Harrr! She be talking like no land lubber!

Hoisted on the Trust Petard

by Sarah Wilson — March 09, 2009

Trust is the driving theme of the new ELCA Sexuality Statement. It is not a bad way to approach the issue, but in the context of the ELCA (and mainline American Christianity generally), there could hardly have been a more ironic choice...

Trust is the driving theme of the new ELCA Sexuality Statement. It is not a bad way to approach the issue, but in the context of the ELCA (and mainline American Christianity generally), there could hardly have been a more ironic choice.

Footnote 2 of the document states: “Some social scientists have begun to identify social trust as an indispensable feature of healthy organizations, institutions, and whole societies, and social distrust as one of the destructive forces at work in the breakdown and dissolution of organized social arrangements. Such reflections operate in the background of this statement.” Indeed!
And yet the very situation of this document, its dissemination, and its upcoming consideration at the assembly, is situated in the most profound ecclesial distrust. Our church is already wildly factionalized, each side amassing its resources and connections to sway the vote one way or another. We are witnessing the “breakdown and dissolution” already.

http://www.lutheranforum.org/sexuality/hoisted-on-the-trust-petard/