Gay Debate to Mark National Lutheran Assembly
Heated debates over homosexuality will likely dominate business sessions at the biennial Evangelical Lutheran Church in America Churchwide Assembly this week in Orlando, Fla.
Heated debates over homosexuality will likely dominate business sessions at the biennial Evangelical Lutheran Church in America Churchwide Assembly this week in Orlando, Fla.
When they begin their meeting today, about 1,000 members voting Lutherans will decide on several issues, including the most divisive topic in current-day Protestantism: homosexual ordination and same-sex marriage blessings.
Three critical resolutions on homosexuality are up for a vote, and warriors on both side of the theological spectrum have prepared their arrows and shields for battle.
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The resolutions, developed in four years by a special task force, essentially calls on the church to: remain united despite theological differences on homosexuality; uphold the prohibition against gay marriage blessings, but give bishops and pastors discretion in deciding how to minister to gay couples; and affirm the church ban on ordaining sexually active gays but allow exceptions for persons in committed relationships.
Presiding Bishop Mark Hanson, head of ELCA, said he hoped the church would stay united despite the differences.
"I don't look to a tension-free church as the mark of a vital and healthy church in mission," Hanson told reporters last week. "I think, as a large church body, we have great capacity to be in mission together that is diminished when we are apart."
However, liberals and conservatives already have plans to lobby the “middle ground” measures on church policy.
“There are enough ELCA members who don’t have difficulty understanding that the churchwide leadership is proposing we should say it’s okay to sin,” said Mark Chavez, president of the Word Alone network of Confessing Lutheran churches. “They object to the leaders proposing that we completely contradict the clear biblical witness to both the old and new testaments.”
Meanwhile, Goodsoil Lutherans, a coalition of pro-gay Lutheran groups, said the resolutions are too restrictive.
“We remain concerned that this proposal is an attempt to maintain “unity” at the expense LGBT people of faith,” Goodsoil wrote on their website. “We believe that the question before the Assembly should be as simple as: ‘This church shall admit to its regular candidacy process all qualified persons, including LGBT people in covenanted same-gender relationships, and shall enforce no unique restrictions or requirements against them.’”
This turmoil over homosexuality has been a crisis in many Protestant churches in recent years. In the Episcopal Church U.S.A., the ordination of an openly gay bishop – V. Gene Robinson of New Hampshire – has nearly ripped apart the entire global Anglican body.
That global concern also lingers for the ELCA, which is part of the larger Lutheran World Federation. The LWF, which Hanson also leaders, represents 138 churches in 77 countries that differ on the gay issue.
The ELCA Churchwide Assembly is the highest legislative body for the church, and is held once every two years. The Council will last through Sunday, August 14.
