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TechnoratiKieschnick, who attended ELCA’s Church Assembly as a guest speaker, reiterated some of the comments he made on the final day of the Aug. 17-23 gathering and noted how doctrinal decisions ELCA had already adopted in 2001 led the LCMS, “in sincere humility and love, to declare that we could no longer consider the ELCA ‘to be an orthodox Lutheran church body.’”
“Sadly, the decisions of this past week to ignore biblical teaching on human sexuality have reinforced that conclusion. We respect the desire to follow conscience in moral decision making, but conscience may not overrule the Word of God,” he commented.
In his concluding remarks, Kieschnick – whose denomination consists of 2.4 million members – recognized that many within the ELCA, there are both clergy and lay who “are committed to remaining faithful to the Gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ, are committed to the authority of Holy Scripture, and strongly oppose these actions.”
“To them we offer our assurance of loving encouragement together with our willingness to provide appropriate support in their efforts to remain faithful to the Word of God and the historic teachings of the Lutheran church and all other Christian churches for the past 2,000 years,” he stated.
ELCA, which officially came into existence on Jan. 1, 1988, is product of the merging of three churches – the 2.25 million-member Lutheran Church in America (LCA), the 2.25 million-member American Lutheran Church (ALC) and the 100,000-member Association of Evangelical Lutheran Churches (AELC).
Through its predecessor church bodies, ELCA is a founding member of the Lutheran World Federation, World Council of Churches and the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the U.S.A. – ecumenical bodies that the LCMS does not belong to.
