My mother was going to be one of the delegates, from a small, rural, conservative church. (A family emergancy led to her not going.) For the last several months, she has been getting long typed letters from other members of her church, outlining how they thought she should vote. They were almost all very strongly against allowing sexually active gays to be called as pastors.
My uncle and several people I know, from more urban settings, are seeing a very different thing. They are hearing many more people who are open to having the ELCA call gays in committed relationship called as pastors.
Based on conversations with my mother, I would not be at all surprised if a vote to allow sexually active gay pastors led to that congregation splitting off from the ELCA, and either joining with another Lutheran denomination or forming a new one. This could be interesting, since I believe the current status of the actual ELCA church structures is that the building and land belongs to synod, not to the congregation.
Just to make things more interesting, there were storms in the Twin Cities yesterday, including the tornado hitting the ELCA church that is next door to the convention center where the Assembly is being held. I’m just waiting for the calls of “God is punishing you for even THINKING about allowing this”.
Nit-picking: The ELCA already allows the ordination and calling of LGBT clergy. What it does not allow is sexually active LGBT clergy. (i.e. It’s ok to be gay, but not to have gay sex.)
Thank you. I try to be pithy. But I don’t know if this is something specific to modern Christianity. No group can be successful if it ignores the concerns of its members or moves too far in a direction that its members don’t support.
Well, I was raised ELCA and while I don’t attend church these days if I started attending again for whatever reason I’d go looking for a good local ELCA congregation. Greater support of gay rights would make me even more likely to stick with the ELCA.
Unless there already is a small moderate-right Lutheran Church that does ordain women & isn’t hardcore Young Earth Creationist, one might just emerge out of this. The Anglican Church of North America includes women-ordination supporters & opponents, charismatics & non-charismatics- it’ll be interesting to see how that works out.
As a member of the ELCA I’m watching this with great interest. It’s true that the ELCA is a lot more liberal and open than, say, the Missouri Synod Lutherans. But like every other mainstream Protestant denomination it has its internal splits between members who thought religion (and America in general) worked a lot better in the 1950s and members who believe religion should be at the leading edge of social change – not to mention a lot of members who see church as a place to escape from problems, not confront them.
In other words, there will be those who think the church is going too fast, those who feel it isn’t going fast enough, and a whole passle of people who wish the whole issue would just go away.
The ELCA isn’t that old; Seminex is still almost “news” as most things in religion are rated. When we formed/merged, there were a lot of congregations and people who came into it as some people approach a marriage - not liking everything their partner was but thinking “I can change him/her”. Because of that we have been shedding people from both extremes (lets use the labels of “traditionalists” and “revisionists” that they throw around over on Ecunet) and probably always will. Until we have raised at least one or two generations of “native ELCA members” to make the decisions – people who do not remember being LCA, ALC, ELC or something else before – its going to continue at about the same rate we’ve seen. The original issue used as a cover for these divorces was ordaining women, then it was having regular and open communion, after that the big flap was joining other denominations in “Full Communion” (accepting their Pastors as equal and available for Call with our own Pastors). This is just the latest (and probably not last) of the “irreconsievable differences” we face.
The congregation (ELCA and very “conservative”) I belong to isn’t very concerned what the Church-wide Assembly decides pretty much because as Lutherans we have some freedom not found in other denominations. It wasn’t that long ago that we changed from the “Black Book” to the “Green” and I see few signs of us looking to purchase the new Red Lutheran Book of Worship any time soon. The Call process is what it is and no-one is talking about changing that. So who is or isn’t ordained or accepted nationally isn’t going to touch us much. If we feel Called to hire a Pastor on either side (openly GLBT or from the “God hates gays”) of the equation there are ways for us to do it.
You really don’t know that there was an active Charismatic movement in the Anglican & Episcopal Church from the 1960s through the 1980s (though I think they faded out in the US in the 1990s)?
Feh, I was a Pentacostal Catholic for a couple weeks. I remember when, back then, St Bede’s Episcopal offered Charismatic services and I tried to imagine what they were like. Thus my post. As I recall, there were more features that involved golf and the correct wine and silverware for the Snake Flambe.
St Bede’s was in the middle of a slow stretch of my commute.
(wrapping an arm around Ted’s shoulder) I hope you are joking but, my longtime friend, the way you tell I’m NOT being a smart aleck is when a mod’s warning doesn’t follow closely on the heels of my post.
I was confused by being a Pentacostal Catholic because, when I started to speak in tongues, it wasn’t coming out in Latin. I’ve seen “The Exorcist” and I know that even demons speak Latin, much less RESPECTABLE entities.
The fact is, that *most * secular and religious folks have consumed all of the rhetoric about “homosexuality,” “gays,” "scientific proof of "gay-ness being natural in ALL of the animal kindgom…
And have determined that…homosexuality is a ‘quirk’ - a ‘kink in the cable’ -
And any person who has read books and informed themselves knows that this drive for “Marriage” is a sham.
Most homosexual males couldn’t think of anything worsethan being shackled to one sexual partner forever: “Until death do us part.”
Marriage is nice. It’s common. It’s “normal.”
So… that’s what they fight for.
The “picket fence.”
"**We’re just like you!!**They shout.
Are you kidding me?
The squeaky niceness of marriage is something all ‘straight’ folks can relate to. So, let’s ride i on that.
Once everyone**thinks that is all we want… hehehe …and let’s us have it…hehehe
