Exodus International Celebrating 30 Years of 'Freedom'
Ed Thomas, Agape Press
Attendees have gathered this week for a yearly conference in Asheville, North Carolina, that birthed the "ex-gay" ministry Exodus International 30 years ago. The organization's membership director says the continued growth is a testament to the power of Christ, and friends and family, to help those struggling to change. Randy Thomas says the people at the Exodus Freedom Conference this week are being equipped with the tools to overcome homosexuality -- whether for themselves, a family member, loved one, or friend. "They come here with a lot of questions -- and we have answers that [we hope] they will see will bring liberation not only to their sexuality but to their souls," notes Thomas. Thomas says the difference in the method is the biblical answer for freedom from any sin: the power of Jesus Christ. He says Jesus has made that power available through Exodus International for 30 years, since the group was formed following a first such multi-ministry conference in 1975. The Freedom Conference addresses a modern topic of strong need with a Youth Day, providing an emphasis on the many pro-homosexual messages now directed at young people, and equipping them also with ways to overcome. In addition, the conference will address issues surrounding biblical sexuality and sexual addictions.
Friday, July 22, 2005
Thursday, July 21, 2005
CTWeblog: Against the Ex-Gays
Weblog: Against the Ex-Gays
Compiled by Rob Moll | posted 07/20/2005
Ex-gay ministries have become popular among the Religious Right as they seek to seem friendly toward homosexuals while they forbid them to marry. But everyone knows the Right really hates gays.
At least that's the story according to a series on Salon.com. Author Mark Benjamin says, "In the nation's divisive culture wars, gay issues have proved to be winners for Christian conservatives, who helped power right-wing Republicans into control of two branches of the federal government. … Religious conservatives are on a mission to ban more than gay marriage. They want to outlaw civil unions giving same-sex partners some of the legal privileges of married heterosexuals, reinstate state sodomy bans, and defeat hate-crimes legislation that would increase penalties for violence against gays."
In the second of his four-part series, Benjamin says, "The theory that homosexuality is a mental disorder that needs to be cured is the moral underpinning of the Christian right's crusade against gay marriage, sodomy laws, gay adoption, and sex-ed curriculums in schools. "
The New York Times is also following a story, circulating around the internet, about a 16-year-old who discusses being gay on his blog. After telling his parents, the boy's parents sent him to Love in Action, a Memphis Christian group with a program that helps gay men and women change their sexual orientation. After his blog entries circulated around the internet, Queer Action Coalition began protesting outside the Memphis church where Love in Action holds Refuge, its treatment program.
Both articles focus on the difficulties of changing sexual orientation, saying that mainstream psychiatric organizations don't support such therapy, that success rates are usually low, if counted, and for participants who don't change their orientation can result in simply feeling more guilty. "Critics of programs that seek to change sexual orientation say the programs themselves can open a person to lifelong problems, including guilt, shame, and even suicidal impulses."
The Times and Salon have a point. For the most part, those of us who sin sexually don't need to be "repaired." Homosexuality isn't always or mostly a "mental disorder that needs to be cured." Testimonies of many ex-gays include accounts of loveless fathers or child molestation. But many straights also have to cope with such childhood traumas. The issue isn't the psychological treatment of an abnormality. We're all abnormal, we all have wounds. We all have sinned, and we all need a Savior.
Compiled by Rob Moll | posted 07/20/2005
Ex-gay ministries have become popular among the Religious Right as they seek to seem friendly toward homosexuals while they forbid them to marry. But everyone knows the Right really hates gays.
At least that's the story according to a series on Salon.com. Author Mark Benjamin says, "In the nation's divisive culture wars, gay issues have proved to be winners for Christian conservatives, who helped power right-wing Republicans into control of two branches of the federal government. … Religious conservatives are on a mission to ban more than gay marriage. They want to outlaw civil unions giving same-sex partners some of the legal privileges of married heterosexuals, reinstate state sodomy bans, and defeat hate-crimes legislation that would increase penalties for violence against gays."
In the second of his four-part series, Benjamin says, "The theory that homosexuality is a mental disorder that needs to be cured is the moral underpinning of the Christian right's crusade against gay marriage, sodomy laws, gay adoption, and sex-ed curriculums in schools. "
The New York Times is also following a story, circulating around the internet, about a 16-year-old who discusses being gay on his blog. After telling his parents, the boy's parents sent him to Love in Action, a Memphis Christian group with a program that helps gay men and women change their sexual orientation. After his blog entries circulated around the internet, Queer Action Coalition began protesting outside the Memphis church where Love in Action holds Refuge, its treatment program.
Both articles focus on the difficulties of changing sexual orientation, saying that mainstream psychiatric organizations don't support such therapy, that success rates are usually low, if counted, and for participants who don't change their orientation can result in simply feeling more guilty. "Critics of programs that seek to change sexual orientation say the programs themselves can open a person to lifelong problems, including guilt, shame, and even suicidal impulses."
The Times and Salon have a point. For the most part, those of us who sin sexually don't need to be "repaired." Homosexuality isn't always or mostly a "mental disorder that needs to be cured." Testimonies of many ex-gays include accounts of loveless fathers or child molestation. But many straights also have to cope with such childhood traumas. The issue isn't the psychological treatment of an abnormality. We're all abnormal, we all have wounds. We all have sinned, and we all need a Savior.
Wednesday, July 20, 2005
Mark Hanson, Minnesota Timberwolf?
Shrimp here: Perhaps you heard the rumor that Mark Hanson said at a synod assembly (it was Virginia), "This is a big tent church and those who can't accept it should leave."
(I heard from a pastor colleague that was there that he said, "We are not the only church in the church catholic and if people feel like they need to leave that is okay."
This rumor is reported in the August issue of the Lutheran Forum Letter, with the editorial comment that they hope it isn't true. They finally received a response yesterday. We are happy to report Bp. Hanson's response:
"In response to your first question, I did not say that which you have
quoted. I did talk about our ecclesiology and that we are one holy,
catholic and apostolic church. I stated that we are one by virtue of
our baptism, and that we will remain one even if we move from being one
denominational body. I went on to express the sadness I will feel if
people choose to leave this church, while recognizing that we will
continue to be held together even in the midst of their leaving."
OK. I think I understand.
Basically, our chief pastor said, "______ off." I'm going to be real sad when the door hits your butt on the way out.
He really does think we are stupid. He really does think he is in control. He really does hold his liberal political views as his core values. He really does think that those who think the Bible is wrong are entitled to their opinions and if they have the majority view that should be the way policy is written.
Tell me again why this is faithfulness?
Tell me again why the first order of business in Orlando is a floor resolution asking Hanson to resign?
It is he and Lutherans Concerned and the GLBT coalition known as goodsoil.org that have left the faith of the church, which is in effect leaving the church, they should just accept that and go, but then they would not have achieved their goal, which it to remove their inner floating guilt which they think they can do by normalizing sexual relations between members of the same sex.
Tuesday, July 19, 2005
Two Canadian Wolves, Shultz and Ingham
... what has happened to the church of today? How did we get so cautious and self-concerned? When did we lose the faith to say to God, "Not my will, but yours?"
...did we quit trusting God just because God is ready to move us around a little?
...when we are silent enough to let God do the talking, God often surprises us with new directions." -Schutz
"We are saying to the church that our love for the Gospel is undiminished here. We are saying that our commitment to the church cannot be questioned. Indeed our actions have been intended to serve the church in obedience to the Spirit." -Ingham
Monday, July 18, 2005
Antinomian Alert: Ingham on Abiding in Jesus and Having Sex with as Many People as You Want
Shrimp here: Go to the ELCIC web site and right on the home page it says, "In full communion with the recently shunned Canadian Anglicans" --well, OK, it says Anglican Church in Canada--I made up the reference to them being raving lunatic heretics, which they are)
Actually Archheretic, er, Archbishop Michale Ingam, who really should not be ridiculed as much as deposed, is a very dangerous man. Proof? Below, his own words. He makes the most deadly, antimonian argument wrapped in such ever lovely, lovely language. Canadian Lutherans should thank him for his use of Luther below.
Without further adeau:
Diocesan Synod 2005
Saturday Morning
Address by Bishop Michael Ingham
Today in Synod we remember the life and work of St. Matthias. The Book of Acts tells us that Matthias was one of the disciples of Jesus from the beginning. He was one of two hundred companions of our Lord who stayed with him throughout his ministry from his baptism right up until his Ascension into heaven. After Judas the betrayer went out and hanged himself in shame, we are told the remaining apostles held an election to bring the inner circle back up to twelve, and Matthias was elected by the drawing of lots.
I remember the day I first heard this story. I was sitting in church as a child and one of the ladies from the choir was reading the lesson. She said "and Judas, falling headlong, burst open in the middle and all his bowels gushed out." Then she accidentally turned over two pages and said "And the lot fell on Matthias."
Tradition says that after Pentecost Matthias travelled to Ethiopia, and there he witnessed to the resurrection of Jesus among the people of East Africa. This is interesting because, many centuries later, Ethiopia was colonized by western European powers, principally Italy and Britain. When the soldiers and generals made their way up the Nile to enter this remote land, they discovered the largest Christian church outside Europe.
Coptic Christianity took deep root among the Ethiopian people. There are, to this day, literally thousands of monasteries scattered throughout the hills and countryside, and among the people there is a deep tradition of prayer. It was the one country in Africa the western churches agreed not to evangelize, because the Gospel was already present, already being lived out, albeit in a cultural form very foreign to Protestant Christians at the time.
In the Collect for St. Matthias Day the church prays to be preserved from false apostles (which is a reference to Judas) and to be kept steadfast in the truth by the ministry of faithful pastors and teachers. We find that same sentiment in the first reading today from Paul. The letter to the Philippians is one of his most passionate and personal letters. In it he speaks of his spiritual journey from being
a zealous Jew and a persecutor of Christians to the joy of his new life as a witness to the power of the risen Christ. It was a difficult and painful journey for Paul. In the third chapter, he writes about the agonizing break with the past this journey meant for him; how he turned aside from a tradition and an orthodoxy he once supported to an uncertain and risky faith he once despised.
He chose a new and emerging religious path over the religion of his own people. He chose to stake his life on a truth few others could see. This decision of faith led him to deep suffering, to experience isolation, rejection and humiliation by those who counted themselves as the true bearers of God's revelation. In this time of wilderness, he discovered the grace and power of Christ, a gift entirely beyond his own merits. And it is from this discovery that Paul appeals to the Philippians to press forward toward the goal of Christ and not to dwell in the easy certainties of
the past."Forgetting what lies behind, and straining forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal for the prize of the heavenly call of God in Jesus Christ."
(Phil. 3:13-14)
The controversy of the day was about circumcision. To Jews this was a sign of the covenant with God, a mark placed upon the body of every male child that signified an irreversible belonging, a special relationship with God that could never be erased. Paul had defended this sign as a universal requirement for everyone who wished to belong to God. But after his encounter with the liberating freedom of Christ, after his deep and irreversible experience of grace and forgiveness, he came to a new place of understanding. He saw his earlier convictions as spiritually immature.
In his grace-filled maturity he realized that God requires no sign except love. God demands no mark except faith. With this good news, Paul became free and was able to give up everything even his own security - and trust himself to God's grace and an unknown future.
"We are no longer citizens of this world," he writes to the Philippians, "our citizenship is in heaven" (3:20). In other words, our task as Christians is to walk the earth bearing witness to another world, to another dimension of reality, and to a God whose glory is made perfect in love.
Love, he says elsewhere, bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love is the greatest of the gifts of the Spirit (I Cor. 13: 7, 13) and it is far more important to concentrate on this than to argue over rites and ceremonies. This is what the church calls the doctrine of justification by grace. Paul's whole theology is about grace, and love, and glory and truth. This grace comes from God, and we cannot earn it. It is entirely unmerited. We can only receive it, and the greatest mistake we can make is to imagine that righteousness or holiness is something we do, when in fact it is God's gift alone. Our salvation, according to Paul, does not depend on our works, but on God's grace.
This is the basis of Christian freedom. "Beware of the dogs" he says to the Philippians, "beware of the evil workers, those who mutilate the flesh in circumcision" (3:2). He repudiates the believers who still hold on to old signs and old ways. The Gospel of Christ is not about rules and regulations, institutions and rituals. It is about grace. It is the power of God to transform and make new. When we worry about institutions, about their limits and how to set the proper boundaries, when we set about trying to keep people out or even in, we are doing the wrong thing. There are no boundaries on God's love. There is no limit to God's grace. "For freedom Christ has set us free," he proclaims to the Galatians, "let no one make you slaves once again to the elemental spirits of the universe!" (Gal 5:1)
This gospel, according to Paul, is an invitation to hope, love, forgiveness, humility and peace. It is not about obedience to law. Paul discovered something that Christians need to learn and re-learn: that observing tradition is not the same as faithfulness to God. Law must continually give way to gospel, even if this means a difficult and painful journey away from past certainties into a new and transformed freedom.
I believe Paul was a mystic, not a lawgiver. Paul needs to be rescued today from those who would turn his liberating message of grace into confining dogmas of obedience, a new theology of works, an orthodoxy of the kind Paul himself firmly rejected after he came to know Christ. There is an ironic reversal of Paul going on today among some who profess him as their champion.
Genuine orthodoxy requires no sign except the sign of love, no mark except faith itself. The same point is made in the second reading this morning. Jesus speaks of himself as the true vine, the source of life, to whom we are intimately and necessarily connected, and from whom spiritual truth flows into us, bearing life and freedom like sap from the tree. In this beautiful passage, Jesus uses a single word over and over again: the word 'abide.' Eleven times he says it: abide in me, as I abide in you; those who abide in me as I in them bear much fruit; apart from me
you can do nothing; if you abide in me and my words abide in you, ask for whatever you wish and it will be done for you (John 15: 1ff).
Why this repetition of 'abide?' The word means to rest safe, to dwell within, to hold fast, to remain with. It carries the meaning of trust, of permanence, of loving commitment, and enduring relationship. Jesus asks us to stay with him, to rest safe in him, to draw our life from his and not to be severed from him by anxiety or fear or by a false attachment to the world or its institutions.
We are asked to abide in his love. We are assured that his love abides in us. And after these eleven repetitions, Jesus gives us his greatest commandment, the one commandment in John's Gospel that sums up all the rest as our primary duty and responsibility: "This is my commandment, that you love another as I have loved you. No one has greater love than this, than to lay down one's life for one's friends. (15:12ff)
We have reached a moment in the life of the church, especially in the Anglican Communion, when the bonds of love have become strained. This is not necessarily a bad thing. Sometimes in families it is only when relationships become strained that members of the family pay closer attention to each other. Sometimes a single member of a family can bring forward an issue that the rest of the family doesn't want to hear about, and it's only when that single member insists, creating a certain amount of discomfort for everyone, that the matter gets dealt with and dishonest
patterns of avoidance are put aside.
The Primate told us yesterday that gay and lesbian Christians have been asking for a hearing in the Anglican Communion for thirty years, and because of our actions in this Diocese and elsewhere the Communion has finally taken note of a matter it must address, and the conversation internationally might now finally begin. This has not been achieved without some strain to many people around the world and to many people in our diocese. But strain is not always bad.
Sometimes families face up to things only when they seem to be breaking down. And healthy families eventually learn to deal with problems, with levels of discontent, because they want to stay together and not turn their backs on each other. Everyone knows that without the family no one belongs.
We have made our statement to our family, the church. We have stood up and said that there is a matter of justice to be looked at; we have said that the unity of the church cannot be built on the exclusion of some of its members, and that the Christian family must find a way to honour and respect every human being, as our baptismal covenant requires. This matter has now been taken up by the national church, and by the international church. It has moved beyond us now, and it may take a lot more time to resolve than we might like. But that is the nature of families. I
believe, when the history of this period is written, that we will be seen to have served the church through our actions, and not to have harmed it. We will be seen to have acted prophetically and with a right conscience by bringing to the attention of our family the needs of all the children of God.
But now it is time to pay attention to relationships and the strain our actions have caused. We have heard at this Synod that there are still levels of deeply felt anxiety among the parishes and people of our Diocese, that will not go away. We have heard a call to reconciliation and healing. We must now put the same effort into re-building broken relationships that we put into ending the discrimination against some people in our church. Just as we have been determined to stand with aboriginal peoples in their quest for healing and reconciliation, we must show the same commitment to those who have stayed unhappily among us and those who have chosen to walk apart in recent years. Reconciliation is a ministry given to each of us at our baptism, and we cannot simply wait for the other person to begin. We must begin it ourselves.
So the words of Jesus come to us now with particular power. Abide in me. Not in doctrines, not in declarations, not in instrument of unity: abide in me. In today's gospel, Jesus is saying to us resist the temptation to be defensive, resist the instinct to despair: deny in yourselves the urge to be angry and resentful of the way things are. If you give in either to bitterness or the quest for victory you will cut yourself off from my life-giving grace, and dry up like a dead branch and be thrown into the fire.
There are two dangers in any period of conflict and controversy. One is to become obsessed with it, captured by it, and deflected from the works of love. And the other is to avoid it, to run away from it, as the disciples did on Good Friday. We must do neither. We have a message to give to the church today, a message that is neither defiance nor surrender. We are saying to the church that our love for the Gospel is undiminished here. We are saying that our commitment to the church cannot be questioned. Indeed our actions have been intended to serve the church in
obedience to the Spirit.
We call on Anglicans everywhere to take seriously the needs of all our
members, just as we take seriously our affection for the Body of Christ to which we belong. Centuries ago, St. Matthias created a church that flourished and grew in a place no one thought to look. This is a good day, therefore, to speak to the world from the West Coast of Canada. The Diocese of New Westminster is alive and well, and seeks nothing else but to bear the marks of love and the signs of faith within the fellowship of the worldwide church.
Actually Archheretic, er, Archbishop Michale Ingam, who really should not be ridiculed as much as deposed, is a very dangerous man. Proof? Below, his own words. He makes the most deadly, antimonian argument wrapped in such ever lovely, lovely language. Canadian Lutherans should thank him for his use of Luther below.
Without further adeau:
Diocesan Synod 2005
Saturday Morning
Address by Bishop Michael Ingham
Today in Synod we remember the life and work of St. Matthias. The Book of Acts tells us that Matthias was one of the disciples of Jesus from the beginning. He was one of two hundred companions of our Lord who stayed with him throughout his ministry from his baptism right up until his Ascension into heaven. After Judas the betrayer went out and hanged himself in shame, we are told the remaining apostles held an election to bring the inner circle back up to twelve, and Matthias was elected by the drawing of lots.
I remember the day I first heard this story. I was sitting in church as a child and one of the ladies from the choir was reading the lesson. She said "and Judas, falling headlong, burst open in the middle and all his bowels gushed out." Then she accidentally turned over two pages and said "And the lot fell on Matthias."
Tradition says that after Pentecost Matthias travelled to Ethiopia, and there he witnessed to the resurrection of Jesus among the people of East Africa. This is interesting because, many centuries later, Ethiopia was colonized by western European powers, principally Italy and Britain. When the soldiers and generals made their way up the Nile to enter this remote land, they discovered the largest Christian church outside Europe.
Coptic Christianity took deep root among the Ethiopian people. There are, to this day, literally thousands of monasteries scattered throughout the hills and countryside, and among the people there is a deep tradition of prayer. It was the one country in Africa the western churches agreed not to evangelize, because the Gospel was already present, already being lived out, albeit in a cultural form very foreign to Protestant Christians at the time.
In the Collect for St. Matthias Day the church prays to be preserved from false apostles (which is a reference to Judas) and to be kept steadfast in the truth by the ministry of faithful pastors and teachers. We find that same sentiment in the first reading today from Paul. The letter to the Philippians is one of his most passionate and personal letters. In it he speaks of his spiritual journey from being
a zealous Jew and a persecutor of Christians to the joy of his new life as a witness to the power of the risen Christ. It was a difficult and painful journey for Paul. In the third chapter, he writes about the agonizing break with the past this journey meant for him; how he turned aside from a tradition and an orthodoxy he once supported to an uncertain and risky faith he once despised.
He chose a new and emerging religious path over the religion of his own people. He chose to stake his life on a truth few others could see. This decision of faith led him to deep suffering, to experience isolation, rejection and humiliation by those who counted themselves as the true bearers of God's revelation. In this time of wilderness, he discovered the grace and power of Christ, a gift entirely beyond his own merits. And it is from this discovery that Paul appeals to the Philippians to press forward toward the goal of Christ and not to dwell in the easy certainties of
the past."Forgetting what lies behind, and straining forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal for the prize of the heavenly call of God in Jesus Christ."
(Phil. 3:13-14)
The controversy of the day was about circumcision. To Jews this was a sign of the covenant with God, a mark placed upon the body of every male child that signified an irreversible belonging, a special relationship with God that could never be erased. Paul had defended this sign as a universal requirement for everyone who wished to belong to God. But after his encounter with the liberating freedom of Christ, after his deep and irreversible experience of grace and forgiveness, he came to a new place of understanding. He saw his earlier convictions as spiritually immature.
In his grace-filled maturity he realized that God requires no sign except love. God demands no mark except faith. With this good news, Paul became free and was able to give up everything even his own security - and trust himself to God's grace and an unknown future.
"We are no longer citizens of this world," he writes to the Philippians, "our citizenship is in heaven" (3:20). In other words, our task as Christians is to walk the earth bearing witness to another world, to another dimension of reality, and to a God whose glory is made perfect in love.
Love, he says elsewhere, bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love is the greatest of the gifts of the Spirit (I Cor. 13: 7, 13) and it is far more important to concentrate on this than to argue over rites and ceremonies. This is what the church calls the doctrine of justification by grace. Paul's whole theology is about grace, and love, and glory and truth. This grace comes from God, and we cannot earn it. It is entirely unmerited. We can only receive it, and the greatest mistake we can make is to imagine that righteousness or holiness is something we do, when in fact it is God's gift alone. Our salvation, according to Paul, does not depend on our works, but on God's grace.
This is the basis of Christian freedom. "Beware of the dogs" he says to the Philippians, "beware of the evil workers, those who mutilate the flesh in circumcision" (3:2). He repudiates the believers who still hold on to old signs and old ways. The Gospel of Christ is not about rules and regulations, institutions and rituals. It is about grace. It is the power of God to transform and make new. When we worry about institutions, about their limits and how to set the proper boundaries, when we set about trying to keep people out or even in, we are doing the wrong thing. There are no boundaries on God's love. There is no limit to God's grace. "For freedom Christ has set us free," he proclaims to the Galatians, "let no one make you slaves once again to the elemental spirits of the universe!" (Gal 5:1)
This gospel, according to Paul, is an invitation to hope, love, forgiveness, humility and peace. It is not about obedience to law. Paul discovered something that Christians need to learn and re-learn: that observing tradition is not the same as faithfulness to God. Law must continually give way to gospel, even if this means a difficult and painful journey away from past certainties into a new and transformed freedom.
I believe Paul was a mystic, not a lawgiver. Paul needs to be rescued today from those who would turn his liberating message of grace into confining dogmas of obedience, a new theology of works, an orthodoxy of the kind Paul himself firmly rejected after he came to know Christ. There is an ironic reversal of Paul going on today among some who profess him as their champion.
Genuine orthodoxy requires no sign except the sign of love, no mark except faith itself. The same point is made in the second reading this morning. Jesus speaks of himself as the true vine, the source of life, to whom we are intimately and necessarily connected, and from whom spiritual truth flows into us, bearing life and freedom like sap from the tree. In this beautiful passage, Jesus uses a single word over and over again: the word 'abide.' Eleven times he says it: abide in me, as I abide in you; those who abide in me as I in them bear much fruit; apart from me
you can do nothing; if you abide in me and my words abide in you, ask for whatever you wish and it will be done for you (John 15: 1ff).
Why this repetition of 'abide?' The word means to rest safe, to dwell within, to hold fast, to remain with. It carries the meaning of trust, of permanence, of loving commitment, and enduring relationship. Jesus asks us to stay with him, to rest safe in him, to draw our life from his and not to be severed from him by anxiety or fear or by a false attachment to the world or its institutions.
We are asked to abide in his love. We are assured that his love abides in us. And after these eleven repetitions, Jesus gives us his greatest commandment, the one commandment in John's Gospel that sums up all the rest as our primary duty and responsibility: "This is my commandment, that you love another as I have loved you. No one has greater love than this, than to lay down one's life for one's friends. (15:12ff)
We have reached a moment in the life of the church, especially in the Anglican Communion, when the bonds of love have become strained. This is not necessarily a bad thing. Sometimes in families it is only when relationships become strained that members of the family pay closer attention to each other. Sometimes a single member of a family can bring forward an issue that the rest of the family doesn't want to hear about, and it's only when that single member insists, creating a certain amount of discomfort for everyone, that the matter gets dealt with and dishonest
patterns of avoidance are put aside.
The Primate told us yesterday that gay and lesbian Christians have been asking for a hearing in the Anglican Communion for thirty years, and because of our actions in this Diocese and elsewhere the Communion has finally taken note of a matter it must address, and the conversation internationally might now finally begin. This has not been achieved without some strain to many people around the world and to many people in our diocese. But strain is not always bad.
Sometimes families face up to things only when they seem to be breaking down. And healthy families eventually learn to deal with problems, with levels of discontent, because they want to stay together and not turn their backs on each other. Everyone knows that without the family no one belongs.
We have made our statement to our family, the church. We have stood up and said that there is a matter of justice to be looked at; we have said that the unity of the church cannot be built on the exclusion of some of its members, and that the Christian family must find a way to honour and respect every human being, as our baptismal covenant requires. This matter has now been taken up by the national church, and by the international church. It has moved beyond us now, and it may take a lot more time to resolve than we might like. But that is the nature of families. I
believe, when the history of this period is written, that we will be seen to have served the church through our actions, and not to have harmed it. We will be seen to have acted prophetically and with a right conscience by bringing to the attention of our family the needs of all the children of God.
But now it is time to pay attention to relationships and the strain our actions have caused. We have heard at this Synod that there are still levels of deeply felt anxiety among the parishes and people of our Diocese, that will not go away. We have heard a call to reconciliation and healing. We must now put the same effort into re-building broken relationships that we put into ending the discrimination against some people in our church. Just as we have been determined to stand with aboriginal peoples in their quest for healing and reconciliation, we must show the same commitment to those who have stayed unhappily among us and those who have chosen to walk apart in recent years. Reconciliation is a ministry given to each of us at our baptism, and we cannot simply wait for the other person to begin. We must begin it ourselves.
So the words of Jesus come to us now with particular power. Abide in me. Not in doctrines, not in declarations, not in instrument of unity: abide in me. In today's gospel, Jesus is saying to us resist the temptation to be defensive, resist the instinct to despair: deny in yourselves the urge to be angry and resentful of the way things are. If you give in either to bitterness or the quest for victory you will cut yourself off from my life-giving grace, and dry up like a dead branch and be thrown into the fire.
There are two dangers in any period of conflict and controversy. One is to become obsessed with it, captured by it, and deflected from the works of love. And the other is to avoid it, to run away from it, as the disciples did on Good Friday. We must do neither. We have a message to give to the church today, a message that is neither defiance nor surrender. We are saying to the church that our love for the Gospel is undiminished here. We are saying that our commitment to the church cannot be questioned. Indeed our actions have been intended to serve the church in
obedience to the Spirit.
We call on Anglicans everywhere to take seriously the needs of all our
members, just as we take seriously our affection for the Body of Christ to which we belong. Centuries ago, St. Matthias created a church that flourished and grew in a place no one thought to look. This is a good day, therefore, to speak to the world from the West Coast of Canada. The Diocese of New Westminster is alive and well, and seeks nothing else but to bear the marks of love and the signs of faith within the fellowship of the worldwide church.
HOW ABOUT WE START TRUSTING GOD ENOUGH TO READ HIS WORD AND BELIEVE IT? sshhheeeeessshhh!!!!!!!!
Shrimp here: I want to emphasize a note from a Canadian friend who is asking that we all really, really, really pray about what's about to happen up there beginning in a few days:
"For those interested, there will be daily updates from the convention posted here
It is not the "official" news source of the ELCIC but a quick look at the site shows it to be run by individuals concerned about the drift of our church.
As well here is a site organized around a petition stating support for the traditional teaching of the church on sexuality. To date it has over 4,200 names (including 118 pastors) from over 200 congregations across Canada. Not bad considering our membership is roughly 188,000 with about 620 congregations and over 800 pastors."
Shrimp alert, shrimp alert (strobe lights, smoke machines, dancinf girls, the magician the Great Bishopini is slinking out on the stage to the Peter Gunn theme .... Get a load of this. This convention even comes with its own, "I know you are too demoralized to preach Sunday after we let the GLBT crowd loot our depository of Confessional truth, or perhaps you are way to angry and shouldn't be in the pulpit anyway, so here is a sermon prepared in advance telling people to just bend over and take it because if you want to be a Lutheran these days you just simply have to forget the concept of fixed truth." Heck of a sermon, folks.
Read a few lines?
"National Bishop Raymond Schultz has written a sermon suitable for use on
Sunday July 24, 2005. Many clergy will be attending worship that morning
at the National Biennial Convention in Winnipeg. Congregational leaders are
encouraged to use this sermon in their pulpits that day.
Bishop Ray's sermon is based on the following texts:
Genesis 29:15-28
Psalm 105:1-11, 45b
Romans 8:26-39
Matthew 13:31-33, 44-52
And just to whet your appetite, here are a few excerpts:
In order for Paul to say what he does about love, he has to talk about
faith and hope first.
There has to be some dynamic to the relationship, something to keep
looking forward to.
Today's readings call upon God's people not to lose hope when things
don't happen the way they expect... No matter how crazy things get,
nothing can separate them from the love of God. "Keep your hopes
up!"Paul writes to them.
... what has happened to the church of today? How did we get so
cautious and self-concerned? When did we lose the faith to say to God,
"Not my will, but yours?"
...did we quit trusting God just because God is ready to move us
around a little?
...when we are silent enough to let God do the talking, God often
surprises us with new directions."
HOW STUPID DO THEY THINK PEOPLE ARE ANYWAY? PERHAPS THIS GUY JUST BOUGHT INTO ALL THOSE SERMON ILLUSTRATIONS ABOUT SHEEP BEING SO DUMB THEY WILL WALK RIGHT OFF THE HILLSIDE INTO THE AIR. HOW ABOUT WE START TRUSTING GOD ENOUGH TO READ HIS WORD AND BELIEVE IT? sshhheeeeessshhh!!!!!!!!
The sermon will be posted as a pdf file on the ELCIC website on July 18th.
You may also order it in print by phoning the National Office extension 173
or emailing your request to fschultz@elcic.ca.
"For those interested, there will be daily updates from the convention posted here
It is not the "official" news source of the ELCIC but a quick look at the site shows it to be run by individuals concerned about the drift of our church.
As well here is a site organized around a petition stating support for the traditional teaching of the church on sexuality. To date it has over 4,200 names (including 118 pastors) from over 200 congregations across Canada. Not bad considering our membership is roughly 188,000 with about 620 congregations and over 800 pastors."
Shrimp alert, shrimp alert (strobe lights, smoke machines, dancinf girls, the magician the Great Bishopini is slinking out on the stage to the Peter Gunn theme .... Get a load of this. This convention even comes with its own, "I know you are too demoralized to preach Sunday after we let the GLBT crowd loot our depository of Confessional truth, or perhaps you are way to angry and shouldn't be in the pulpit anyway, so here is a sermon prepared in advance telling people to just bend over and take it because if you want to be a Lutheran these days you just simply have to forget the concept of fixed truth." Heck of a sermon, folks.
Read a few lines?
"National Bishop Raymond Schultz has written a sermon suitable for use on
Sunday July 24, 2005. Many clergy will be attending worship that morning
at the National Biennial Convention in Winnipeg. Congregational leaders are
encouraged to use this sermon in their pulpits that day.
Bishop Ray's sermon is based on the following texts:
Genesis 29:15-28
Psalm 105:1-11, 45b
Romans 8:26-39
Matthew 13:31-33, 44-52
And just to whet your appetite, here are a few excerpts:
In order for Paul to say what he does about love, he has to talk about
faith and hope first.
There has to be some dynamic to the relationship, something to keep
looking forward to.
Today's readings call upon God's people not to lose hope when things
don't happen the way they expect... No matter how crazy things get,
nothing can separate them from the love of God. "Keep your hopes
up!"Paul writes to them.
... what has happened to the church of today? How did we get so
cautious and self-concerned? When did we lose the faith to say to God,
"Not my will, but yours?"
...did we quit trusting God just because God is ready to move us
around a little?
...when we are silent enough to let God do the talking, God often
surprises us with new directions."
HOW STUPID DO THEY THINK PEOPLE ARE ANYWAY? PERHAPS THIS GUY JUST BOUGHT INTO ALL THOSE SERMON ILLUSTRATIONS ABOUT SHEEP BEING SO DUMB THEY WILL WALK RIGHT OFF THE HILLSIDE INTO THE AIR. HOW ABOUT WE START TRUSTING GOD ENOUGH TO READ HIS WORD AND BELIEVE IT? sshhheeeeessshhh!!!!!!!!
The sermon will be posted as a pdf file on the ELCIC website on July 18th.
You may also order it in print by phoning the National Office extension 173
or emailing your request to fschultz@elcic.ca.
O Canada!
Tenth Biennial Convention of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Canada meets July 21–24, 2005, Winnipeg Manitoba. They have business to do!
"The world of other religions is part of our mission field. Conversion is not the only reason for telling the story of God. Jesus Christ and his relationship with God is a gospel that will make its way into the awareness of other believers in the same way that their gifts will awaken greater understanding of the Christian revelation."
Read more here.
We DO NOT want to pick on ELCIC. We are vastly uninformed on what goes on there compared to deep experience in ELCA ethos and politics. What I would like to say is, if you guys are in communion with The Anglican Church in Canada, seems like that would take about a week just deciding what to do about that before your fall meeting. Just go to titusonenine and put in the name of their leader Michael Ingham (the king of the antinomian spawn of Spong)and start reading the interesting articles. Here's one.
“In Nottingham, England, last week, the Anglican Consultative Council, one of four global” instruments of unity,” kicked out the Anglican Church of Canada and Episcopal Church U.S.A., rejecting their rationale for blessing same-sex relations….
Meanwhile, two developments may hasten the day the Anglican Church of Canada breaks intoprogressive and traditional factions.
In June, the conservative Anglican Essentials coalition formalized its existence as
Anglican Essentials Canada. The 800 AEC delegates also formed two subsidiaries, the
Essentials Federation and the Essentials Network (legally the Anglican Network in
Canada).
The Essentials Federation, for traditionalists still at home in the ACC, will try to
reverse the momentum behind gay marriage before its 2007 General Convention.
The Network or ANiC is for traditionalists who believe they are now marginalized in thechurch and suppressed for their orthodoxy.
“The Network is the establishment of the necessary ecclesiastical structure, should theAnglican Church of Canada choose to walk apart,” says Rev. Paul Orritt of St. Peter’s Anglican in Okotoks, an AEC director.
“We’re not a competitive church. We’re building lifeboats, Anglican lifeboats ” – with towlines to the bishops of Global South.
Only 10 to 15 per cent of Anglican congregations are already represented at Essentials. But when liberal New Westminster began same-sex blessings, and eight of its 80 parishes split, they took about one-third of its members and revenue….”
About Michael Ingham:
"The following is an address delivered by Bishop Ingham, a married straight man, and an Anglican Bishop. This address was delivered in Canada, describing how and why he changed his position to accept gay relationships. In his introduction he mentions the debate between two leading Anglicans, the Revd John Stott (leader of the low church evangelical tradition from UK) and the Right Revd John Spong (liberal bishop and gay supporter from the USA). John Stott has been called by some people as the 'pope' of the Anglican evangelical low church tradition and of course Bishop Spong has been regarded by others as atheist who does a rather good job as a bishop (Bishop Spong is a non-theist christian, those who are skeptical of the supernatural God - sort of a Buddhist version of Christianity).
In this address, Bishop Ingham traces the history of Christianity's negative attitude towards sex that make women second class, and gay people lower than women. He goes on to discuss how sexism and homophobia are closely related. He proposes a church that extends marriage to her gay members and he believes that when gay union is no longer an issue, ordination of practising gay people will be a non-issue as well (just like we extend marriage to the clergy). He agrees that celibacy is a high calling but is against imposing celibacy on people just because they are gay. For that matter, it is a double standard to allow married clergy but not clergy in gay partnership.
He also says that if we suppress the erotic, it comes back as pornographic. If we idealise love without sex and we get sex without love."
Here's the sermon:
For God So Loved the World...
Address by the Right Revd Michael Ingham,
Bishop of New Westminster
27 September, 1996,
St. Leonard's Church, Toronto, Canada
Three years ago, in July 1993, we held a debate in Vancouver between John Stott and Bishop Spong. It was held in the Cathedral on a hot summer's night and about 1400 people came. We turned 300 away at the door.
It was an amazing evening. Both men spoke passionately and persuasively. They spoke with an evident measure of respect for each other. But what they described were two fundamentally different understandings of human sexuality, human freedom, the interpretation of Scripture, and indeed the Gospel itself, and they were applauded by two quite different sections of the audience.
Two things became clear that night: first, what a marvellous thing the Anglican Church is that we can hold together such diverse and opposite viewpoints within both our members and our leaders. Many of us remain in good relationship with each other despite disagreement on these fundamental issues. And second, what a huge gulf divides our church in its understanding of human sexuality."
SCRATCH... (sound of record player arem dragged across record [you rememebr them, right?] wait, stop, major cognitive dissonance moment. John Stott and Shelby Spong? Together, like as equal in voice?
YOu read the rest of this sermon. Note that this was 10 years ago. He has gotten much loopier since then. I read one of his messages that said the Bible is not to be trusted becasue it says Jesus ascended to heaven and as scientists know that if he ascended at the speed of light he wouldn't even be near the edge of the Milky Way by now ... God save us.
Here's the sermon in question, and I do mean question.
"The world of other religions is part of our mission field. Conversion is not the only reason for telling the story of God. Jesus Christ and his relationship with God is a gospel that will make its way into the awareness of other believers in the same way that their gifts will awaken greater understanding of the Christian revelation."
Read more here.
We DO NOT want to pick on ELCIC. We are vastly uninformed on what goes on there compared to deep experience in ELCA ethos and politics. What I would like to say is, if you guys are in communion with The Anglican Church in Canada, seems like that would take about a week just deciding what to do about that before your fall meeting. Just go to titusonenine and put in the name of their leader Michael Ingham (the king of the antinomian spawn of Spong)and start reading the interesting articles. Here's one.
“In Nottingham, England, last week, the Anglican Consultative Council, one of four global” instruments of unity,” kicked out the Anglican Church of Canada and Episcopal Church U.S.A., rejecting their rationale for blessing same-sex relations….
Meanwhile, two developments may hasten the day the Anglican Church of Canada breaks intoprogressive and traditional factions.
In June, the conservative Anglican Essentials coalition formalized its existence as
Anglican Essentials Canada. The 800 AEC delegates also formed two subsidiaries, the
Essentials Federation and the Essentials Network (legally the Anglican Network in
Canada).
The Essentials Federation, for traditionalists still at home in the ACC, will try to
reverse the momentum behind gay marriage before its 2007 General Convention.
The Network or ANiC is for traditionalists who believe they are now marginalized in thechurch and suppressed for their orthodoxy.
“The Network is the establishment of the necessary ecclesiastical structure, should theAnglican Church of Canada choose to walk apart,” says Rev. Paul Orritt of St. Peter’s Anglican in Okotoks, an AEC director.
“We’re not a competitive church. We’re building lifeboats, Anglican lifeboats ” – with towlines to the bishops of Global South.
Only 10 to 15 per cent of Anglican congregations are already represented at Essentials. But when liberal New Westminster began same-sex blessings, and eight of its 80 parishes split, they took about one-third of its members and revenue….”
About Michael Ingham:
"The following is an address delivered by Bishop Ingham, a married straight man, and an Anglican Bishop. This address was delivered in Canada, describing how and why he changed his position to accept gay relationships. In his introduction he mentions the debate between two leading Anglicans, the Revd John Stott (leader of the low church evangelical tradition from UK) and the Right Revd John Spong (liberal bishop and gay supporter from the USA). John Stott has been called by some people as the 'pope' of the Anglican evangelical low church tradition and of course Bishop Spong has been regarded by others as atheist who does a rather good job as a bishop (Bishop Spong is a non-theist christian, those who are skeptical of the supernatural God - sort of a Buddhist version of Christianity).
In this address, Bishop Ingham traces the history of Christianity's negative attitude towards sex that make women second class, and gay people lower than women. He goes on to discuss how sexism and homophobia are closely related. He proposes a church that extends marriage to her gay members and he believes that when gay union is no longer an issue, ordination of practising gay people will be a non-issue as well (just like we extend marriage to the clergy). He agrees that celibacy is a high calling but is against imposing celibacy on people just because they are gay. For that matter, it is a double standard to allow married clergy but not clergy in gay partnership.
He also says that if we suppress the erotic, it comes back as pornographic. If we idealise love without sex and we get sex without love."
Here's the sermon:
For God So Loved the World...
Address by the Right Revd Michael Ingham,
Bishop of New Westminster
27 September, 1996,
St. Leonard's Church, Toronto, Canada
Three years ago, in July 1993, we held a debate in Vancouver between John Stott and Bishop Spong. It was held in the Cathedral on a hot summer's night and about 1400 people came. We turned 300 away at the door.
It was an amazing evening. Both men spoke passionately and persuasively. They spoke with an evident measure of respect for each other. But what they described were two fundamentally different understandings of human sexuality, human freedom, the interpretation of Scripture, and indeed the Gospel itself, and they were applauded by two quite different sections of the audience.
Two things became clear that night: first, what a marvellous thing the Anglican Church is that we can hold together such diverse and opposite viewpoints within both our members and our leaders. Many of us remain in good relationship with each other despite disagreement on these fundamental issues. And second, what a huge gulf divides our church in its understanding of human sexuality."
SCRATCH... (sound of record player arem dragged across record [you rememebr them, right?] wait, stop, major cognitive dissonance moment. John Stott and Shelby Spong? Together, like as equal in voice?
YOu read the rest of this sermon. Note that this was 10 years ago. He has gotten much loopier since then. I read one of his messages that said the Bible is not to be trusted becasue it says Jesus ascended to heaven and as scientists know that if he ascended at the speed of light he wouldn't even be near the edge of the Milky Way by now ... God save us.
Here's the sermon in question, and I do mean question.
Sunday, July 17, 2005
Pray for ELCIC
Lutheran resolution on same-sex blessings
"Delegates to the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Canada's (ELCIC) national convention this summer will consider a three-part resolution that would allow local congregations to decide if they want to authorize the blessing of same-sex relationships. The resolution would include a process for churches to follow in order to conduct same-sex blessings, the right of congregations and clergy to perform the blessings and a repudiation of earlier documents on homosexuality "in light of developing theological, pastoral, and sociological scholarship." The ELCIC is Canada's largest Lutheran body with more than 180,000 members in 624 churches. -- ChristianWeek
Yes, Lutherans in Canada are getting ready for voting on the homosex agenda. Here is an official page loaded with pdf's
"Delegates to the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Canada's (ELCIC) national convention this summer will consider a three-part resolution that would allow local congregations to decide if they want to authorize the blessing of same-sex relationships. The resolution would include a process for churches to follow in order to conduct same-sex blessings, the right of congregations and clergy to perform the blessings and a repudiation of earlier documents on homosexuality "in light of developing theological, pastoral, and sociological scholarship." The ELCIC is Canada's largest Lutheran body with more than 180,000 members in 624 churches. -- ChristianWeek
Yes, Lutherans in Canada are getting ready for voting on the homosex agenda. Here is an official page loaded with pdf's
Just read it ...
What is goodsoil.org all about?
goodsoil.org is the official website of the collaboration to overcome the policy and practice of discrimination within the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA) against lgbt clergy, same-sex marriages and covenanted relationships.
It's About Transformation: Throughout all of goodsoil's efforts before and during the 2005 Churchwide Assembly, our primary concern is the transformation of all who participate. We are children of God, loved as we are, committed to justice in the name of Christ. We act with integrity and authenticity, proclaiming our message of freedom in Christ with boldness, experiencing the power within that will manifest itself wherever we are through whatever we do, the power graciously given us by the God who loves us unconditionally.
It's About Evangelism and Revival: Our goodsoil work is one that proclaims our wholeness and develops power for the work of justice. Our outreach is to all, inviting the coming together and sharing of our lives as children of a loving God.
-- We invite glbt clergy held captive by their fear to leave the dark of their closets. We commit ourselves to active support of these sisters and brothers and to all who step out of their closets.
-- We proactively give witness at ELCA meetings at synodical and churchwide levels and develop personal contacts with voting members and church-wide leadership.
-- We intentionally align ourselves with the justice-seeking efforts of youth, young adults and persons of color in the ELCA and invite them to become actively involved in our work and leadership.
It's About Shining a Light on Injustice: As we carry out our witness and proclamation we boldly expose the untruths and lack of integrity demonstrated by ELCA leaders and imbedded in ecclesiastical structures and procedures. We do not ignore or deny the injustice implicit in the ELCA's carrying on of business as usual. We encourage our g/l/b/t/ colleagues to step away from participating in the activities that implicitly perpetuate the spiritual violence done to their g/l/b/t sisters and brothers.
It's About Pastoral Care: We recognize the spiritual violence done to g/l/b/t persons and the pain experienced by many who work for justice in the ELCA. We also acknowledge the distress of many who struggle to hold on to the beliefs that hold them captive. We provide places and opportunities for healing at all CWA meetings. We invite the ECP roster to take leadership in this work.
It's About Full Participation and Fairness: The voice of our church is heard through legislative decisions made by the Church Council and the Churchwide Assembly. All ELCA members -- especially those of us who are sexual minority persons -- deserve the opportunity to participate fully in the life of this body of Christ.
The vote on Full Participation must not be delayed: Decisions regarding full participation of glbt people in the church should not be delayed or postponed beyond the 2005 Churchwide Assembly. We actively resist any effort to delay a vote at 2005 CWA on the ordination/blessings of relationships issues mandated for study by the 2001 CWA.
A Simple Majority Should Prevail: We urge the Church Council to rescind the proposed 2/3 vote requirement at CWA and to allow a simple majority to decide g/l/b/t-affirming changes to the ELCA's positions on ordination and the blessings of same gender covenanted relationships.
Roster Discrimination Against GLBT Clergy Must End: We seek the removal of all language that prohibits or limits the rostering or continued service of ELCA clergy in same-gender covenanted relationships or who wish the possibility of entering into such relationships.
Blessing Covenanted Same-Gender Relationships is a Pastoral Right: We actively resist any proposal to take away the authority of ELCA pastors to perform blessings of same-gender covenanted relationships. We support the church-wide development of liturgies and rites for ELCA pastors and congregations to use in blessing these relationships."
It's about revival and evangelism?
goodsoil.org is the official website of the collaboration to overcome the policy and practice of discrimination within the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA) against lgbt clergy, same-sex marriages and covenanted relationships.
It's About Transformation: Throughout all of goodsoil's efforts before and during the 2005 Churchwide Assembly, our primary concern is the transformation of all who participate. We are children of God, loved as we are, committed to justice in the name of Christ. We act with integrity and authenticity, proclaiming our message of freedom in Christ with boldness, experiencing the power within that will manifest itself wherever we are through whatever we do, the power graciously given us by the God who loves us unconditionally.
It's About Evangelism and Revival: Our goodsoil work is one that proclaims our wholeness and develops power for the work of justice. Our outreach is to all, inviting the coming together and sharing of our lives as children of a loving God.
-- We invite glbt clergy held captive by their fear to leave the dark of their closets. We commit ourselves to active support of these sisters and brothers and to all who step out of their closets.
-- We proactively give witness at ELCA meetings at synodical and churchwide levels and develop personal contacts with voting members and church-wide leadership.
-- We intentionally align ourselves with the justice-seeking efforts of youth, young adults and persons of color in the ELCA and invite them to become actively involved in our work and leadership.
It's About Shining a Light on Injustice: As we carry out our witness and proclamation we boldly expose the untruths and lack of integrity demonstrated by ELCA leaders and imbedded in ecclesiastical structures and procedures. We do not ignore or deny the injustice implicit in the ELCA's carrying on of business as usual. We encourage our g/l/b/t/ colleagues to step away from participating in the activities that implicitly perpetuate the spiritual violence done to their g/l/b/t sisters and brothers.
It's About Pastoral Care: We recognize the spiritual violence done to g/l/b/t persons and the pain experienced by many who work for justice in the ELCA. We also acknowledge the distress of many who struggle to hold on to the beliefs that hold them captive. We provide places and opportunities for healing at all CWA meetings. We invite the ECP roster to take leadership in this work.
It's About Full Participation and Fairness: The voice of our church is heard through legislative decisions made by the Church Council and the Churchwide Assembly. All ELCA members -- especially those of us who are sexual minority persons -- deserve the opportunity to participate fully in the life of this body of Christ.
The vote on Full Participation must not be delayed: Decisions regarding full participation of glbt people in the church should not be delayed or postponed beyond the 2005 Churchwide Assembly. We actively resist any effort to delay a vote at 2005 CWA on the ordination/blessings of relationships issues mandated for study by the 2001 CWA.
A Simple Majority Should Prevail: We urge the Church Council to rescind the proposed 2/3 vote requirement at CWA and to allow a simple majority to decide g/l/b/t-affirming changes to the ELCA's positions on ordination and the blessings of same gender covenanted relationships.
Roster Discrimination Against GLBT Clergy Must End: We seek the removal of all language that prohibits or limits the rostering or continued service of ELCA clergy in same-gender covenanted relationships or who wish the possibility of entering into such relationships.
Blessing Covenanted Same-Gender Relationships is a Pastoral Right: We actively resist any proposal to take away the authority of ELCA pastors to perform blessings of same-gender covenanted relationships. We support the church-wide development of liturgies and rites for ELCA pastors and congregations to use in blessing these relationships."
It's about revival and evangelism?
Saturday, July 16, 2005
Solid Rock Lutherans hold news conference in Chicago in front of the ELCA headquarters building to announce opposition to proposals
On Tuesday, July 12, Solid Rock Lutherans held a news conference in Chicago in front of the ELCA headquarters building to announce its opposition to ELCA proposals to allow the ordination of some non-celibate gays and lesbians as pastors and to allow the blessing of same-sex unions. Bishop Paull Spring, chairman of SRL, and Pastor Jaynan Clark Egland, a board member, represented Solid Rock Lutherans. A news release was also distributed, along with a background memo. The text of the news release is included below.
Roy Harrisville III
Executive Director, Solid Rock Lutherans
Traditional Lutherans call on church not to 'divide our house'
A majority seeks to defend church tradition against homosexuality proposals.
FOR RELEASE: 2 PM CDT July 12 CONTACT: Rev. Roy
Harrisville, III
Executive Director
Solid Rock Lutherans
St. Paul, Minn.
(651)-287-8497
www.sldrck.org
CHICAGO - Two leaders of Solid Rock Lutherans, Inc., a large reform movement within the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA), today will announce their movement's strong opposition to ELCA proposals that would allow the ordination of gays and lesbians in same-sex relationships and open the door to blessing such relationships.
A news conference will be held in front of ELCA headquarters at 8765 W.
Higgins Road in Chicago, Ill. Solid Rock Lutherans, Inc. is an umbrella organization for groups and individuals who oppose drastic change in the ELCA's standards for sexual conduct and ordination.
Before boarding the plane to come to the news conference, Pastor Paull Spring, former bishop of the Northwestern Pennsylvania Synod of the ELCA and chairman of Solid Rock Lutherans, lamented, "I am deeply concerned for the future of my church. The ELCA is considering truly radical proposals to allow the ordination of non-celibate homosexuals and bless same-sex unions.
These proposals have no basis in scripture and will, I'm afraid, wreak havoc within the church I love."
Comparing what is happening in the ELCA to similar events in the Episcopal Church (USA), Spring continued. "We've already seen the damage caused to the Episcopal Church by their approval of one openly gay man, Gene Robinson, as a bishop. This action has led to a loss of membership and giving and has strained and fractured the worldwide Anglican Communion."
Pastor Jaynan Clark Egland of Spokane, Wash., a Solid Rock Lutherans board member, picked up on the same point. "The upcoming vote may well be the ELCA's Gene Robinson moment," Clark Egland said.
The new sexuality proposals will be voted on by the 1,018 voting members to the ELCA Churchwide Assembly to be held Aug. 8 - 14 in Orlando, Fla. The ELCA, with just under 5 million members, is the largest Lutheran denomination in America.
At a large gathering in April, Pastor Clark Egland challenged supporters by declaring, "Someone needs to ask the ELCA, 'By what authority do you intend to do these things?' Certainly our leaders don't believe that they can un-sin sin for certain people in specific places. Do we really want to make room for that kind of practice? Talk about setting a precedent."
Commenting recently on the weak demand for such changes within the church, Clark Egland said, "Lutherans across America support traditional church teachings on sexuality by a 2 to 1 majority. More than 28,000 Lutherans who last year took part in a church wide Bible study on the subject rejected change by a 2 to 1 ratio. Solid Rock Lutherans even polled the entire 5 million-member church - and tradition won again by a similar 2 to 1 margin."
Clark Egland summed up by saying, "Those calling for the ordination of practicing homosexuals and the blessing of homosexual unions may be loud, but they are certainly few."
Solid Rock Lutherans is deeply concerned about the possible consequences of its church rejecting settled church teachings. Spring referred to a recent article by noted theologian Robert Benne in the July issue of "The Lutheran," the official magazine of the ELCA. "Matthew 12:25 calls into question whether our church can endure being divided against itself on matters so fundamental as sexuality and marriage. We believe that a relatively small number of activists are seeking to force drastic changes upon the ELCA. If these proposals are adopted, the consequences for our church are likely to be severe - lost congregations, lost members and lost giving. We urge all ELCA voting members to defeat these proposals," said Spring.
Solid Rock Lutherans was formed two years ago to oppose proposed changes in ELCA doctrine on sexuality. As stated in the organization's introductory brochure, Solid Rock Lutherans is dedicated to upholding the current Biblical and Lutheran confessional standards of the ELCA on sexual conduct and ordination. The organization believes that the Word of God affirms the union of woman and man in the bond of marriage as the only proper setting for sexual relations and that only those who are guided by this Word be considered for ordination.
Roy Harrisville III
Executive Director, Solid Rock Lutherans
Traditional Lutherans call on church not to 'divide our house'
A majority seeks to defend church tradition against homosexuality proposals.
FOR RELEASE: 2 PM CDT July 12 CONTACT: Rev. Roy
Harrisville, III
Executive Director
Solid Rock Lutherans
St. Paul, Minn.
(651)-287-8497
www.sldrck.org
CHICAGO - Two leaders of Solid Rock Lutherans, Inc., a large reform movement within the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA), today will announce their movement's strong opposition to ELCA proposals that would allow the ordination of gays and lesbians in same-sex relationships and open the door to blessing such relationships.
A news conference will be held in front of ELCA headquarters at 8765 W.
Higgins Road in Chicago, Ill. Solid Rock Lutherans, Inc. is an umbrella organization for groups and individuals who oppose drastic change in the ELCA's standards for sexual conduct and ordination.
Before boarding the plane to come to the news conference, Pastor Paull Spring, former bishop of the Northwestern Pennsylvania Synod of the ELCA and chairman of Solid Rock Lutherans, lamented, "I am deeply concerned for the future of my church. The ELCA is considering truly radical proposals to allow the ordination of non-celibate homosexuals and bless same-sex unions.
These proposals have no basis in scripture and will, I'm afraid, wreak havoc within the church I love."
Comparing what is happening in the ELCA to similar events in the Episcopal Church (USA), Spring continued. "We've already seen the damage caused to the Episcopal Church by their approval of one openly gay man, Gene Robinson, as a bishop. This action has led to a loss of membership and giving and has strained and fractured the worldwide Anglican Communion."
Pastor Jaynan Clark Egland of Spokane, Wash., a Solid Rock Lutherans board member, picked up on the same point. "The upcoming vote may well be the ELCA's Gene Robinson moment," Clark Egland said.
The new sexuality proposals will be voted on by the 1,018 voting members to the ELCA Churchwide Assembly to be held Aug. 8 - 14 in Orlando, Fla. The ELCA, with just under 5 million members, is the largest Lutheran denomination in America.
At a large gathering in April, Pastor Clark Egland challenged supporters by declaring, "Someone needs to ask the ELCA, 'By what authority do you intend to do these things?' Certainly our leaders don't believe that they can un-sin sin for certain people in specific places. Do we really want to make room for that kind of practice? Talk about setting a precedent."
Commenting recently on the weak demand for such changes within the church, Clark Egland said, "Lutherans across America support traditional church teachings on sexuality by a 2 to 1 majority. More than 28,000 Lutherans who last year took part in a church wide Bible study on the subject rejected change by a 2 to 1 ratio. Solid Rock Lutherans even polled the entire 5 million-member church - and tradition won again by a similar 2 to 1 margin."
Clark Egland summed up by saying, "Those calling for the ordination of practicing homosexuals and the blessing of homosexual unions may be loud, but they are certainly few."
Solid Rock Lutherans is deeply concerned about the possible consequences of its church rejecting settled church teachings. Spring referred to a recent article by noted theologian Robert Benne in the July issue of "The Lutheran," the official magazine of the ELCA. "Matthew 12:25 calls into question whether our church can endure being divided against itself on matters so fundamental as sexuality and marriage. We believe that a relatively small number of activists are seeking to force drastic changes upon the ELCA. If these proposals are adopted, the consequences for our church are likely to be severe - lost congregations, lost members and lost giving. We urge all ELCA voting members to defeat these proposals," said Spring.
Solid Rock Lutherans was formed two years ago to oppose proposed changes in ELCA doctrine on sexuality. As stated in the organization's introductory brochure, Solid Rock Lutherans is dedicated to upholding the current Biblical and Lutheran confessional standards of the ELCA on sexual conduct and ordination. The organization believes that the Word of God affirms the union of woman and man in the bond of marriage as the only proper setting for sexual relations and that only those who are guided by this Word be considered for ordination.
Same-sex marriages? Civil unions? A gay theologian thinks they're only the beginning
By: RICHARD OSTLING - Associated Press
Wednesday, January 28, 2004
from North Carolina Times
Americans are starting to seriously ponder gay marriage, legalized by Massachusetts' highest court, and civil unions, enacted in Howard Dean's Vermont and several cities. The issue of same-sex couples could affect the 2004 elections and is part of the Episcopal Church's ongoing split.
But those moral innovations may be only the beginning. Why not legitimize threesomes and foursomes? What about bisexuals, who are attracted to both genders? And why not abolish marriage altogether?
Such eyebrow-raisers are posed by Marvin Ellison, the ethics professor at the United Church of Christ's Bangor (Maine) Theological Seminary, in "Same-Sex Marriage?: A Christian Ethical Analysis," published by the United Church's Pilgrim Press.
Ellison was married to a woman but didn't find that estate "particularly user-friendly" and now lives openly with a gay partner. He's a clergyman in the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) and was appointed to the panel that wrote its 1991 sex study, which was rejected as too liberal.
His rather superficial and repetitious book is perhaps significant in signaling a new strategy among liberal Protestants seeking to topple traditional sexual rules. Ellison no longer ponders the Bible passages that have been cited for centuries to forbid same-sex behavior and exalt heterosexual monogamy. He simply ignores them.
The headline news is Ellison's leap beyond the current nationwide discussion to pursue long-term implications.
He thinks "a lively debate is needed," for instance, on whether marriage should now be redefined to recognize "polyamorous" people, those involved with "multiple partners."
He wonders, "How exactly does the number of partners affect the moral quality of a relationship? ... Could it be that limiting intimate partnerships to only two people at a time is no guarantee of avoiding exploitation?"
Besides pondering marriage for bisexuals, he protests that the narrowly "bipolar" definition of marriage excludes "intersexuality, transgenderism, transsexuality and other sexualities."
Many of his fellow homosexuals doubt marriage is worth seeking or supporting, Ellison reports, because the institution has been so oppressive and so heterosexual. He, for one, has no intention of marrying his male partner if that becomes possible.
Ellison notes that some Christian liberals who advocate gay marriage hope to stem "gay male cruising and experimentation with multiple anonymous sex partners" and to foster monogamous commitment. He finds it "troubling" that ethicists would see "marriage is a necessary social control mechanism to tame men's sexuality."
In his view, strong defense of gay sexuality "requires critiquing the notion that the only moral (and legal) sex is marital sex," because old sexual categories and moral norms should be reconsidered.
In particular, marriage is based on monogamy, which is "limiting and does not reflect the different ways in which couples structure their partnerships."
Like other gay writers, Ellison wonders whether government should abolish marriage altogether rather than redefine it to include gays.
He is upset that "marriage has been privileged" by both the church and secular law, which denigrates such adult relationships as "domestic partnerships" and "long-term cohabitation."
Ellison suggests that civil law recognize that "the marital family is only one way to construct a family," arguing that "a variety of family models deserves the community's support" and that "non-married persons who bond together are quite successful at fulfilling family functions."
If lesbian and gay marriage is legalized, pressure for all types of couples to marry is likely to increase. He fears that will reinforce marriage as "the exclusive conduit for state subsidies and social respectability," stigmatizing homosexual and heterosexual couples who choose not to marry.
For now, he reports, gays, lesbians, bisexuals and transgenders are "deeply divided" on whether marriage is desirable, and "few queer people are yet persuaded that marriage can be a school for love or justice."
Wednesday, January 28, 2004
from North Carolina Times
Americans are starting to seriously ponder gay marriage, legalized by Massachusetts' highest court, and civil unions, enacted in Howard Dean's Vermont and several cities. The issue of same-sex couples could affect the 2004 elections and is part of the Episcopal Church's ongoing split.
But those moral innovations may be only the beginning. Why not legitimize threesomes and foursomes? What about bisexuals, who are attracted to both genders? And why not abolish marriage altogether?
Such eyebrow-raisers are posed by Marvin Ellison, the ethics professor at the United Church of Christ's Bangor (Maine) Theological Seminary, in "Same-Sex Marriage?: A Christian Ethical Analysis," published by the United Church's Pilgrim Press.
Ellison was married to a woman but didn't find that estate "particularly user-friendly" and now lives openly with a gay partner. He's a clergyman in the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) and was appointed to the panel that wrote its 1991 sex study, which was rejected as too liberal.
His rather superficial and repetitious book is perhaps significant in signaling a new strategy among liberal Protestants seeking to topple traditional sexual rules. Ellison no longer ponders the Bible passages that have been cited for centuries to forbid same-sex behavior and exalt heterosexual monogamy. He simply ignores them.
The headline news is Ellison's leap beyond the current nationwide discussion to pursue long-term implications.
He thinks "a lively debate is needed," for instance, on whether marriage should now be redefined to recognize "polyamorous" people, those involved with "multiple partners."
He wonders, "How exactly does the number of partners affect the moral quality of a relationship? ... Could it be that limiting intimate partnerships to only two people at a time is no guarantee of avoiding exploitation?"
Besides pondering marriage for bisexuals, he protests that the narrowly "bipolar" definition of marriage excludes "intersexuality, transgenderism, transsexuality and other sexualities."
Many of his fellow homosexuals doubt marriage is worth seeking or supporting, Ellison reports, because the institution has been so oppressive and so heterosexual. He, for one, has no intention of marrying his male partner if that becomes possible.
Ellison notes that some Christian liberals who advocate gay marriage hope to stem "gay male cruising and experimentation with multiple anonymous sex partners" and to foster monogamous commitment. He finds it "troubling" that ethicists would see "marriage is a necessary social control mechanism to tame men's sexuality."
In his view, strong defense of gay sexuality "requires critiquing the notion that the only moral (and legal) sex is marital sex," because old sexual categories and moral norms should be reconsidered.
In particular, marriage is based on monogamy, which is "limiting and does not reflect the different ways in which couples structure their partnerships."
Like other gay writers, Ellison wonders whether government should abolish marriage altogether rather than redefine it to include gays.
He is upset that "marriage has been privileged" by both the church and secular law, which denigrates such adult relationships as "domestic partnerships" and "long-term cohabitation."
Ellison suggests that civil law recognize that "the marital family is only one way to construct a family," arguing that "a variety of family models deserves the community's support" and that "non-married persons who bond together are quite successful at fulfilling family functions."
If lesbian and gay marriage is legalized, pressure for all types of couples to marry is likely to increase. He fears that will reinforce marriage as "the exclusive conduit for state subsidies and social respectability," stigmatizing homosexual and heterosexual couples who choose not to marry.
For now, he reports, gays, lesbians, bisexuals and transgenders are "deeply divided" on whether marriage is desirable, and "few queer people are yet persuaded that marriage can be a school for love or justice."
The Ecclesiastical Mass Confusion Perpetual Motion Machine
July 15, 2005 ELCA News Service writes, "ELCA Churchwide Assembly To Consider 196 Memorials From Synods."
First of all, I have to say that words fail to express the deep sense of alienation I feel when I see that a historic Reformation church poised on the edge of a deep chasm is going to spend a week talking about things that are none of their business. Look here:
"Memorials covered topics such as caring for creation, ELCA
engagement in the Holy Land, Jewish-Christian relations, new
worship resources, anti-racism work, support for the ELCA
publishing house, and constitutional matters such as the
composition of the Church Council and possible ratification of
ELCA governing documents. Nearly half of the memorials are
related to three proposals on homosexuality."
OK, the last line. All three proposals are crap. They should have never been put forward. They all dishonor God, revelation, the apostolic faith. Dissenting position One from the Task Force Report is the only one that deserves passing, but since there never should have been a Task Force, well, understand?
That takes care of "nearly half." Now, working backward: are we going to work on that constitution forever? Is this a perpetual motion machine? I'm afraid we really got this all wrong. We are not the federal government. We do not need to meet to pass bills that lobbyists and activists what passed. We are to preach Christ and Him crucified. We are to go into the world with apostolic faith and means so that people be converted and turn from Satan to the Father. Hello!!??!!
Now for the last. If anyone truly believes that the ELCA is supposed to be telling any government how to run their state, forget it. Maybe the USA, OK, if they were killing babies or something, but Israel? The 5,000,000 donut eatin' Lutherans are supposed to tell Israel how to safeguard the region. They need their head examined.
OK, now let's vote on whether racism is good or bad. Give us a break folks.
Lastly, the publishing house would not need any support if they printed things people wanted to read, OK.
Your turn. Leave a comment.
First of all, I have to say that words fail to express the deep sense of alienation I feel when I see that a historic Reformation church poised on the edge of a deep chasm is going to spend a week talking about things that are none of their business. Look here:
"Memorials covered topics such as caring for creation, ELCA
engagement in the Holy Land, Jewish-Christian relations, new
worship resources, anti-racism work, support for the ELCA
publishing house, and constitutional matters such as the
composition of the Church Council and possible ratification of
ELCA governing documents. Nearly half of the memorials are
related to three proposals on homosexuality."
OK, the last line. All three proposals are crap. They should have never been put forward. They all dishonor God, revelation, the apostolic faith. Dissenting position One from the Task Force Report is the only one that deserves passing, but since there never should have been a Task Force, well, understand?
That takes care of "nearly half." Now, working backward: are we going to work on that constitution forever? Is this a perpetual motion machine? I'm afraid we really got this all wrong. We are not the federal government. We do not need to meet to pass bills that lobbyists and activists what passed. We are to preach Christ and Him crucified. We are to go into the world with apostolic faith and means so that people be converted and turn from Satan to the Father. Hello!!??!!
Now for the last. If anyone truly believes that the ELCA is supposed to be telling any government how to run their state, forget it. Maybe the USA, OK, if they were killing babies or something, but Israel? The 5,000,000 donut eatin' Lutherans are supposed to tell Israel how to safeguard the region. They need their head examined.
OK, now let's vote on whether racism is good or bad. Give us a break folks.
Lastly, the publishing house would not need any support if they printed things people wanted to read, OK.
Your turn. Leave a comment.
Friday, July 15, 2005
On gays, the Anglicans (ditto for Lutherans) are riven by competing approaches to the Bible
Shrimp here: Mr Ostling is THE senior AP religion writer and here he tackles "the troubles." Everything he says here can be said about the ELCA and ELCIC except the ELCA from the top is embracing that the top two approaches are "irreconcilable" (and I really wish Hanson or Nessen would weight in here and explain why that doesn't make the followers of said hermeneutics members of two different religions).
By: Richard N. Ostling | AP Religion Writer
In their tense debate about homosexuality, the world's 77 million Anglicans (called Episcopalians in the United States) take four approaches to biblical teaching: dismissal, perplexity, renovation and traditionalism.
Dismissal is the left-fringe attitude personified by Bishop John Shelby Spong, former head of the Newark, N.J., diocese. In "The Sins of Scripture" (HarperSanFrancisco), he says calling the Bible "the Word of God" (a belief he himself affirmed at ordination) is "perhaps the strangest claim ever made" for a document.
Spong finds the Old Testament's homosexual prohibitions ignorant and "morally incompetent" expressions of "popular prejudices." With the New Testament, he disdains Paul's condemnations as "ill-informed" ravings from a zealot who, he hypothesizes, was a "deeply repressed, self-loathing" homosexual.
"The contending positions are mutually exclusive," he concludes, and "there can be no compromise." He dismisses conservative views as "frail, fragile and pitiful."
The other three approaches were displayed at a June hearing before the international Anglican Consultative Council. (By coincidence, on the same day, President Bush told a Southern Baptist Convention session he favors amending the U.S. Constitution to protect traditional marriage.)
Perplexity was the outlook of Anglican Church of Canada representatives. Their denomination affirmed the "integrity and sanctity" of homosexual relationships and tolerated a diocese's blessing ceremonies for same-sex couples. The Canadians said they are "seeking discernment" but face "deep divisions" and lack consensus.
Renovation was the policy of the U.S. Episcopal Church in its report "To Set Our Hope on Christ," written by seven theologians. It was the denomination's first official rationale for recognition of the unhindered same-sex blessings in its ranks and for toleration of openly gay clergy, including a bishop.
Traditionalists answered that argument with "A True Hearing," a paper by writers from nine nations that the Anglican Mainstream group gave to delegates to explain the stance endorsed in 1998 by 82 percent of the world's Anglican bishops.
The two papers typified debates within many mainline Protestant groups.
The Episcopal Church's report compared full inclusiveness for gays with the New Testament church's opening to Gentiles. It cited Acts 10, where Peter receives a vision allowing non-kosher foods and then commends baptism for Gentile converts; and Acts 15, where a council sets policy toward Gentiles.
The traditionalist paper said that in Acts 15 the church eliminated Jewish strictures on diet and circumcision for Gentiles, "but there was to be continuity in the moral sphere," since the council upheld Jewish sexual morals by warning Gentiles against "unchastity."
The Episcopal report said ancient Jewish prohibitions in Leviticus were part of a "holiness code" written to sustain Israel's distinctiveness and national survival. It said the code "makes no distinction between ritual and moral regulations," implying the gay ban is as outmoded as, say, rules against blending textiles.
The traditionalists responded that while early Christianity eliminated ritual rules, Jewish teachings against "immoral behavior" remained in force. For instance, the Leviticus passage condemns incest. And New Testament verses endorse Jewish sexual standards.
The key New Testament passage is Romans 1:26-27, where Paul cites both male and female same-sex behavior as departures from God's design.
On that, the Episcopal report said it's legitimate to argue with Paul because he was so "steeped in" Jewish tradition, and to speculate that he might hold different views today considering his enlightened views on Gentiles, women and slaves.
The traditionalists said Paul clearly denounced all same-sex activity, even loving and committed relationships of the sort the Episcopal Church now proposes as the ideal.
As much as the Bible, the Episcopal Church's case relied on psychologists' acceptance of same-sex behavior, the belief that gay orientation is not chosen and churches' positive experiences with homosexual members.
On the Net:
Anglican Mainstream text: http://www.anglican-mainstream. net/truehear.asp
By: Richard N. Ostling | AP Religion Writer
In their tense debate about homosexuality, the world's 77 million Anglicans (called Episcopalians in the United States) take four approaches to biblical teaching: dismissal, perplexity, renovation and traditionalism.
Dismissal is the left-fringe attitude personified by Bishop John Shelby Spong, former head of the Newark, N.J., diocese. In "The Sins of Scripture" (HarperSanFrancisco), he says calling the Bible "the Word of God" (a belief he himself affirmed at ordination) is "perhaps the strangest claim ever made" for a document.
Spong finds the Old Testament's homosexual prohibitions ignorant and "morally incompetent" expressions of "popular prejudices." With the New Testament, he disdains Paul's condemnations as "ill-informed" ravings from a zealot who, he hypothesizes, was a "deeply repressed, self-loathing" homosexual.
"The contending positions are mutually exclusive," he concludes, and "there can be no compromise." He dismisses conservative views as "frail, fragile and pitiful."
The other three approaches were displayed at a June hearing before the international Anglican Consultative Council. (By coincidence, on the same day, President Bush told a Southern Baptist Convention session he favors amending the U.S. Constitution to protect traditional marriage.)
Perplexity was the outlook of Anglican Church of Canada representatives. Their denomination affirmed the "integrity and sanctity" of homosexual relationships and tolerated a diocese's blessing ceremonies for same-sex couples. The Canadians said they are "seeking discernment" but face "deep divisions" and lack consensus.
Renovation was the policy of the U.S. Episcopal Church in its report "To Set Our Hope on Christ," written by seven theologians. It was the denomination's first official rationale for recognition of the unhindered same-sex blessings in its ranks and for toleration of openly gay clergy, including a bishop.
Traditionalists answered that argument with "A True Hearing," a paper by writers from nine nations that the Anglican Mainstream group gave to delegates to explain the stance endorsed in 1998 by 82 percent of the world's Anglican bishops.
The two papers typified debates within many mainline Protestant groups.
The Episcopal Church's report compared full inclusiveness for gays with the New Testament church's opening to Gentiles. It cited Acts 10, where Peter receives a vision allowing non-kosher foods and then commends baptism for Gentile converts; and Acts 15, where a council sets policy toward Gentiles.
The traditionalist paper said that in Acts 15 the church eliminated Jewish strictures on diet and circumcision for Gentiles, "but there was to be continuity in the moral sphere," since the council upheld Jewish sexual morals by warning Gentiles against "unchastity."
The Episcopal report said ancient Jewish prohibitions in Leviticus were part of a "holiness code" written to sustain Israel's distinctiveness and national survival. It said the code "makes no distinction between ritual and moral regulations," implying the gay ban is as outmoded as, say, rules against blending textiles.
The traditionalists responded that while early Christianity eliminated ritual rules, Jewish teachings against "immoral behavior" remained in force. For instance, the Leviticus passage condemns incest. And New Testament verses endorse Jewish sexual standards.
The key New Testament passage is Romans 1:26-27, where Paul cites both male and female same-sex behavior as departures from God's design.
On that, the Episcopal report said it's legitimate to argue with Paul because he was so "steeped in" Jewish tradition, and to speculate that he might hold different views today considering his enlightened views on Gentiles, women and slaves.
The traditionalists said Paul clearly denounced all same-sex activity, even loving and committed relationships of the sort the Episcopal Church now proposes as the ideal.
As much as the Bible, the Episcopal Church's case relied on psychologists' acceptance of same-sex behavior, the belief that gay orientation is not chosen and churches' positive experiences with homosexual members.
On the Net:
Anglican Mainstream text: http://www.anglican-mainstream. net/truehear.asp
Pro-Homosexual UCC Leaders Are Pushing 'Counterfeit' Christianity
By Ed Thomas
July 14, 2005
(AgapePress) - A spokesman for an evangelical renewal organization in the United Church of Christ says the latest vote by church representatives at a recent Atlanta meeting is an important and shameful benchmark for the denomination. During that gathering, UCC General Synod delegates voted to support a same-sex "marriage" resolution and reject a resolution that favored traditional marriage between one man and one woman.
However, executive director David Runnion-Bareford of Biblical Witness Fellowship notes that the General Synod voted to affirm resolutions regarding the lordship of Christ, the centrality of the cross, and other mainstream evangelical doctrines. That leads him to conclude that the UCC is trying to fool people into thinking there is a legitimate Christian blessing on their liberal, pro-homosexual stances.
Runnion-Bareford contends that, compared to all the other Protestant denominations, the UCC stands alone in authorizing all the homosexual alternative lifestyles in a general resolution from its rule-making body and calling them compatible with Christianity. "This is not just simply a very liberal kind of denomination that just doesn't get it about God," he says. "They really are attempting to create a counterfeit that is saleable."
A further indication of this, the Biblical Witness Fellowship spokesman notes, is the fact that there was media coverage and commentary from around the world, including reports from the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) and National Public Radio on the UCC General Synod's decision to endorse same-sex marriage. He even sees something suspect in the timing of an appearance by leading Senate Judiciary Committee Democrat Charles Schumer on ABC's "This Week," where the senator suggested he would make homosexual marriage an issue in the next Supreme Court justice confirmation battle.
Runnion-Bareford believes the UCC intended for its pro-homosexual agenda to get the media attention and discussion it is receiving and took carefully orchestrated steps to see that this would happen. "It's interesting to see the BBC run this as a front item as soon as that vote was taken," he says, "and for Senator Schumer to come out for gay marriage, almost as soon as that vote was taken, in a very strong way."
What is "afoot here" with the United Church of Christ, the church renewal advocate contends, is "an attempt to gain Christian sanction for the ideology that has moved forward in an attempt to let gays gain legal sanctions in the state of Massachusetts." Runnion-Bareford says now that it is clear the UCC leadership wants to help that agenda along, many local churches in the denomination will be forced to take a stance on their doctrine as it relates to the issues of homosexuality and marriage.
July 14, 2005
(AgapePress) - A spokesman for an evangelical renewal organization in the United Church of Christ says the latest vote by church representatives at a recent Atlanta meeting is an important and shameful benchmark for the denomination. During that gathering, UCC General Synod delegates voted to support a same-sex "marriage" resolution and reject a resolution that favored traditional marriage between one man and one woman.
However, executive director David Runnion-Bareford of Biblical Witness Fellowship notes that the General Synod voted to affirm resolutions regarding the lordship of Christ, the centrality of the cross, and other mainstream evangelical doctrines. That leads him to conclude that the UCC is trying to fool people into thinking there is a legitimate Christian blessing on their liberal, pro-homosexual stances.
Runnion-Bareford contends that, compared to all the other Protestant denominations, the UCC stands alone in authorizing all the homosexual alternative lifestyles in a general resolution from its rule-making body and calling them compatible with Christianity. "This is not just simply a very liberal kind of denomination that just doesn't get it about God," he says. "They really are attempting to create a counterfeit that is saleable."
A further indication of this, the Biblical Witness Fellowship spokesman notes, is the fact that there was media coverage and commentary from around the world, including reports from the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) and National Public Radio on the UCC General Synod's decision to endorse same-sex marriage. He even sees something suspect in the timing of an appearance by leading Senate Judiciary Committee Democrat Charles Schumer on ABC's "This Week," where the senator suggested he would make homosexual marriage an issue in the next Supreme Court justice confirmation battle.
Runnion-Bareford believes the UCC intended for its pro-homosexual agenda to get the media attention and discussion it is receiving and took carefully orchestrated steps to see that this would happen. "It's interesting to see the BBC run this as a front item as soon as that vote was taken," he says, "and for Senator Schumer to come out for gay marriage, almost as soon as that vote was taken, in a very strong way."
What is "afoot here" with the United Church of Christ, the church renewal advocate contends, is "an attempt to gain Christian sanction for the ideology that has moved forward in an attempt to let gays gain legal sanctions in the state of Massachusetts." Runnion-Bareford says now that it is clear the UCC leadership wants to help that agenda along, many local churches in the denomination will be forced to take a stance on their doctrine as it relates to the issues of homosexuality and marriage.
Thursday, July 14, 2005
Must be seen to be believed: click on edited bill
Shrimp here: This might sound hystrionic to the humans who don't have this on their sonar, but here it is---they will not be happy until they take over. You take a look at the below. It must be seen to be believed. An openly gay politician took a fisheries research bill and turned it into a gay agenda takeover.
You humans got problem on your hands.
Fish Bill Gutted; Now Smells Like Once-Defeated Homosexual 'Marriage' Legislation
By Jody Brown
July 13, 2005
(AgapePress) - If it looks like a fisheries research bill and smells like a fisheries bill, chances are -- at least in California -- that it's a bill promoting homosexual "marriage." One family advocate in the Golden State calls the resurrection of the once-dead legislation "an abuse of process."
AB 849 originally dealt with California's fish and game code and with ocean and marine fishery research. It had been read before the State Assembly, passed, and sent on to the Senate. Now, after being gutted and amended in late June by San Francisco Assemblyman Mark Leno and his co-authors, it not only has completely new content dealing with "gender-neutral marriage," but a new title as well: the "Religious Freedom and Civil Marriage Protection Act." (See mark-up of AB 849)
The bill, passed on a party-line vote yesterday (July 12) by the California Senate Judiciary Committee, would amend the state family code on marriage, replacing specific references to gender with the generic "person" or "persons." The bill now goes to the Senate Appropriations Committee before the full Senate could vote on it. A similar bill (AB 19) was defeated last month by the State Assembly.
Not surprisingly, Leno -- an open homosexual -- has no problem with the bill's transformation. "I understand there is at times a nefarious reputation to the gut-and-amend process," he tells Associated Press. "That is, rightfully, when it is used at the end of the session, sometimes in the dark of the night when public hearings are short-circuited. Nothing could be further from the truth with this bill."
Randy Thomasson, president of the Sacramento-based Campaign for Children and Families (CCF), was among those who testified against the bill before the Judiciary Committee. "It was an absurd hearing," he says bluntly.
"I reminded the committee members that Californians already voted to say only marriages between a man and a woman were valid in California," he says in reference to the March 2000 initiative approved by more than 60 percent of voters. He also pointed out to the committee that the California State Constitution expressly prohibits the Legislature from repealing the people's vote -- and that AB 489 violates that provision. But Democratic members of the Committee, he says, did not care.
According to Thomasson, Los Angeles Assemblyman Gil Cedillo said, "The people aren't always right. The constitution is a 'living' document." Fremont Assemblywoman Liz Figueroa responded, "It's time to celebrate the virtues this building offers us" -- and Sheila Kuehl of Santa Monica, one of the bill's co-authors, exclaimed: "I'm proud to be a lesbian!"
The CCF president calls AB 849 "an outrageous attack" on marriage, the voters of California, the state constitution, and democracy. "The Democrat politicians' homosexual marriage agenda trashing the people's vote demonstrates that California ... has become a dictatorship," he says. "This is why pro-family Californians must ... take the marriage protection battle into their own hands."
Toward that end, Thomasson is encouraging marriage traditionalists to support the Voters' Right to Protect Marriage Initiative by visiting the website VoteYesMarriage.com. That initiative calls for an amendment to the state constitution defining marriage as between one man and one woman. In addition, the amendment would protect all aspects of marriage -- licenses, rights, etc. -- from courts, government agencies, and government officials.
© 2005 AgapePress all rights reserved
Wednesday, July 13, 2005
Hope that makes it clearer
Shrimp here: I apologize when I get a thing wrong, OK? You let me know if you see any inaccuracies, even if it is just casting something in a less than accurate way.
The editor of the newsletter for the Alberta synod of the ELCIC contacted me to say "Things are not quite so liberal here in Alberta as Roste's article might make it seem." That was in reference to my July 11 post.
That gives me the opportunity to give you the url of their newsletter archive. Go there and read the whole June 2005 newsletter. Good writing from the editor, a pastor gives his take and what he and their congregation is having to go through since their leadership has invited them to "go and play with the wolves," and some other articles.
Past issues of The Forum can be found here
Also look at the May 2004 issue for information related to the post on July 11.
Hope that makes it clearer.
In Christ,
Shrimp
The editor of the newsletter for the Alberta synod of the ELCIC contacted me to say "Things are not quite so liberal here in Alberta as Roste's article might make it seem." That was in reference to my July 11 post.
That gives me the opportunity to give you the url of their newsletter archive. Go there and read the whole June 2005 newsletter. Good writing from the editor, a pastor gives his take and what he and their congregation is having to go through since their leadership has invited them to "go and play with the wolves," and some other articles.
Past issues of The Forum can be found here
Also look at the May 2004 issue for information related to the post on July 11.
Hope that makes it clearer.
In Christ,
Shrimp
Tuesday, July 12, 2005
An Open Letter to Bishop Mark Hanson
From Carl E. Braaten
The Reverend Dr. Mark Hanson
Bishop, Evangelical Lutheran Church in America
8765 West Higgins Road
Chicago, Illinois 60631
Dear Bishop Mark Hanson:
Greetings! I am writing out of a concern I share with others about the theological state of affairs within the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America. The situation might be described as one of “brain drain.” Theologians who have served Lutheranism for many years in various capacities have recently left the ELCA and have entered the Roman Catholic Church or the Orthodox Church in America. Why?
When Jaroslav Pelikan left the ELCA and became a member of the OCA, I felt it was not terribly surprising. After all, he had been reading and writing about the Fathers of Eastern Orthodoxy for so many years, he could quite naturually find himself at home in that tradition, without much explanation. A short time before that Robert Wilken, a leading patristics scholar teaching at the University of Virginia, left the ELCA to become a Roman Catholic.
Then other Lutheran theological colleagues began to follow suit. Jay Rochelle, who for many years was my colleague and the chaplain at the Lutheran School of Theology at Chicago joined the Orthodox Church. Why? Leonard Klein, pastor of a large Lutheran parish in York, Pennsylvania, and former editor of Lutheran Forum and Forum Letter, last year left the ELCA to study for the Roman Catholic priesthood. Why? This year Bruce Marshall, who taught theology for about fifteen years at St. Olaf College and was a long-standing member of the International Lutheran-Orthodox Dialogue, has left the ELCA to enter the Roman Catholic Church. Why? David Fagerberg, formerly professor of religion at Concordia College, although coming from a strong Norwegian Lutheran family, left the ELCA for the Roman Catholic Church, and now teaches at the University of Notre Dame. Reinhard Huetter, a German Lutheran from Erlangen University, came to the Lutheran School of Theology at Chicago fifteen years ago to teach theology and ethics, now teaches at Duke Divinity School, and this year became a Roman Catholic. Why? Mickey Mattox, a theologian who recently served at the Lutheran Ecumenical Institute in Strasbourg and now teaches at Marquette University, has recently begun the process of becoming a Roman Catholic. In all these cases the transition involves spouses and children, making it incredibly more difficult. Why are they doing this? Is there a message in these decisions for those who have ears to hear?
All of these colleagues have given candid explanations of their decisions to their families, colleagues, and friends. While the individuals involved have provided a variety of reasons, there is one thread that runs throughout the stories they tell. It is not merely the pull of Orthodoxy or Catholicism that enchants them, but also the push from the ELCA, as they witness with alarm the drift of their church into the morass of what some have called Liberal Protestantism. They are convinced that the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America has become just another liberal protestant denomination. Hence, they have decided that they can no longer be a part of that. Especially, they say, they are not willing to raise their children in a church that they believe has lost its moorings in the great tradition of evangelical (small e) and catholic (small c) orthodoxy (small o), which was at the heart of Luther’s reformatory teaching and the Lutheran Confessional Writings. They are saying that the Roman Catholic Church is now more hospitable to confessional
Lutheran teaching than the church in which they were baptized and confirmed. Can this possibly be true?
I have decided, without any doubt about it, that I could not re-invent myself to become something else than I was raised to be by my Magadascar missionary parents – an heir of the Lutheran confessing movement. Through theological study and ecumenical engagement I thought I had learned something about what it means to be Lutheran. I have written many books and articles, preached and published many sermons – leaving a long paper trail – over a period of five decades, explaining what it means to be Lutheran.
There is nothing in all of those communications that accommodates liberal protestantism, which Karl Barth called a “heresy,” an assessment with which I fully agree. If it is true that the ELCA has become just another liberal protestant denomination, that is a condition tantamount to heresy. The most damning thing in my view that can be charged against the ELCA is that it is just another liberal protestant denomination. Are all these theologians wrong in their assessment of the ELCA? I wish I could deny it. I have been looking for some convincing evidence to the contrary, because I am not about to cut and run.
There is no place I know of where to go. I do know, however, that the kind of Lutheranism that I learned – from Nygren, Aulen, Bring, Pinomaa, Schlink, P. Brunner, Bonhoeffer, Pannenberg, Piepkorn, Quanbeck, Preus, and Lindbeck, not to mention the pious missionary teachers from whom I learned the Bible, the Catechism, and the Christian faith -- and taught in a Lutheran parish and seminary for many years is now marginalized to the point of near extinction. In looking for evidence that could convincingly contradict the charge that the ELCA has become just another liberal protestant denomination, it would seem reasonable to examine what is produced by its publishing house, theological schools, magazines, publications, church council resolutions, commission statements, task force recommendations, statements and actions by its bishops. The end result is an embarrassment; there is not much there to refute the charge.
As Erik Petersen said about 19h century German Protestantism, all that is left of the Reformation heritage is the aroma from an empty bottle. A lot of the pious piffle remains, but then, so was Adolf von Harnack a pious man. All the heretics of the ancient church were pious men. Our pastors and laity are being deceived by a lot of pietistic aroma, but the bottle is empty. Just ask these fine theologians – all friends and colleagues of mine – who have left the ELCA. They are not stupid people; they don’t tell lies; they don’t make rash decisions. They are all serious Christians. What is happening is nothing less than a tragedy. The ELCA is driving out the best and the brightest theologians of our day, not because it is too Lutheran, but because it has become putatively just another liberal protestant denomination.
I would think that this is a situation that ought to concern you immensely as well as all the leadership cadres of the ELCA. But might it also be the case that the very persons who ought to be troubled by this phenomenon will say to themselves (perhaps not out loud), “good riddance, we won’t be bothered by those dissenting voices anymore? We wish more of their ilk would leave.”
I must tell you that I read all your episcopal letters that come across my desk. But I must also tell you that your stated convictions, punctuated by many pious sentiments, are not significantly distinguishable from those that come from the liberal protestant leaders of other American denominations. I do not disagree with your political leaning to the left. I am a life-long political liberal, unlike many of my friends. My wife and I opposed the unjust war against Vietnam in the 60’s and 70’s, and we have with equal conviction opposed the foolhardy invasion of Iraq by the Bush administration. We also supported the ELCA in its ecumenical actions to re-institute the episcopal office by means of passing the CCM as well as to adopt the Joint Declaration on the Doctrine of Justification with the Vatican. But none of that equates with transforming Lutheranism into a liberal protestant denomination, in terms of doctrine, worship, and morality.
When I finished my graduate studies at Harvard and Heidelberg, I was ordained by the
ELC and served a parish in North Minneapolis, simultaneously teaching at Luther
Seminary. At that time I was instrumental in founding Dialog, a journal of theology, together with Robert Jenson, Roy Harrisville, Kent Knutson, James Burtness, and others, in order to draw midwest Lutheranism into the world-wide orbit of Lutheran theology.
We were not ecumenically oriented at the start. At that time no Luther Seminary professors were dealing with the issues posed by Bultmann, Tillich, Bonhoeffer, Barth, Brunner, Aulen, Nygren and many others. Dialog got the reputation of being a journal edited by young upstarts who thought they knew better. It seemed to us then that most of our professors were not very well informed. But they were good Lutherans, not a single heretic among them. Heresy was not the problem at that time. The journal that our group founded in 1961 has now become the voice of a liberal protestant version of Lutheranism. Robert Jenson and I resigned from the journal as its editors in 1991 to found a new journal, Pro Ecclesia, a Journal of Catholic and Evangelical Theology. In the last fourteen years we have published the articles of theologians of all traditions – Lutheran, Anglican, Catholic, Evangelical, and Orthodox – exhibiting the truth that we all share common ground in the Great Tradition. The same cannot be said of Dialog anymore. It has become a function of the California ethos of religion and morality, nothing seriously Lutheran about it anymore, except the aroma of an empty bottle. Too bad. I was its editor for twenty years and Jenson for ten years, but now in our judgment it has become, perhaps even unwittingly, the very opposite of what we intended. The journal now expresses its belief that to be prophetic is to become the mouthpiece of the denominational bureaucracy, that is, to attack the few dissenting voices in the ELCA.
One day a church historian will write the history of Lutheranism in America. There will be a few paragraphs trying to explain how the self-destruction of confessional orthodox Lutheranism came about around the turn of the millennium and how it underwent a metamorphosis into a liberal protestant denomination. Recently in an issue of the Lutheran magazine you expressed your hope that Lutherans could some day soon celebrate Holy Communion with Roman Catholics. My instant reaction was: it is becoming less and less likely, as the ELCA is being taken hostage by forces alien to the solid traditions Lutherans share with Roman Catholics. The confessional chasm is actually becoming wider. So much for the JDDJ! The agreement becomes meaningless when Lutheranism embarks on a trajectory that leads to rank antinomianism.
Where do we go from here? I am going nowhere. Meanwhile, I am hearing rumors about
a possible schism or something about the formation of a dissenting synod. None of that will redound to the benefit of the one, holy, catholic and apostolic church we confess in the Creed. Each person and congregation will do what they deem fitting and appropriate in view of the apostasy that looms on the horizon of our beloved Lutheran Church. My friend Wolfhart Pannenberg has stated that a church that cannot take the Scriptures seriously is no longer a church that belongs to Jesus Christ. That is not an original statement of his or mine, but one said by every orthodox theologian in the Great Tradition, including Athanasius and Augustine, as well as Martin Luther and John Calvin. Does the ELCA take the Scriptures seriously? We will soon find out. Whoever passes the issue off as simply a hermeneutical squabble is not being honest – “we have our interpretation and you have yours.” Who is to judge who is right? The upshot is ecclesiastical anarchy, sometimes called pluralism. To each his own. Chacun son gout!
I am extremely sorry it has come to this doctrinally unstable situation in the church I was ordained to serve almost half a century ago. My father and two of his brothers served this church in Madagascar and China. My brother and sister served this church in the Camaroons and Madagascar. My cousins have served this church as ordained ministers in this country and abroad for decades. Knowing them as well as I do, I am confident in stating their belief that this church in some of its expressions is not remaining truly faithful to the kind of promises they made upon their ordination to the Christian ministry.
Can the situation which I have described in stark terms be remedied? Have we reached
the point of no return? Are we now hopelessly mired in what Karl Barth identified as
“Kulturprotestantismus?” I know of about half a dozen Lutheran renewal groups
desperately trying to call the ELCA back to its foundational texts and traditions. Would they exist if there were no problem that needs to be addressed? How many congregations and pastors have left or are leaving the ELCA for other associations?
One day we will have to answer before the judgment seat of God as to what we have
done for and against the Church of Jesus Christ. There will be no one by our side to help us find the words to use in response. All of us will have many things for which to repent and to implore God’s forgiveness. And we will all cry out, “Lord, have mercy!”
Sincerely in Christ our Lord,
Carl E. Braaten
From Carl E. Braaten
The Reverend Dr. Mark Hanson
Bishop, Evangelical Lutheran Church in America
8765 West Higgins Road
Chicago, Illinois 60631
Dear Bishop Mark Hanson:
Greetings! I am writing out of a concern I share with others about the theological state of affairs within the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America. The situation might be described as one of “brain drain.” Theologians who have served Lutheranism for many years in various capacities have recently left the ELCA and have entered the Roman Catholic Church or the Orthodox Church in America. Why?
When Jaroslav Pelikan left the ELCA and became a member of the OCA, I felt it was not terribly surprising. After all, he had been reading and writing about the Fathers of Eastern Orthodoxy for so many years, he could quite naturually find himself at home in that tradition, without much explanation. A short time before that Robert Wilken, a leading patristics scholar teaching at the University of Virginia, left the ELCA to become a Roman Catholic.
Then other Lutheran theological colleagues began to follow suit. Jay Rochelle, who for many years was my colleague and the chaplain at the Lutheran School of Theology at Chicago joined the Orthodox Church. Why? Leonard Klein, pastor of a large Lutheran parish in York, Pennsylvania, and former editor of Lutheran Forum and Forum Letter, last year left the ELCA to study for the Roman Catholic priesthood. Why? This year Bruce Marshall, who taught theology for about fifteen years at St. Olaf College and was a long-standing member of the International Lutheran-Orthodox Dialogue, has left the ELCA to enter the Roman Catholic Church. Why? David Fagerberg, formerly professor of religion at Concordia College, although coming from a strong Norwegian Lutheran family, left the ELCA for the Roman Catholic Church, and now teaches at the University of Notre Dame. Reinhard Huetter, a German Lutheran from Erlangen University, came to the Lutheran School of Theology at Chicago fifteen years ago to teach theology and ethics, now teaches at Duke Divinity School, and this year became a Roman Catholic. Why? Mickey Mattox, a theologian who recently served at the Lutheran Ecumenical Institute in Strasbourg and now teaches at Marquette University, has recently begun the process of becoming a Roman Catholic. In all these cases the transition involves spouses and children, making it incredibly more difficult. Why are they doing this? Is there a message in these decisions for those who have ears to hear?
All of these colleagues have given candid explanations of their decisions to their families, colleagues, and friends. While the individuals involved have provided a variety of reasons, there is one thread that runs throughout the stories they tell. It is not merely the pull of Orthodoxy or Catholicism that enchants them, but also the push from the ELCA, as they witness with alarm the drift of their church into the morass of what some have called Liberal Protestantism. They are convinced that the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America has become just another liberal protestant denomination. Hence, they have decided that they can no longer be a part of that. Especially, they say, they are not willing to raise their children in a church that they believe has lost its moorings in the great tradition of evangelical (small e) and catholic (small c) orthodoxy (small o), which was at the heart of Luther’s reformatory teaching and the Lutheran Confessional Writings. They are saying that the Roman Catholic Church is now more hospitable to confessional
Lutheran teaching than the church in which they were baptized and confirmed. Can this possibly be true?
I have decided, without any doubt about it, that I could not re-invent myself to become something else than I was raised to be by my Magadascar missionary parents – an heir of the Lutheran confessing movement. Through theological study and ecumenical engagement I thought I had learned something about what it means to be Lutheran. I have written many books and articles, preached and published many sermons – leaving a long paper trail – over a period of five decades, explaining what it means to be Lutheran.
There is nothing in all of those communications that accommodates liberal protestantism, which Karl Barth called a “heresy,” an assessment with which I fully agree. If it is true that the ELCA has become just another liberal protestant denomination, that is a condition tantamount to heresy. The most damning thing in my view that can be charged against the ELCA is that it is just another liberal protestant denomination. Are all these theologians wrong in their assessment of the ELCA? I wish I could deny it. I have been looking for some convincing evidence to the contrary, because I am not about to cut and run.
There is no place I know of where to go. I do know, however, that the kind of Lutheranism that I learned – from Nygren, Aulen, Bring, Pinomaa, Schlink, P. Brunner, Bonhoeffer, Pannenberg, Piepkorn, Quanbeck, Preus, and Lindbeck, not to mention the pious missionary teachers from whom I learned the Bible, the Catechism, and the Christian faith -- and taught in a Lutheran parish and seminary for many years is now marginalized to the point of near extinction. In looking for evidence that could convincingly contradict the charge that the ELCA has become just another liberal protestant denomination, it would seem reasonable to examine what is produced by its publishing house, theological schools, magazines, publications, church council resolutions, commission statements, task force recommendations, statements and actions by its bishops. The end result is an embarrassment; there is not much there to refute the charge.
As Erik Petersen said about 19h century German Protestantism, all that is left of the Reformation heritage is the aroma from an empty bottle. A lot of the pious piffle remains, but then, so was Adolf von Harnack a pious man. All the heretics of the ancient church were pious men. Our pastors and laity are being deceived by a lot of pietistic aroma, but the bottle is empty. Just ask these fine theologians – all friends and colleagues of mine – who have left the ELCA. They are not stupid people; they don’t tell lies; they don’t make rash decisions. They are all serious Christians. What is happening is nothing less than a tragedy. The ELCA is driving out the best and the brightest theologians of our day, not because it is too Lutheran, but because it has become putatively just another liberal protestant denomination.
I would think that this is a situation that ought to concern you immensely as well as all the leadership cadres of the ELCA. But might it also be the case that the very persons who ought to be troubled by this phenomenon will say to themselves (perhaps not out loud), “good riddance, we won’t be bothered by those dissenting voices anymore? We wish more of their ilk would leave.”
I must tell you that I read all your episcopal letters that come across my desk. But I must also tell you that your stated convictions, punctuated by many pious sentiments, are not significantly distinguishable from those that come from the liberal protestant leaders of other American denominations. I do not disagree with your political leaning to the left. I am a life-long political liberal, unlike many of my friends. My wife and I opposed the unjust war against Vietnam in the 60’s and 70’s, and we have with equal conviction opposed the foolhardy invasion of Iraq by the Bush administration. We also supported the ELCA in its ecumenical actions to re-institute the episcopal office by means of passing the CCM as well as to adopt the Joint Declaration on the Doctrine of Justification with the Vatican. But none of that equates with transforming Lutheranism into a liberal protestant denomination, in terms of doctrine, worship, and morality.
When I finished my graduate studies at Harvard and Heidelberg, I was ordained by the
ELC and served a parish in North Minneapolis, simultaneously teaching at Luther
Seminary. At that time I was instrumental in founding Dialog, a journal of theology, together with Robert Jenson, Roy Harrisville, Kent Knutson, James Burtness, and others, in order to draw midwest Lutheranism into the world-wide orbit of Lutheran theology.
We were not ecumenically oriented at the start. At that time no Luther Seminary professors were dealing with the issues posed by Bultmann, Tillich, Bonhoeffer, Barth, Brunner, Aulen, Nygren and many others. Dialog got the reputation of being a journal edited by young upstarts who thought they knew better. It seemed to us then that most of our professors were not very well informed. But they were good Lutherans, not a single heretic among them. Heresy was not the problem at that time. The journal that our group founded in 1961 has now become the voice of a liberal protestant version of Lutheranism. Robert Jenson and I resigned from the journal as its editors in 1991 to found a new journal, Pro Ecclesia, a Journal of Catholic and Evangelical Theology. In the last fourteen years we have published the articles of theologians of all traditions – Lutheran, Anglican, Catholic, Evangelical, and Orthodox – exhibiting the truth that we all share common ground in the Great Tradition. The same cannot be said of Dialog anymore. It has become a function of the California ethos of religion and morality, nothing seriously Lutheran about it anymore, except the aroma of an empty bottle. Too bad. I was its editor for twenty years and Jenson for ten years, but now in our judgment it has become, perhaps even unwittingly, the very opposite of what we intended. The journal now expresses its belief that to be prophetic is to become the mouthpiece of the denominational bureaucracy, that is, to attack the few dissenting voices in the ELCA.
One day a church historian will write the history of Lutheranism in America. There will be a few paragraphs trying to explain how the self-destruction of confessional orthodox Lutheranism came about around the turn of the millennium and how it underwent a metamorphosis into a liberal protestant denomination. Recently in an issue of the Lutheran magazine you expressed your hope that Lutherans could some day soon celebrate Holy Communion with Roman Catholics. My instant reaction was: it is becoming less and less likely, as the ELCA is being taken hostage by forces alien to the solid traditions Lutherans share with Roman Catholics. The confessional chasm is actually becoming wider. So much for the JDDJ! The agreement becomes meaningless when Lutheranism embarks on a trajectory that leads to rank antinomianism.
Where do we go from here? I am going nowhere. Meanwhile, I am hearing rumors about
a possible schism or something about the formation of a dissenting synod. None of that will redound to the benefit of the one, holy, catholic and apostolic church we confess in the Creed. Each person and congregation will do what they deem fitting and appropriate in view of the apostasy that looms on the horizon of our beloved Lutheran Church. My friend Wolfhart Pannenberg has stated that a church that cannot take the Scriptures seriously is no longer a church that belongs to Jesus Christ. That is not an original statement of his or mine, but one said by every orthodox theologian in the Great Tradition, including Athanasius and Augustine, as well as Martin Luther and John Calvin. Does the ELCA take the Scriptures seriously? We will soon find out. Whoever passes the issue off as simply a hermeneutical squabble is not being honest – “we have our interpretation and you have yours.” Who is to judge who is right? The upshot is ecclesiastical anarchy, sometimes called pluralism. To each his own. Chacun son gout!
I am extremely sorry it has come to this doctrinally unstable situation in the church I was ordained to serve almost half a century ago. My father and two of his brothers served this church in Madagascar and China. My brother and sister served this church in the Camaroons and Madagascar. My cousins have served this church as ordained ministers in this country and abroad for decades. Knowing them as well as I do, I am confident in stating their belief that this church in some of its expressions is not remaining truly faithful to the kind of promises they made upon their ordination to the Christian ministry.
Can the situation which I have described in stark terms be remedied? Have we reached
the point of no return? Are we now hopelessly mired in what Karl Barth identified as
“Kulturprotestantismus?” I know of about half a dozen Lutheran renewal groups
desperately trying to call the ELCA back to its foundational texts and traditions. Would they exist if there were no problem that needs to be addressed? How many congregations and pastors have left or are leaving the ELCA for other associations?
One day we will have to answer before the judgment seat of God as to what we have
done for and against the Church of Jesus Christ. There will be no one by our side to help us find the words to use in response. All of us will have many things for which to repent and to implore God’s forgiveness. And we will all cry out, “Lord, have mercy!”
Sincerely in Christ our Lord,
Carl E. Braaten
Stripping the Emperor's Clothes
The Presiding Bishop of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America was born in Minneapolis on Dec. 2, 1946, the son of a Lutheran Pastor. While his father was a noted speaker for the Pietist Lutherans, his son distanced himself by going to the liberal extreme. After graduation from Minnehaha Academy in 1964, Mark earned a bachelor's degree in sociology from Augsburg College in 1968. He was a Rockefeller Fellow at Union Theological Seminary from 1968 to 1969, received a master of divinity degree from Union Theological Seminary, New York, in 1972, and attended Luther Seminary, St. Paul, Minn., from 1973 to 1974. His critics wonder if Hanson has ever gotten over the thrill of anti-Vietnam War protests at Columbia and the heady days of Liberation Theology at Union Seminary.
Mark Hanson was known to be a liberal bishop before elected as Presiding Bishop, and has consistently pushed that agenda to the point that the ELCA might literally break apart. However, it is not his liberal politics that most alienates his more conservative membership (nearly 70% according to Mark Noll, church historian at Wheaten), it is the near intellibility of liberal theology to ears raised on Luther and the Bible. Both Jesus and Luther spoke plainly when they talked to people. Hansen speaks in platitudes.
However, when a Lutheran theologian begins to read what Hanson speaks as he goes arounf, they are puzzled to find any Lutheranism in his working theology at all. One wonders what the percetages of Lutheranism is left in this brew? It is the same in all liberal mainline churches in their last gasp of course (i.e., Philip Turner's "The Working Theology of the ECUSA," or consider how mcu Puritan is left in the rhetoric of the UCC and John Thomas).With this in mind read the following:
At the national WELCA convention Hanson said the following things:
1) Hanson told the delegates that, to comment on the state of the ELCA, the best way to prepare is to ask the church's 5 million members about the state of their faith."The state of the ELCA depends on the vitality of the faith of the baptized of this church," he said, noting that to be Lutheran is to recognize "all the baptized are called."
RESPONSE: Nothing could be further from the truth than to say that the state of the ELCA depends upon the vitality of the faith of he baptized of this church.
The fate of the institutional ELCA is logically independent of the faith of its members. Hanson's statement assumes that an increase in individual faith will eventuate in praxis which affirms the ELCA. Nothing could be more absurd, those I suppose Cardinal Cajetan might have thought the same thing. If anything, an increase in individual faith might lead to further disintegration of the ELCA.
To say that all the baptized are called is nonsense (and is unbiblical and nonconfessional), and it makes magic (ex opere operato) out of baptism. To be called by the Holy Spirit is to come to saving faith in Christ. Many who are baptized do not have saving faith. If one denies this, then they are followers of Origen and the ancient heresy of universalism.
2) The ELCA is unique because it is not organized in a hierarchy but on the principle of interdependence with many groups inside and outside the ELCA, Hanson said. He emphasized the church's interdependence "with the body of Christ ecumenically and globally."
The ELCA is a "mature" 18-year-old church, which must be interdependent with others. At next month's ELCA Churchwide Assembly,voting members will decide whether to adopt a proposal for interim Eucharistic sharing with the United Methodist Church, Hanson said. In his role as also president of the Lutheran World Federation, Geneva, Switzerland, Hanson said he will meet Pope Benedict XVI on Nov. 6 at The Vatican.
RESPONSE: Has Hanson never met Ratzinger? Has he read any of his stuff? I have no idea what Hanson is talking about with the "interdependence" stuff. Is he saying that the hierarchical ELCA is contextualized with other groups? If so, then hierarchy is fully compatible with interdependence. I can hardly wait to be
interdependent with the United Methodist Church. In fact, I think I shall invite my Methodist friends over for beer and brats and talk about their reaction to the Book of Concord, particularly the article on free will.
3) The ELCA must confront racism and reach out to new members across all ethnicities, Hanson said. The Churchwide Assembly in Orlando, Fla., will also make decisions on questions regarding homosexuality, he said."I don't fear what will happen in Orlando. We are going to Orlando to be the body of Christ," Hanson said. Christians in the United States must look at themselves through the eyes of global partners, he said. Many in the world look at the United States and see it "drunk with economic power . mesmerized with our military might," Hanson said. He said now is the time for Lutherans in the United States to remind fellow citizens that we are part of a global family.
RESPONSE: The Unitarians are still confronting religious intolerance, and they are quite irrelevant in an age of religious tolerance. As the ELCA exists to confront the "isms", we will (and are becoming)irrelevant in an age where everybody (especially the government)confronts the "isms".
I believe that many in the world (especially many within Islam) look at us as being fat cats, immoral, addicted to hedonism. They see us more as drunk on needing our pleasure fix than on being mesmerized by our military might. Of course, Hanson still thinks in 1960s categories. He has really never grown-up and cannot look at the world in fresher ways.
4) Focusing on the gathering theme, "Act Boldly," Hanson said to act boldly does not mean to act alone but "communally" not arrogantly "but in humility."
Finally, Hanson said some tension in the church is a sign of vitality. "I worry
about a church that is concerned about conflict," he said. He challenged the delegates to think about how they read the Bible, reminding them that wherever Jesus walked he caused tension and questioned people in authority.
"We need to engage tension and remain healthy," he said. "We must speak openly and respectfully with each other."
RESPONSE: Which of the two valid ways of reading scripture is Hanson using when talking about Jesus here? It makes a difference if he is the Messiah of God or a wandering cynic philosopher."
Comment?
Monday, July 11, 2005
Educators' Union Lays Strategy to Offset Attacks on Pro-Homosexual Policies
By Jim Brown and Jody Brown
July 11, 2005
(AgapePress) - The National Education Association (NEA) has adopted a new strategy to counter opposition to the formation of Gay-Straight Alliance clubs in public schools, and has condemned opponents of those clubs.
At its recent convention in Los Angeles, representatives of the 2.7-million-member NEA voted overwhelmingly to develop a comprehensive strategy to deal with "the new and more sophisticated attacks" against policies that create a safe environment for "gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender" (GLBT) students in schools. The Washington Times quotes the chairman of the Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual and Transgender Caucus of the NEA, who asserted that "extremist groups are using increasingly sophisticated and aggressive tactics to attack school districts with affirming GLBT policies, curriculum, and practices."
Jeralee Smith, founder of the NEA's Conservative Educators Caucus, says she is not surprised by the vote, considering the homosexual-affirming nature of the NEA's representative assembly.
"The thing that made me extremely sad was to hear the speeches [by proponents of the strategy] ... because they attacked the quality of life and the personal decisions of people who have left the homosexual lifestyle," Smith shares. She describes those comments as "a direct attack" that "affected me a lot personally, because it's my own personal story."
According to the Times report, a delegate from Pennsylvania stood to speak in opposition to the proposal and to point out that homosexual-affirming school programs ignore the fact that some people have left the homosexual lifestyle. That delegate, says the Times, was interrupted by booing from the convention floor, causing NEA president Reg Weaver to bring debate on the matter to a close.
Smith says the NEA has no tolerance for former homosexuals. "None of the actions that we have made in the NEA have been against their choice," she notes, "and yet it seems to be okay to completely undercut and trash the choice of people who decided they don't want to adopt a gay identity and [instead] become ex-gay or heterosexuals."
Smith, who has been in the union for four years, says the NEA views delegates who speak out against pro-homosexual policies as "plants from the religious right." But that apparently does not dissuade her from pressing on. She says since the NEA uses her union dues for political purposes, she believes she can make a bigger difference by "putting her mouth where her money goes" instead of dropping out of the union.
© 2005 AgapePress all rights reserved
July 11, 2005
(AgapePress) - The National Education Association (NEA) has adopted a new strategy to counter opposition to the formation of Gay-Straight Alliance clubs in public schools, and has condemned opponents of those clubs.
At its recent convention in Los Angeles, representatives of the 2.7-million-member NEA voted overwhelmingly to develop a comprehensive strategy to deal with "the new and more sophisticated attacks" against policies that create a safe environment for "gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender" (GLBT) students in schools. The Washington Times quotes the chairman of the Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual and Transgender Caucus of the NEA, who asserted that "extremist groups are using increasingly sophisticated and aggressive tactics to attack school districts with affirming GLBT policies, curriculum, and practices."
Jeralee Smith, founder of the NEA's Conservative Educators Caucus, says she is not surprised by the vote, considering the homosexual-affirming nature of the NEA's representative assembly.
"The thing that made me extremely sad was to hear the speeches [by proponents of the strategy] ... because they attacked the quality of life and the personal decisions of people who have left the homosexual lifestyle," Smith shares. She describes those comments as "a direct attack" that "affected me a lot personally, because it's my own personal story."
According to the Times report, a delegate from Pennsylvania stood to speak in opposition to the proposal and to point out that homosexual-affirming school programs ignore the fact that some people have left the homosexual lifestyle. That delegate, says the Times, was interrupted by booing from the convention floor, causing NEA president Reg Weaver to bring debate on the matter to a close.
Smith says the NEA has no tolerance for former homosexuals. "None of the actions that we have made in the NEA have been against their choice," she notes, "and yet it seems to be okay to completely undercut and trash the choice of people who decided they don't want to adopt a gay identity and [instead] become ex-gay or heterosexuals."
Smith, who has been in the union for four years, says the NEA views delegates who speak out against pro-homosexual policies as "plants from the religious right." But that apparently does not dissuade her from pressing on. She says since the NEA uses her union dues for political purposes, she believes she can make a bigger difference by "putting her mouth where her money goes" instead of dropping out of the union.
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Equal Time
Shrimp here: I could be laying myself open to a charge of being one-sided, so this week I am going to feature the comments of the opposition and leave the rebuttal up to you all.
The first Revisionist is Vaughn Roste, from ELCIC. He writes, "The Bible, more often than many would like to believe, is often just that: metaphor. This does not make it any less true ... I believe the Bible is absolutely 100% true. Some of it even actually happened."
Read the whole thing: Alberta's Lutheran Church enters homosexual debate.
The first Revisionist is Vaughn Roste, from ELCIC. He writes, "The Bible, more often than many would like to believe, is often just that: metaphor. This does not make it any less true ... I believe the Bible is absolutely 100% true. Some of it even actually happened."
Read the whole thing: Alberta's Lutheran Church enters homosexual debate.
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