; Archie Bunker on steroids; ...


Lutheran (EL C S*A) Ping!

* as of August 19, AD 2009, a liberal protestant SECT, not part of the holy, catholic and apostolic CHURCH.

Alleluia! Christ Ascends with shouts of joy!

8 posted on 05/14/2010 9:13:17 AM PDT by lightman (Adjutorium nostrum (+) in nomine Domini)
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To: SmithL

They diminished themselves when they allowed Homosexuals to preach.


9 posted on 05/14/2010 9:18:24 AM PDT by Venturer
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To: SmithL

Maybe he ought to be saddened by the liberal termites taking over one of Christianity’s greatest denominations and substituting the fashionable philosophy of political correctness for the teachings of Jesus Christ.


10 posted on 05/14/2010 9:18:29 AM PDT by Vigilanteman (Obama: Fake black man. Fake Messiah. Fake American. How many fakes can you fit in one Zer0?)
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To: SmithL

It’s a house built on sand.


11 posted on 05/14/2010 9:30:34 AM PDT by Missouri gal
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To: lightman

Wonder how the bishop feels about pastors being removed from the roster because of their outspoken, orthodox stand....


12 posted on 05/14/2010 10:28:39 AM PDT by aberaussie
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To: SmithL

“Bishop” Hanson said:
“While the issue of homosexuality is tearing at the seams of most Protestant denominations today, Bishop Hanson said it is ‘an admirable thing’ that churches are talking about sexuality instead of avoiding the controversy.”

It is admirable thing also, I suppose, your eminence, that the ELCA has started talking about sexuality while avoiding preaching and teaching the scandal of the cross of Jesus Christ. Brilliant leadership. Brilliant! And so faithful and courageous.

He continued:
“’It wasn’t many years ago that we wouldn’t talk about sexuality in the church. We let the culture be the context in which sexuality was expressed, defined, [and] portrayed in some very unhealthy, dehumanizing, contrary-to-God’s-intent-for-humanity way, he said.”

Yes, and ever since you started talking about sexuality (almost non-stop) the ELCA has been hemorrhaging members. They are down over a million since the union of 1981. Brilliant leadership. Brilliant! And so faithful and courageous.

Then he added:
“As the American culture ‘trivializes’ and ‘commodifies’ sexuality, the church needs to speak up about healthy sexuality and to explain that it is ‘a sacred gift of God and creation.’”

So, in answer to this problem, under your leadership the ELCA ‘trivializes’ and ‘commodifies’ Christian doctrine, voting out or selling off whichever items it has decided no longer to peddle to your clients. Brilliant leadership. Brilliant! And so faithful and courageous.

You, “Bishop” Hanson, are a coward, a liar, and a putz.


13 posted on 05/14/2010 10:39:59 AM PDT by Belteshazzar
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To: Belteshazzar
“Bishop” Hanson said:

“While the issue of homosexuality is tearing at the seams of most Protestant denominations today, Bishop Hanson said it is ‘an admirable thing’ that churches are talking about sexuality instead of avoiding the controversy.”

It is admirable thing also, I suppose, your eminence, that the ELCA has started talking about sexuality while avoiding preaching and teaching the scandal of the cross of Jesus Christ. Brilliant leadership. Brilliant! And so faithful and courageous.

It is absolutely astounding that the "Social Teaching Statement on Human Sexuality" contains no references to "chastity" and only ONE reference to "abstinence"; and that is as a parenthetical within a footnote pertaining to STD prevention education.

14 posted on 05/14/2010 10:45:27 AM PDT by lightman (Adjutorium nostrum (+) in nomine Domini)
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To: Belteshazzar
Funny you should mention faithful. Martin Luther would have a word with Bishop Hanson:

"If I profess with the loudest voice and clearest exposition every portion of the truth of God except precisely that little point which the world and the devil are at that moment attacking, I am not confessing Christ, however boldly I may be professing Christ. Where the battle rages, there the loyalty of the soldier is proved, and to be steady on all the battlefield besides is mere flight and disgrace if he flinches at that point."

15 posted on 05/14/2010 11:37:31 AM PDT by rhema ("Break the conventions; keep the commandments." -- G. K. Chesterton)
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To: rhema

I have known and loved that quotation for the about 30 years since I first came across it. The only nit I would pick is that Bishop Hanson has flinched at a hundred different points. Each new assault of the devil and the world is more blatant and abominable than the last. The bishop and (unfortunately most of) his church body have become so accustomed to flinching it is all they know how to do.

In fact - and this will not be received well by some - many if not most of the congregations and pastors who have already pulled out of the ELCA are already so far down the road of compromise and concession of the truth that they have probably done nothing more than delayed their own descent into the same hole that the ELCA is heading for. Higher criticism and feminism have done incurable damage to them, and most don’t even know it.

To be sure there are individual believers, perhaps even in large numbers, but the new body they are joining is fatally flawed from the beginning. It will come to no good. I wish it would be different. I so wish it. But ...


16 posted on 05/14/2010 2:12:34 PM PDT by Belteshazzar
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To: Belteshazzar

He is an invertebrate. My Church voted to stay. About 200 of us left. Giving has dropped by 50%. What does that tell you?


17 posted on 05/14/2010 3:35:26 PM PDT by aliquando (A Scout is T, L, H, F, C, K, O, C, T, B, C, and R.)
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To: lightman

Thanks for the ping!

My church is losing some members and only great efforts on the part of a few people is the total membership holding. Of course, we are losing some of the most active and generous families.


18 posted on 05/14/2010 4:34:15 PM PDT by RebelBanker (May have been the losing side. Still not convinced it was the wrong one.)
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To: RebelBanker

Such “death by a thousand cuts” is striking the ELCA coast to coast.

Many congregations are marginal even in good times; lose one or two top givers and....


19 posted on 05/14/2010 5:14:42 PM PDT by lightman (Adjutorium nostrum (+) in nomine Domini)
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To: SmithL

“I express my deep sadness because we are diminished as a church body with every loss”

Oh, obviously you’re diminished, which means diminishing returns, as it were....


20 posted on 05/14/2010 7:00:53 PM PDT by the OlLine Rebel (Common sense is an uncommon virtue./Technological progress cannot be legislated.)
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