Global or local, change comes painfully slow.

August 17, 2009 by Dan Hooper.

The recent brouhaha within the Anglican communion over the Episcopal Church decision to continue liberalizing its views of gay/lesbian clergy is apparently nowhere stronger than in Africa. It has been estimated that within a few years, Africa will be the defacto geographic center of Christendom. Not Rome, not Salt Lake City, not Minneapolis. Hmmm.

I have ranted before about Anglican Archbishop of Nigeria Peter Akinola, who is extremely hostile to homosexuality and is leading the fight to splinter up the worldwide Anglican communion over the presence of the Rt. Rev. Gene Robinson, the openly gay Episcopal Bishop of New Hampshire. Although the ELCA and the Episcopal Church are in full communion, strictly speaking I don’t have a dog in their fight, so Archbishop Akinola doesn’t frighten me.

So much the global perspective on the culture and sex wars here in America. It is hard to open up and relax a church body in America when it fears to weaken relationships in the ecumenical scene which it has spent generations strengthening.

But what about ordinary people of faith at the local level? Are we chopped liver to the Christian church while bishops and archbishops angrily argue over the doctrine of sex? (Is there even a doctrine of sex?)

This past Sunday, a visitor walked in to worship with us in Hollywood, who identified himself afterward as an ELCA pastor from the adjacent synod who has been out from under his parish call for several years. He spent them getting an advanced degree but is now struggling with the internal faith/vocation issue of whether to seek to return to active ministry or not. He is gay and partnered, among other things.

In our system, you have 3 years to accept another call to a position or you automatically drop off the clergy roster of the ELCA, unless some extension or special circumstances are arranged. The clock is ticking for this gay pastor, as it is for all of us who have spent our careers serving a church that has been hostile to (at best) indifferent to our presence.

This week’s vote in Minneapolis may be helpful or meaningful for him, but the most important thing remains his own sense of discernment. Does he believe he still has a vocation to serve in word and sacrament? Is he willing and able to make enormous sacrifices to serve in Christ’s stead in a world still filled with hatred, fear, phobias, and Christians with feet of clay?

This is the local expression of the sex/culture and faith wars. Who was it (a famous somebody?) that said: “the greatest battles a person will ever fight are inside his own head”?

—Pastor Dan Hooper, Los Angeles

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