This Breaks My Heart – Look at the level of infiltration or
Homosexuals and Liberals in this denomination. The vote wasn’t even close 56% -
44%, These are Lutheran
white washed sepulchres filled with dead men’s bones and all manner of
rotteness.
Under the new policy, individual ELCA
congregations will be allowed to hire homosexuals as clergy as long as they are
in a committed relationships. Until now, gays and
lesbians had to remain celibate to serve as clergy.
The change passed with the support of
68 percent of about 1,000 delegates at the ELCA's national assembly. It makes
the group, with about 4.7 million members in the
"I have seen these same-gender
relationships function in the same way as heterosexual relationships - bringing
joy and blessings as well as trials and hardships," the Rev. Leslie
Williamson, associate pastor at Trinity Lutheran Church in Des Plaines, Ill.,
said during the hours of debate. "The same-gender couples I know live in
love and faithfulness and are called to proclaim the word of God as are all of
us."
Conservative congregations will not be
forced to hire gay clergy. Nevertheless, opponents of the shift decried what
they saw as straying from clear Scriptural direction, and warned that it could
lead some congregations and individual churchgoers to split off from the ELCA.
"This will cause an ever greater
loss in members and finances. I can't believe the church I loved and served for
40 years can condone what God condemns," said the Rev. Richard Mahan,
pastor at St. Timothy Lutheran Church in
David Keck, a delegate from the
Southern Ohio Synod, said he feared that by embracing partnered gays as clergy
that the ELCA was heading down a road that would ultimately lead to "the
blessing of same-sex unions as the policy of this church," he said.
Mahan said he believed a majority of
his congregation would want to now break off from the ELCA.
Other leaders indicated they might
leave as well; the Rev. Tim Housholder, pastor of St. Luke's
In September, Lutheran CORE - the group
that led the fight against the changes - is holding a convention in
Other Christian denominations in the
But ELCA supporters of its change said
that failure to ratify it ran just as great a risk of alienating large portions
of the membership, particularly those from younger generations.
The Rev. Katrina Foster, pastor at
Fordham Evangelical Lutheran Church in the Bronx, said that Lutherans heard
similar warnings about flouting Scripture when they made past changes that are
now seen as successful - chiefly, the ordination of women.
"We can learn not to define
ourselves by negation," said Foster, who is a lesbian. "By not only
saying what we are against, which always seems to be the same
- against gay people. We should be against poverty. I wish we were as
zealous about that."
Tim Mumm, a gay man and an assembly
delegate from
"I believe for me to marry a woman
would be wrong - even sinful," Mumm said. "I don't believe God
intended to put me and others in a no-win situation."
Some ELCA congregations had already been
flouting the ban on noncelibate gay priests by hiring pastors in gay
relationships. Some synods looked the other way, while others removed such
priests from their rosters.
It was such divisions and
inconsistencies in enforcement that an ELCA task force aimed to finesse when it
began several years ago to draw up the ministry recommendations and a broader
social statement on human sexuality, which passed earlier this week.
Under the new policy, heterosexual
clergy and professional lay workers will still have to abstain from sex outside
marriage. The proposed change would cover those in "lifelong, monogamous,
same-gender relationships."