ELCA Council on using sadness surrounding divorce as an analogy to proceed on homosexual relations

If you have any concern for the ELCA you must have great concern for the way Church Council in leading us in the sexuality issue. We are very fortunate to hear from Robert Gagnon on our specific situation. Here is a brief section of a larger arguement you can link to below:

"An addendum to the Church Council's divorce/remarriage analogy:

It should be noted that the Council not only wants the ELCA Churchwide Assembly to accept their recommendation of “exceptions.” It also wants people to accept the fact that this “compromise” is only provisional; that the ELCA must eventually, as with divorce and remarriage, adopt a denomination-wide policy that puts up no bar to ordaining persons who are currently in committed homosexual unions.

That point is implicit in the use of the divorce-and-remarriage analogy. And it is made explicit in the “Rationale for Support of the Proposed Process” given to that segment of the church that already supports homosexual unions: “Just as it took the Church and the world many years to understand other critical issues, such as the re-marriage of divorced people, this process provides the opportunity for continued discernment of where the Holy Spirit is leading this church” (p. 4). In other words, acceptance of the Council’s recommendation would put the ELCA on a journey of “understanding” and “discernment” that would eventually “lead” to marriage ceremonies for homosexual unions and a denomination-wide willingness to ordain homosexual persons in committed homosexual unions.

Do you catch what the ELCA Church Council is requiring of each group, those who think homosexual practice is inherently sinful and those who think that only promiscuous homosexual practice is sinful? The former group must change their view in some significant way while the latter group doesn’t need to change their view at all but merely to hold on and be patient because in due course they will see their view completely vindicated by the denomination.

So if one intends to vote for the Council’s recommendation one should recognize that this will be a vote for a denomination-wide full embrace of committed homosexual unions within the next 2-5 years. To fail to recognize this is to fool oneself or to be misled by others—or both.

Read more Gagnon's comments on the American Lutheran Publicity Bureau blog.