Er, Make that No Awakening

Shrimp here. Susan Hogan/Albach of the Chicago Sun Times followed up yesterday on the planned ordination of Jen Rude (who is sooo lesbian that she's self-identified as "Queer") with this brief article:

Bishop Wayne Miller said Wednesday he won't discipline a congregation that's challenging the celibacy requirement for gay clergy in the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America.

Resurrection Lutheran Church in Lake View plans to ordain a lesbian as associate pastor. Jen Rude says she won't pledge lifelong celibacy because she considers the rule discriminatory. In the ELCA, heterosexual pastors can marry.

Miller, head of the Metropolitan Chicago Synod, said he wants to "stay in conversation" with the congregation rather than censure or drive it out of the denomination.

Shrimp understands that when he was an "identified person" prior to this spring's bishop's election ("running for bishop" is deemed unseemly in most of the ELCA, but several synods "identify" potential nominees in the weeks before an election and send them out for a dog-and-pony show -- but I digress)... During the pre-election build-up in Metro Chicago, of the identified candidates, Pastor Miller was the one "identified person" who was willing to say that as Bishop his job was to enforce the standards of the ELCA, regardless of his personal feelings. (All the others, Shrimp has been told, said they'd continue Bishop Landahl's policy of letting their personal feelings prevent them from enforcing the church's standards regarding openly GLBTQ pastors.)

This was, of course, before the ELCA Churchwide Assembly adopted this resolution presented by then-MCS Bishop Paul Landahl:

RESOLVED, that in an effort to continue as a church in moral deliberation without further strife and pain to its members, the Churchwide Assembly prays, urges, and encourages synods, synodical bishops, and the presiding bishop to refrain from or demonstrate restraint in disciplining those congregations and persons who call into the rostered ministry otherwise-qualified candidates who are in a mutual, chaste, and faithful committed same-gender relationship; and be it further

RESOLVED, that the Churchwide Assembly prays, urges, and encourages synods, synodical bishops, and the presiding bishop to refrain from or demonstrate restraint in disciplining those rostered leaders in a mutual, chaste, and faithful committed same-gender relationship who have been called and rostered in this church.

Okay, Lutherans: What does this mean?"

Heck if Shrimp knows. But if he were to hazard a guess, "We are to fear and love Goodsoil so that whoever is approved by Extraordinary Lutheran Ministries gets a free pass in the   (insert Synod name here)   Synod.

Shrimp out.