Lutheran Gay Clergy Vote Tests Mainline Churches

As I have previously noted, I am very happy with the vote by the ELCA to adopt both the social statement on human sexuality and the resolution allowing partnered clergy in same sex relationships because at last I feel that I am fully welcomed and part of the church. I will certainly encourage friends who lack church homes because of the sexual orientation to check out the ELCA. But I am also happy with the vote for another reason - it will challenge other churches to accept modern knowledge on sexual orientation and move into the 21st century or remain among the ignorant backward denominations that in time will become increasingly marginalized in time by the younger generations that favor gay marriage. If a denomination wants to become the stronghold for the old and uneducated so be it, but there will ultimately be a cost to be paid. My own children have stated that they will not go to a church that is not gay friendly and up until now have had limited options. A column in the Washington Post looks at the challenge the ELCA has laid down:

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In breaking down barriers restricting gays and lesbians from the pulpit, the nation's largest Lutheran denomination has laid down a new marker in a debate over the direction of mainline Protestant Christianity, a tradition that once dominated American religious life.

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By voting Friday to allow gays and lesbians in committed relationships to serve as clergy, the 4.7-million member Evangelical Lutheran Church in America will either show how a church can stand together amid differences, or become another casualty of division over sexual morality and the Bible, observers say. "We're going to be living in tension and ambiguity for a longer time, partly because the culture has shifted," said David Steinmetz, a Duke Divinity School professor of Christian history.

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The ELCA - the nation's seventh largest Christian church - reached its conclusion after eight years of study and deliberation. That culminated Friday when the church's national assembly in Minneapolis struck down a policy that required any gay and lesbian clergy to remain celibate.

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The assembly also signed off on finding ways for willing congregations to "recognize, support and hold publicly accountable lifelong, monogamous, same gender relationships." The church fell short of calling that gay marriage, but conservatives see that as the next step. While congregations will not be forced to hire gay clergy, conservative ELCA members decried the decisions as straying from clear Scriptural direction and warned that defections are likely.

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The ELCA's move is especially jarring and significant because "it is viewed by all of us as one of the more Reformation-rooted, broadly orthodox denominations" and takes its theology seriously, said Richard Mouw, president of the multi-denominational and evangelical Fuller Theological Seminary in Pasadena, Calif.

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Barbara Wheeler, a former president of Auburn Theological Seminary in New York who is now director of the school's Center for the Study of Theological Education, praised the ELCA for laying a theological foundation for Friday's vote by first approving a broad social statement on sexuality. . . . "What you're seeing is two things: The society is in the process of changing its collective mind about the moral status of same-sex relationships, and there's a parallel theological movement."

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Conservative ELCA members have warned of damaged relationships with Lutherans in other countries. While Lutherans in Europe and Scandinavia are to the left of the ELCA on homosexuality, African and Asian Lutherans have been taught a more conservative line by missionaries and theologians, said the Rev. Conrad Braaten, senior pastor of Church of the Reformation, an ELCA congregation in Washington, D.C. Braaten is optimistic the ELCA can hold together through the sexuality tensions.

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Braaten is optimistic the ELCA can hold together through the sexuality tensions. "This particular discussion has been going on with a lot of deep feelings in the Lutheran church, but not a lot of acrimony and not a lot of bridges being burnt," he said. "I think that's going to make a difference."

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For readers in search of a church home, please consider the ELCA - I would love to have the church expand because of this bold decision and further pressure other denominations to move into the 21st century or run the risk of dying out.