Different histories in moving forward.

July 18, 2010 by Pastor Dan.

A couple of weeks ago (okay, I’m slow to process everything. I have a life and a “day job.”) the Presbyterians met in the same city as the Lutherans did 11 months ago, to conduct their periodic denominational business and to change their “gatekeeping” control over their clergy—specifically their LGBT clergy.

The Presbyterians aren’t getting as much press on their decision for a variety of reasons. For one thing, the Unitarians/Universalists, United Church of Christ, Episcopal Church and Evangelical Lutheran Church in America have beaten them to it, so the media become less interested. Secondly, this didn’t go as far as the Lutheran decisions, and this may not stick at all.

The action of the General Assembly is similar, in fact, to what their denomination attempted to do several years ago. On the up side 53% of the convention delegates decided to approve policy changes to permit same-gender clergy who are not abstinent—they are sexually active—to still serve as clergy.

But I’m not excited yet for my Presbyterian colleagues. This convention action doesn’t take effect unless a majority of the presbyteries (groups of local churches) agree. Two years ago, 94 of the 173 local presbyteries voted it down (54%). Weeks later, by the way, and that news was off the front page.

The other issue is that unlike the Lutheran decision, the Presbyterian one on July 9 was not connected to a thorough study and official statement about human sexuality that recognized the validity of same-sex intimate relationships. According to Associated Press, the Presbyterian delegates ” decided not to redefine marriage in their church constitution to include same-sex couples.”

Well, the Lutherans didn’t “redefine marriage” either but made some room for an understanding that gay or lesbian couples may have valid relationships. For all the years that Lutheran activists “belly-ached” about the ELCA dodging the decisions by sending out our lives for another study, the last study process actually paid off. It involved more people at more levels of the church in a sincere attempt to understand what LGBT people are about, and especially why we can be people of faith just like heterosexuals can be. In fairness, it’s important to know that many denominations, including Lutherans and Presbyterians, etc. have conducted studies of human sexuality and homosexuality. (Many of them take up chunks of drawer space in my filing cabinets because they were done before you could download them as a PDF file.) But it has been repeatedly observed that the only minds changed by sexuality studies are those who actually participated in them—usually the commission members who read, interviewed, debated and drafted the reports, not the official board which received the reports.

Although it now seems that the ELCA is more progressive than the Presbyterian Church U.S.A. or the United Methodist Church (which rejected gay marriage 15 months ago) continues to dig in its heels for similar reasons—there are thousands of country churches or small town churches that do not want to look at the sexuality issues at all), progress can be a double-edged sword. The partly-approved new Presbyterian policy would allow non-celibate (a misnomer for sexually active) individuals to be ordained and serve as clergy and presumably elders of the church. The ELCA action was more intentional in opening its gates to clergy who are either sexually abstinent or in a lifelong PALM or publicly accountable, lifelong, monogamous relationship—a far cry from sexual libertinism.

In effect, the Lutheran decision means that by recognizing the validity of committed same-gender relationships the church expects gay or lesbian people to be held to an ethical standard which is identical, except for the gender of the partner, to a heterosexual marriage. The Presbyterian measure apparently doesn’t go that far because the delegates didn’t want to affirm a redefinition of marriage.

So my gay Presbyterian colleague across town, if this policy is not rejected by 87 local presbyteries who shudder and wince at the thought of a West Hollywood or San Francisco, could be “recognized” as a non-celibate pastor. Since he is single and not coupled let alone married, he would slide into a normalized status without having to cross his fingers behind his back. But my Lutheran colleague across town who is officially “single” but sexually-active in a series of short-term, no commitment, quick-but-not-deep relationships, would likely be scrutinized carefully about his sexual expression and his non-permanent boyfriends. But since I am in a publically-accountable, lifelong monogamous relationship (monogamous for 34 years; the public accountability wasn’t possible until Domestic Partnerships became legal a few years ago) ??  I have nothing to fear from such scrutiny, which doesn’t afford me any smugness. Homophobic people wouldn’t care one whit about the distinction I have raised.  

Change has its costs as well as benefits. Plainly, if LGBT people want to be treated with respectability and to be able to not keep their sexuality and their relationships in a stifling closet, they have to get used to the idea that there are other ethical standards in the community which are broader and more important than the gender of one’s “significant other.”

So while the LGBT/Presbyterian activists may be disappointed that the marriage redefinition failed in convention, and may be further disappointed if the local presbyteries don’t support the one positive decision in Minneapolis, they may have two or more years to get used to additional levels of public accountability.

—Pastor Dan Hooper

Posted in Sex, Lesbian/Gay Marriage, Doctrine, Ecumenical Issues, History, LGBT Christian, ELCA | Print | No Comments »

Blessed are . . . but woe unto!

April 27, 2010 by Pastor Dan.

“Blessed are you who are poor, for yours is the kingdom of God. “Blessed are you who are hungry now, for you will be filled. Blessed are you who weep now, for you will laugh. . . .

“But woe to you who are rich, for you have received your consolation. Woe to you who are full now, for you will be hungry. Woe to you who are laughing now, for you will mourn and weep.” —Luke 6:20–25

My friend Robert and his wife were visiting for a week from the Midwest. We got into long conversations about how different California is from where they live, and how different the churches are. Robert is African-American, and an astute observer of the almost completely white culture around him, including church culture.

It seems to me that most of all, the line between Christian values and social attitudes gets completely blurred out, so that where you live and what the social setting is like will profoundly impact your faith life. In the part of the Midwest where Robert lives, successful middle and upper-middle class people with Republican politics and conformist social attitudes prevail. He has heard a lot of frustration and anger, for example, over the decision that the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America made last summer to finally open its doors to partnered gay and lesbian clergy. And he hears a lot of frustration and anger about politics under the Obama administration. “they’ve taken my country away! I want my country back!” he says dramatically, imitating the big tears from his neighbors and even his brother-in-law.

If there is any one thing which is pulling this country apart, it is the underlying sense of privilege and entitlement held by many of its citizens. the people who currently have and hoard privileges will “squeal like a stuck pig” at the slightest suggestion that they must share those privileges with others who do not have them. (If you pool together all of the individual pleas for justice, equality and a decent life from many quarters that are individually dismissed as “special interests” you get a picture of the great big chunk of our nation’s people who don’t have privileges.)

Of course privilege and entitlement are grounded in or mixed up with a belief in the scarcity of all things. I cannot share my wealth with others, for example, because then I won’t have as much. I cannot share equality or justice with others because then I would suffer injustice. Blah, blah, blah.

Racism is a belief that one’s race entitles one to privileges that persons of another race cannot or should not have.

The current rant about illegal immigration is intimately tied into racism, where “Mexicans” (a conflated label for all Latin Americans used by people who are not Latin American) are the “new niggers.”

People with power and privilege, of course, have always maneuvered everything that power and privilege affords them to keep their power and privilege. Legislators who feel privileged and powerful will write the laws and stack the decks to keep their perks. Banks and insurance companies will continue to rig our entire economic system to keep themselves rich. But when the aggregate of “special interests” team up on them – often called “populism”—people of privilege begin to “stoke the fires of indignation”—a phrase form Rachel Maddow that fits a lot of extremist politics going on right now.

In my view, much of the perpetual partisan impasse in Congress and in state legislatures is grounded in this sense that privilege and entitlement are endangered. Politicians who would rather say “no” to everything are implicitly saying “no change” in the status quo, And to defend the status quo is not to say that the world is perfect the way it is, but to say that my position in the world as it is must be defended at all costs.

From a Christian point of view—not one overly affected by the comfortable social values of the middle and upper classes—defending privilege and entitlement is completely contrary to the Gospel of Jesus. His dire warnings were mostly directed at the privileged classes of his ancient society: the priests, scribes and Pharisees that formed the upper social class. Yes, it seems wrong to mix politics and religion (some readers of this will have quit about eight paragraphs ago!), but the fix for that is to not let the politics of privilege influence our faith in God’s justice and care for all people, especially those who have not privileges or entitlement.

—Pastor Dan Hooper

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Faithful discernment in reactionary times.

March 30, 2010 by Pastor Dan.

There is little doubt that America and the world are going through “reactionary times.” The whole human race seems to have a “knee-jerk” response to every stimulus, from fundamentalist Islam to fundamentalist Christianity on several continents. Then there is politics, in which it seems every commentator strives to become a loudmouth, and every loudmouth strives to run for office.

We might like to walk away from all this, but the apostles of reactionary thinking hunt us down, invade our privacy, and badger us with inflammatory and indignant dichotomies. If I hear one more person, secular or religious, who declares that the current state of affairs is an “Armageddon” I think I will puke.

(Armageddon, by the way, appears only once in the entire Bible in one measly verse, Revelation 16.16. Its place and meaning are fraught with interpretive pitfalls, but I think it’s interesting that the folks who insist that the entire Bible must be taken literally take this one verse symbolically. If Armageddon is an actual geographical place where the final battle between God and Satan will take place, then that will be in the Holy Land—if anybody can ever figure out where Mount Megiddo is. Even crazier, Rev. 16:16 indicates “the place that in Hebrew is called Armageddon,” but alas there is no such word or place in the Hebrew Bible or Hebrew language. Hmmm.)

One thing seems certain to me ~ the final battle between good and evil is not likely to happen in New Brighton, Minnesota (home of the reactionary Word Alone club) or any of the dozen odd places around the U.S. where conservative Lutherans have their shorts in a knot over last summer’s decision by the churchwide assembly of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America to allow the ordination of lesbian and gay clergy.

As we have observed in recent months, there are sub-armagiddish battles going on in Lutheran congregations over whether they should stay in the national churchbody or instead run to . . . wherever they think that queers are least likely to turn up, I guess.

Even I have to rethink my time-honed prejudices about red and blue states, open and closed minds and the progressive or retentive expressions of ideas about God and human sexuality. I was delighted to read that as group of 18 current and retired/emeritus faculty from one of our seminaries —not one I had considered “progressive” by any stretch— have decided to speak up in favor of the ELCA’s churchwide decisions, in other words, in support of its discernment that LGBT people are also children of God and full brothers and sisters to other Christians. Faculty from Lutheran Theological Southern Seminary in Columbia, South Carolina have issued the Columbia Declaration, with an entire web site publishing various resources in support of the ELCA’s actions, including materials with biblical, historical, confessional, practical and missional focus.

Some of these resources tread over well-worn liberalizing paths, but one can hope that perhaps some new people will walk these paths and discover new territory. If you want fresh material to think through these controversies today, I commend the articles published here.

The “Columbia Declaration” (obviously dubbed in distinction from the so-called Manhattan Declaration last fall) says in part,

We believe that the ELCA’s Assembly actions are consistent with the biblical and Lutheran confessional tradition. We therefore support the opening of the roster of the ELCA to qualified and approved candidates for ministry who are in lifelong, committed, publicly accountable, monogamous same-sex relationships. We also support the actions of the Assembly that create the possibility for individual congregations who so choose to bless same-sex unions.May I just quote and echo the concluding remarks of Rev. Dr. Harold F. Park from Southern Seminary: After instituting the Lord’s Supper, Jesus said to the eleven disciples, “I give you a new commandment, that you LOVE one another, just as I have loved you.” Jesus did NOT say, “that you AGREE with each other.” Then in His prayer to the Father before being crucified for OUR sins, Jesus prayed, “…that they may all be ONE, just as we are one . . . completely one.” (John 17: 21,23)In reading and applying the Bible, I give much more importance to the words of JESUS than to the words of Paul or the Old Testament writers.Amen.— Pastor Dan Hooper, Los Angeles

Posted in Doctrine, Lesbian/Gay Marriage, Bible & Interpretation, LGBT Christian, Ministry, History, ELCA | Print | No Comments »

We’re here, we’re queer, we’re Christian.

February 27, 2010 by Pastor Dan.

Further to my recent post on the “core” of the faith and those congregations voting to leave the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, the March 2010 issue of the Lutheran magazine has one entire News page devoted to this mess. From this source, a box with a fraying rope picture reports:

Congregations vote to leaveTwenty-eight of the ELCA’s some 10,200 congregations passed a second and final vote to leave the denomination as of Feb. 4.  The Office of the Secretary also reported an additional 128 passed a first vote, while first votes in 64 congregations failed.  In four congregations the votes are being disputed.  Nineteen of the ELCA’s 65 synods had no congregations taking votes.Synods with the most congregations taking votes were: Montana (17), Southwestern Texas (12), East-Central Synod of Wisconsin (11), Southeastern (11), Pacifica (10) [Orange County, California, etc.] and Eastern Washington-Idaho (10).”The Lutheran magazine is trying to be even-handed and journalistically professional. At least they’re reporting this, rather than hiding or ignoring the conflict.  On the same page, other news briefs indicate that some congregations that had been withholding benevolence money from the denomination over the pro-LGBT vote last August have now decided to begin donating it again.  The news also reports on an Iowa congregation that is disputing with its bishop over the exact count of a 2/3 vote of voting members needed to leave the denomination.  And meanwhile the Northeastern Iowa Synod Council has rescinded two very anti-gay resolutions it had previously adopted.  Iowa, you will remember, has legal same-sex marriage, so it’s an issue that is closer to home than the streets of San Francisco.  But such turmoil! trouble! disagreement! 

And, we are the people who started all this?  Well, hardly.  No.  We refuse to take responsibility for homophobic reactions to our lives.  We are LGBT Christians, in the midst of the larger church, who decided to claim our integrity as well as our inborn sexuality.  We decided to be honest, to tell our church that we are here and that we have faith and that we want to fully participate in the community’s life of faith with honesty. All the turmoil is not coming from us, but from the people who can’t handle the truth. When they are prodded to handle the truth, some of them want to flee from the church, and want to believe they are being driven out.  Hey, we could write the manual on what it feels like to be driven out, and guess what?  We didn’t leave.  We are the people of faith who didn’t cave in or go away when we felt unwelcome because we knew the truth that God welcomes, God includes, God blesses, and God heals.

I know there are thousands—millions—of people raised in the Church of Christ who came to terms with their sexuality and no longer have anything to do with any church.  Some are deeply scarred and have rejected all religion, all Christian spirituality.  Others long to come home, but they are not about to come home unless it is safe to do so.  They need assurance they will not get beat up again.

Watching the ELCA come to terms with its lesbian and gay clergy is kind of like watching a family come to terms with a lesbian daughter or a gay nephew.  You want to walk away—quickly—but it’s your family, and something deeply rooted in you believes that, because you know your family, they will eventually come around.  It’s still painful watching them argue with each other, and bring up their wildly irrational fears and complaints, but after awhile, all the emotion sort of drains out of it, and they are still the same people we’ve lived with our whole lives.  They’ll get over it and life will go on.

All I can do is commend these people, this church, and this process, to the all-embracing arms of God.

—Pastor Dan Hooper

Posted in LGBT Christian, Lesbian/Gay Marriage, Faith, Public Affairs, Ministry, Coming Out, ELCA | Print | No Comments »

The “core” of the faith: not about sex.

February 25, 2010 by Pastor Dan.

Associated Press had a feature story yesterday on the dissenters who are leaving the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America because of its increasingly liberal agenda. The story, which is even-handed if not totally sympathetic, highlights the experiences of several Lutheran churches—some small and some large— and pastors who have taken action to abandon their membership in the ELCA.

This kind of thing is not new. From time to time for decades thee have been individual congregations who get exercised over one or another issue and cannot countenance having organizational relations with people who do not agree with them on whatever pressing issue of the day is causing a stir.

You can read the full story here: Lutherans seeing fallout over gay clergy issue.

Statistically, the division is insignificant. Only a couple hundred congregations out of the ELCA’s 10,000+ have taken any steps to leave because the ELCA is now on a path to officially welcome lesbian/gay clergy in same-sex intimate relationships. Here in Southern California, we’ve seen a couple of these couple hundred, and most of them have been small congregations, and one or two very large parishes that are full of themselves and must feel a certain economic and egotistic independence.

The thrust of the AP story is that not all these conservative congregations are moving in the same direction. They are splitting off into several different little splinter groups which have formed in the last decade or so as receptacles for them.

The one that has any significance is called Lutheran CORE, headed by one Rev. Mark Chavez. CORE hopes to form a new denomination by August called North American Lutheran Church. By my count off their web screen, they have 135 congregations in the U.S. and 4 in Canada, plus some overseas. Hardly a counter-Reformation.

CORE posts some theological statements, among which stuff on traditional views of marriage and family figures prominently. But they also had this article that intrigued me, “The Diminution of God as Father (And his Holy Pronouns)” written by the Bishop Emeritus of the ELCA Virginia Synod. (Ahh, Virginia again: think Falwell, think 3/5 of a human being…) Turns out that author Rev. Richard Bansemer is exercised about contemporary prayer language that tires to diminish he, him, and his in referring to God the Creator. His 1,900 word essay (about the length of a typical Sunday sermon for me: a 12-minute listen) has a couple dozen quotes from the Bible, and nothing from any other Christian scholar ancient or modern. So it’s a light weight argument that implies that the ELCA is going under because we have diminished the God-our-Father language.

Will these men ever get it? A good place to start is the scholarly work by Gail Ramshaw, God Beyond Gender [Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1995] and her chapter, “Pronouns and the Christian God.”

Bansemer and his ilk in CORE, I guess, wouldn’t be interested in Ramshaw’s finding that the brilliant ancient Cappadocian Fathers of the 4^th century (St. Basil the Great, Bishop of Caesarea in Cappadocia, St. Gregory, Bishop of Nazianzus and St. Gregory, Bishop of Nyssa) wrote and taught that God is not male in the way that human beings are male and female. These guys were as orthodox as you could get, and triumphed at the Council of Constantinople in a.d. 381 over Arianism. Ramshaw notes Gregory of Nazianzus “ridiculing those who would draw from the gender designation in language a notion of actual sexuality within God.”

That God is consistently referred to in the Bible with masculine is above all an effort to distinguish the Hebrew and Christian faith(s) from the pagan goddess worship in the ancient world, a religious paradigm which was very obsessed with fertility and therefore with sexuality.

Why bring all this trivia up? Much of CORE’s theological statement seems obsessed not only with gender but with the same relentless masculine privilege that has plagued the Christian faith almost since the day they crucified our first feminist: Jesus Christ. CORE’s Advisory Council, for example, is made up of 17 men and 2 women.

Counter reformation: you can have the CORE.

But worse, CORE looks like an effort to keep beating a drum which is small and bent: the idea that there are deep and fundamental theological issues over which no compromise with the ELCA is possible, and those fundamental issues are all about gender and human sexuality. Somebody should tap the CORE people on the shoulder and point out to them that there is not much in the ancient creeds and confessions about gender and not a word about human sexuality. The faith of the church—the ancient church, the modern church, the ELCA, is our faith in God and in Jesus Christ, not our faith in marriage, family, gender, sexuality, homosexuality, gender role models or the proper way to bring up children in a home with one mom and one dad. In short, CORE has staked out its uniqueness in the same sand trap used by most other contemporary indignational movements that represent the right wing of the so-called Culture Wars.  As for me and my house, we will keep the faith.

—Pastor Dan Hooper

Posted in Doctrine, Sex, Bible & Interpretation, LGBT Christian, ELCA, Uncategorized | Print | No Comments »

The Spirit moves among us.

February 11, 2010 by Pastor Dan.

I was quite astonished to read the following, because the subject matter in the e-mail didn’t completely display in my window. The parable in this is that you have to wait for the last word, in this case, “lifted.” I think my spirits are lifted, too.  — P.D.

Censure of Abiding Peace Lutheran Congregation LiftedBishop Gerald Mansholt, ELCA Central States Synod, has lifted the censure against Abiding Peace Lutheran congregation of Kansas City, Missouri, which had been imposed in March 2001 because the congregation called and ordained Pastor Donna Simon the previous October. Pastor Donna is rostered with Extraordinary Lutheran Ministries (ELM) and was ordained extraordinarily (meaning outside the normal rubrics of the ELCA) under a provision in the Lutheran Confessions allowing such ordinations when bishops can’‘t or won’‘t.

Pastor Donna has served that congregation since her ordination and call. That service and her ministry drew praise from the bishop. In his letter to the congregation, he said of Pastor Donna, a lesbian not yet on the roster of the ELCA, and her service as pastor for nine years: “…though ordained outside the established processes of the Church, Pastor Simon has been a gracious witness among us in this synod as well as in the larger Church. She has spoken the truth in love, and shared her witness and struggle as a baptized child of God, even as she has prayed for a day of wider understanding and acceptance in the Church.”

Bishop Mansholt, in notifying the synod of the lifting of the censure, repeated the above praise for Pastor Donna and commented on the faithfulness of the congregation at Abiding Lutheran: “As the Church studied, prayed and conversed with one another over the matters of gay and lesbian people in the Church, Abiding Peace Church might have walked away. But they remained in the Church and stayed in dialog with brothers and sisters who were trying to make sense of these issues in the light of the Gospel. They kept on praying for a better day, a time of wider awareness and acceptance. . . . I know the congregation also longs for the day when their pastor might be welcomed onto the roster of the ELCA.”

Emily Eastwood, Executive Director, Lutherans Concerned, said, “We are very pleased that the stalwart faithfulness and grace-filled witness of both Pastor Donna Simon and the congregation of Abiding Peace have at long last been recognized and uplifted by the Church and the body of Christ they serve so well. It is our fervent, prayerful hope and our continuing advocacy that more of the Church come to understand and honor the service of LGBT Lutherans as we continue the journey from ignorance, misunderstanding and oppression into the light of Christ Jesus.”

See http://tiny.cc/PE9ks for the full text of Bishop Mansholt’s letter to the Central States Synod.

Phil Soucy

Director Communications LC/NA

communications@lcna.org

Posted in LGBT Christian, Faith, History, Ministry, ELCA | Print | No Comments »

Is he still totally nuts?

January 14, 2010 by Pastor Dan.

I first heard it at a clergy association meeting yesterday, and all I could do was shake my head, again, that Pat Robertson cannot resist publicly saying inane and inappropriate things, especially when natural disasters happen. It is one thing to blame Hurricane Katrina destroying New Orleans on legalized abortion (I am not making this up! You might also enjoy Wikipedia’s entry on the “fringe theories” behind Hurricane Katrina), but to allude that a slave rebellion in 1791 in a “pact with the devil” has anything to do with natural disasters takes an extra special dose of hubris and ignorance.

See: “Pat Robertson links Haiti quake to pact with devil” in the Los Angeles Times, January 13, 2010.Pat Robertson completely misses the heart of Christian faith in trying to explain why things happen in terms of the Devil! I was more saddened than shocked at his public comment and its follow-up effort to save face.The heart of our faith as Christians is to live out the compassion of Jesus in our own times, both in our own community and wherever people are in need. Our own congregation is just beginning to explore ways to respond to this disaster as we did three years ago when we sent $2,000 directly to people affected by the South Asian tsunami, which was enough to re-build an entire building.We are also connected with ELCA International Disaster Response, which is seeking immediate financial gifts to send on to long-standing relief and assistance partner agencies. One hundred percent of all donations go directly to the disaster response. (There is no overhead or administrative percentage held out. Anyone interested in helping can find information about giving at www.elca.org/disaster.)

Robertson’s latest foot-in-mouth or head-up-behind remark cannot be overlooked as the musings of a doddering old man His broadcasting empire still influences huge numbers. Officially founded 50 years ago this week, CBN’s own web site claims that the 700 Club has an average viewership of 1 million, and that the media empire Robertson built broadcasts to 200 countries.

But Pat Robertson’s own sense of “compassion” seems to be pathetically limited (Americans United’s Barry Lynn labels his remarks “grotesque insensitivity“), in my opinion based on a follow-up statement form the 700 Club quoted in the Times story:

Hours after his comments ignited a firestorm in the news media and online, Robertson’s “The 700 Club” TV show issued a statement elaborating on his remarks. . . .”Dr. Robertson never stated that the earthquake was God’s wrath,” the statement went on. It added that “Dr. Robertson’s compassion for the people of Haiti is clear. He called for prayer for them.”As part of Robertson’s bizarre legacy, last October the CBN network warned trick-or-treaters about demonic Halloween candy. Eight years ago Robertson and the late Jerry Falwell blamed the September 11, 2001 attacks on the ACLU, feminists, abortionists and homosexuals.It has been estimated that Robertson’s personal fortune may be approaching $1 billion. He personally owned an oil refinery here in Southern California and a diamond mine in South Africa. If he were disposed from a Christ-like heart, he could personally finance an enormous amount of relief efforts in Haiti.Robertson’s own life expectancy isn’t so hot (he turns 80 in March). At his point in life he ought to be giving more thought to his legacy than his ego. What true ministry has he put into place which is Christ-like? Instead he will leave a legacy of ignorant and arrogant comments about the supposed sins and demonic forces behind high-profile calamities.

—Pastor Dan Hooper

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Posted in Environment, Fundamentalism, Public Affairs, PRAYERS, ELCA | Print | No Comments »

Tell Minnesota about your life and faith.

November 25, 2009 by Pastor Dan.

My friend Steve just tipped me off to an informal survey which Minnesota Public Radio is conducting about reactions to the ELCA’s August 2009 decision to allow same-gender-partnered clergy in its ranks. In recent days more than a thousand people have expressed their opinion to MPR’s Public Insight Network. Here is how the network summarizes it:

“Of the people who wrote to us, most said they haven’t considered leaving the church over the ELCA’s stance allowing people in committed same-gender relationships to be pastors. In fact, many were concerned that we are giving too much attention to those who want to leave, rather than focusing on the story that most individuals and churches plan to stay with the ELCA. Some wrote to say that this change will bring them back to the church, or keep them from leaving.”

Here is the link to add your name and commentary. Or click on the graphic.

Of the 1,100 people who have written responses, MPR says that 150 are clergy (15%). So I decided to add my “two cents” to their survey:

“I am one who never left the church, not during college years, not even when I came out as a gay man. In seminary, I was deeply conflicted until I gained the spiritual maturity to see that the Gospel was speaking to me with the good news that it is not my achievements nor my self-denial which earned me God’s favor. It is pure grace.

“I began to serve the Church as an ordained pastor–at first closeted, over time less closeted, more outspoken. When the church pushed me off its clergy roster in 1991 I remained faithful anyway. In 2004 I was called back to ministry, by a courageous Lutheran congregation willing to ignore the rules, and specifically to do outreach with gay and lesbian people. I remain in ministry with Hollywood Lutheran Church in an increasingly diverse local community. We are grieved that other powerful and fearful churches threaten to pull out of the ELCA (God bless them wherever they come to rest). As for me and our parish, we continue to give thanks to God for courage, compassion, and open-hearted ministry wherever it springs up. And we believe the Holy Spirit speaks to all through these things.”

Obviously I could say a lot more. This is probably the most condensed form (in 200 words) I have ever told my story and explained my faith.

The hardest to explain briefly is my growing confidence that what has happened in the ELCA, over the last number of years which reached its dramatic conclusion last August, powerfully illustrates the work of the Spirit among us as we try to arrive at truth. It is not the absence of 100 or so congregations which are voting to exit, or the larger number of those congregations who are retaliating against the ELCA by withholding funds, which will change the course of the church to follow Christ more closely. It is the growing number of congregations, pastors and individuals who act courageously, pray fervently, offer hospitality to LGBT people and reserve judgment, and gradually come to see their role in the larger ministry of grace and healing which the whole Christian Church has been given. Regardless of threats of schism, we absolutely must use the courage God gave us to do what is right, continue ministry, speak honestly and lovingly, and not hide in closets of fear or uncertainty.

—Pastor Dan Hooper

Posted in Faith, LGBT Christian, "The Closet", Living by Grace, Public Affairs, Ministry, Coming Out, ELCA | Print | No Comments »

We’re here. We’re Christian. Get used to it.

November 23, 2009 by Pastor Dan.

The year 2009 has already been momentous enough in the world of faith, what with both the Episcopal Church and the Lutheran Church taking decisive left turns on sexuality issues. The Episcopal Church essentially ended its self-imposed moratorium of electing a lesbian/gay bishop, after the existence of out gay Bishop Gene Robinson set the world’s conservative Anglican into a firestorm of indignation.

Then a month later the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America did something almost unthinkable for a mid-America-dominated outfit of good decent folks: it lifted the 20 year old ban on the ordination of partnered lesbian and gay people into the Lutheran ministry. Since that momentous day in August, everybody seemed to threaten to stop talking to the Lutherans, including other Lutherans, Catholics, etc.

Every denomination of Christians knows full well that they already have lesbian and gay clergy in their ranks. But most of them have preferred the continuous hypocrisy of plausible deniability – that they are unaware or even sincerely believe that they do not have lesbian and gay clergy because, well, they don’t allow such a thing. (By the way, the word “plausible” has an interesting history of its own.)

At any rate, the outrage and indignation over the reality of sexual variation even among decent and God-fearing people, is at least the flashpoint for a lot of upheaval in the Christian world.

Upheaval is usually caused by a lot of light material being tossed around by stronger forces. (I imagine the example of, say, a card table full of champagne glasses is upset by a fast-moving house pet.) There is far less upheaval of any sort when something is built on bedrock, and I always thought that the Christian faith was built on bedrock. I was brought up to believe that. More on that later.

But upheaval there is, and many well-respected commentators have been suggesting now for years that what we see emerging is an enormous realignment in the world of religion. Breakaway groups from mainline Protestant denominations, for example, may simply team up and form new unions.

So as the CORE Lutherans announce they are moving ahead to form their own little churchbody, we can’t help wondering if they will eventually converge with the Lutheran Church–Missouri Synod if that latter can trust their conservatism, or even the Wisconsin Evangelical Lutheran Synod (which is really not evangelical and not Lutheran in my humble opinion).

As a side note, I will watch with enthusiasm mixed with amazement to see how many ELCA congregations actually do go with the CORE movement. My count today on their web site is that 87 congregations are moving in their direction. Keep in mind that somewhere between 300 and 400 ELCA congregations have signed on with the Lutherans Concerned Reconciling in Christ program to publicly welcome lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people. So at the moment this doesn’t look like a serious realignment of apocalyptic proportions.

But the this ecumenical thing popped into the news, the so-called Manhattan Declaration which came out three days ago, that attempts to put up a barricade to the enormous social change of recent decades, over the signatures of Orthodox, Catholic and Evangelical Christians.

(It seems more than a little odd this group would grab the title from the climate change people who in 2008 issued the Manhattan Declaration in Manhattan. This month’s 7-page religious moratorium was actually released in Washington D.C., not New York. I suppose now anybody could just write up his or her own version of truth and issue it under the title “The Holy Bible,” and it would be okay, huh?)

But this seems to fit the pattern of that “strange bedfellow” coalition of Mormons and Roman Catholics who donated huge sums to “defend” heterosexual marriage in California and again in Maine.

Bruce Garrett, of Truth Wins Out has written a cogent piece (”Statement Of Conscience: Just Give Us The Money”) on the Declaration and warns of its blatantly anti-gay political agenda.

Is there a real Christian realignment going on? Realignment is hard to detect for certainty when things change at glacial speed. And you know how the media loves to exaggerate, hence the word “upheaval” when 87 out of 10,000 congregations pick up their marbles and leave the ELCA’s game.

Personally, I doubt that there is a grand realignment that will abide for very long. The Mormon/Catholic alliance over Proposition 8 was a marriage of convenience. Both, as I have said, did their best to take the moral heat off of their own houses (a wild history of plural marriages, and a current pattern of sexually-abusive priests and pedophiles) by amping up their indignation over same-sex marriage.

Even in the current Declaration, there is so little holding Evangelical and Catholics together theologically that I doubt it means a massive or fundamental realignment. There are still plenty of evangelical Christians who think the Pope is Antichrist, for example. And Benedict XVI hasn’t done anything to dispel that age-old antipathy. It was more than amusing to see the Catholic News Agency identify some of the writers who put the Declaration together as including “renowned Evangelical leader Charles Colson.” Charles Colson, of Watergate notoriety? Charles Colson, who wrote “Born Again” in 1976 after serving time in prison for obstruction of justice? Well, I guess so, because he got into bed with ex-Lutheran convert to Roman Catholicism (the late) Richard John Neuhaus to publish “Evangelicals and Catholics Together: Toward a Common Mission” in 1995. (You can get your used copy from Amazon right now for 59¢.)

And I suspect the Orthodox are not about to cave into Roman Papal authority any time soon, especially in light of its astonishing resurgence in post-Soviet Russia. The ecumenism of recent years on that front has Orthodoxy being cordial but not really trusting the Papacy. And Benedict is not likely to suggest parity with the Patriarch. His recent”generous” offer to welcome disaffected Anglicans back into the Roman fold, for example, smacks of canon law machinations: an Anglican bishop can become a Roman priest, keeping his wife but forfeiting his episcopate. Gee thanks, Ben.

If the Christian faith and witness is built on real bedrock, it is not the bedrock of Christian history nor a unified view of the divisive social issues in any era. It could only be the bedrock of the Lordship of Jesus Christ and the historic creeds and confessions of what it means to be Christian. (So there go the Mormons, who hold to some very odd beliefs about God, Jesus, Adam, and human beings becoming Gods, and who turn up their noses at the ancient statements of faith.) Clearly, the bedrock of Christian faith, and the “core” of Lutheran theological teachings, are about what God does for humanity in Jesus Christ. Those core believes including nothing about who is Pope or whether one needs a pope, a bishop or a priest. the core believes including nothing about human sexuality, homosexuality, or marriage, for that matter.

You can appeal all you want to tradition, and loyalty to the real Holy Bible, but unity of faith is grounded on a great deal more than widely-held prejudices and a quickly assembled outrage and bluster promulgated to grab the attention of the media. And most important, a 7-page statement drawn up by indignant traditionalists does absolutely nothing to make reality go away. And a significant part of reality is that there are lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer and questioning human beings out there, many of whom were raised in Christian homes and in spite of all the conservative bluster still acknowledge the Lordship of Jesus Christ. We’re here, we’re queer. We’re Christian. Get used to it. Do I have to say that into Latin?

— Pastor Dan Hooper

Posted in Doctrine, Catholic matters, Bible & Interpretation, Ecumenical Issues, History, LGBT Christian, ELCA | Print | No Comments »

Deeply flawed at the core.

November 21, 2009 by Pastor Dan.

My friend Steve writes/rants about the latest ecclesiastical saber-rattling:

Hey, it’s Thursday, so the Lutherans must be forming yet another break-away denomination. Did you see the LA Times today? A little piece from AP that the CORE group is moving ahead more rapidly than they had originally anticipated in the formation of a new denomination for those unhappy with the direction of the ELCA. [Good background article from Associated Press here]

Well, need I say it? What will their foundational docs look like: “We are the church that thinks homosexuality is a sin.” So much for the solid rock of faith. E gads.

AND what a phenomenal WASTE of resources…to put all that energy into leaving and forming something “new” (which is, in actuality, a rehash of something very OLD…can you say “Missouri?”) What good could be done with all those resources!

Oh, and so much for the “bound conscience.” These folks, apparently, were never bound to anything but their own dogmatism. As soon as they didn’t get their way, they decided to take their marbles and go home. OK, bye!

SO…maybe NOW the ELCA will be able to move into God’s future, unencumbered by these folks. There’s a vision you can hang your hat on!

End of rant (for now).

My thoughts (which I will one day express just a tad more completely): the church that is held together merely by habit and antipathy to someone else’s sex life is deeply flawed. May God bless them. They need it. – DH

Posted in Doctrine, Sex, Bible & Interpretation, LGBT Christian, Ministry, ELCA | Print | No Comments »

After the eye of the storm.

October 29, 2009 by Pastor Dan.

The Evangelical Lutheran Church in America is still passing through a storm of internal discernment and anxiety about the vote taken by the voting members at its August biennial Assembly to liberalize its rules about lesbian/gay clergy. Before that vote was taken, there was a lot of noise and threats. The vote was like the eye at the center of a hurricane. Now the aftermath is playing out in congregations over whether to leave the denomination or not.Congregations who are probably as far away from interacting with lesbian or gay clergy as possible still feel compelled to consider breaking ties with the Church of their heritage. This is always the way it is. A congregation on the North Dakota prairie is in fact not affected or impacted by whether a congregation in urban California or Illinois has a lesbian or gay pastor. But they also have little to no contact with LGBT people. Their own closeted young people probably left town as fast as possible to look for a better life elsewhere, and the families of LGBT people simply don’t want to expose themselves to ridicule or misunderstanding. So these parishes –even larger ones— keep up the pretense that “we don’t have that problem here,” and feel they can’t even send their mission dollars to a denomination that welcomes us. This past Wednesday, I heard our own Bishop report on a few congregations in this Synod which are acting out the same scripts as in the news release below. Here it is harder to believe that an urban Los Angeles congregation could be so naive, or could not have recognized a powerful statistic: if one out of every ten people is lesbian or gay, then one out of every four families has a family member who is lesbian or gay. When a church says “not welcome!” to the larger community, it is putting one fourth of its own families on notice that they must enter the closet with the lesbian or gay family member and stay there.

—Pastor Dan Hooper

ELCA News Service  -  October 29, 2009 09-241-JB

Some ELCA Congregations Vote to Leave or Redirect Funds, Find It’s Not EasyCHICAGO (ELCA)—Throughout the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA), leaders and members have responded in a variety of ways to changes in the church’s ministry polices, a decision made by voting members of the 2009 Churchwide Assembly. Some members agreed with the decision. Some were opposed. Some weren’t sure how to react. Since the assembly, some ELCA congregations have taken votes to leave the denomination or redirect funds away from the ELCA. Leaders and members in a few such congregations report it’s not always easy to make such choices, and there can be unintended consequences.

The 2009 assembly, which met Aug. 17-23 in Minneapolis, adopted proposals to change ELCA ministry policies. One change makes it possible for Lutherans in publicly accountable, lifelong, monogamous same-gender relationships to serve as ELCA associates in ministry, clergy, deaconesses and diaconal ministers.

For some ELCA leaders and members, the assembly directive was inconsistent with their understanding of biblical authority. They often repeat the assertion that “the ELCA has left them.” The assembly also adopted by exactly a two-thirds majority a social statement on human sexuality. The statement addressed a wide range of matters related to human sexuality, but a portion of it addressed same gender relationships, causing disagreement among the voting members.

Through Oct. 27, the ELCA Office of the Secretary reports an estimated 50 of the ELCA’s 10,396 congregations have taken first votes to leave the denomination or have scheduled them, nearly all because of the assembly’s actions on sexuality. Five such votes have failed. The estimate is based on reports from synod bishops, said David D. Swartling, ELCA secretary.

Some Vote to Leave the ELCA or Try. Generally congregations that want to leave the ELCA are required to take two votes, at least 90 days apart, and must achieve a two-thirds majority of voting members present for each vote. They are also required to “consult” with the synod bishop between votes to leave. Former Lutheran Church in America congregations and ELCA- established congregations must be granted “synodical approval” before their ELCA membership is terminated. The same approval is needed if the congregation chooses to be independent or relate to a non-Lutheran church body. At Wangen Prairie Lutheran Church, Cannon Falls, Minn., 31 members of the 40-member congregation voted 20-11 to leave but failed to achieve the required two-thirds needed under constitutional rules. That has left the Rev. Joy M. Gonnerman, who serves the congregation half-time, with a difficult situation. And she expects some members to challenge the vote. Gonnerman told the ELCA News Service the congregation narrowly defeated an attempt to leave in 2005, after the churchwide assembly that year declined a proposal to change ministry policies. She said Wangen Prairie’s ELCA membership “has been tenuous at best.”

“I keep praying for them, keep preaching and keep administering the sacraments,” she said. Gonnerman noted that most of the 11 who voted to stay attend worship regularly, and many of the others don’t. “I find that those so angry about the sexuality issue talk a lot about God, but not much about Jesus.

We (Lutherans) read the Bible through the lens of Jesus,” Gonnerman said. Gonnerman said she focuses on keeping the congregation together. “I work on unity. My goal as pastor is to work on unity and welcome people with their diverse ideas.” In the coming weeks she said she will offer guidance to members and keep in mind that whatever the congregation decides to do “must come from within.”

A similar situation exists at Christ Lutheran Church, Cottonwood, Minn., which voted 74-44 on Oct. 18 to leave the ELCA, but the vote failed to achieve a two-thirds majority. The congregation’s president, Joel C. Dahl, declined to be interviewed by the ELCA News Service, but said in an e-mail message, “I have hopes that after some further education of our congregation, we will vote again in the affirmative to separate from the ELCA and join another Lutheran denomination.” He told the Marshall Independent newspaper that an informational meeting for the congregation is planned sometime next month.

The Rev. James L. Demke, pastor, confirmed that the 600-member congregation will have “more discussion about the issues.”

St. John Lutheran Church, a 1,200-member congregation in Roanoke, Va., voted 342-143 to leave the ELCA Sept. 27, barely achieving the two thirds majority required. The congregation plans to take a second and final vote to leave the denomination Jan. 10, said the Rev. Mark A.

Graham, senior pastor. Graham explained that the congregation has been discussing issues of marriage, family and human sexuality for many years. After the churchwide assembly acted, he and St. John’s two associate pastors recommended to the congregation council that St. John begin the process to leave the ELCA on the grounds that “the ELCA has left traditional biblical teaching.”

It has not been an easy process. Graham expects as many as one-third of the members will leave the congregation. Some have already left. “The last thing I ever expected is to bring a recommendation that would cause conflict and division,” he said in an interview. “I know there are good Christians who disagree with us. It breaks my heart, but we see no other way.”

Even if the pastors had not made their recommendation, Graham believes many members would have left on their own, perhaps more than the one-third St. John expects to lose. “We would have had conflict here either way if we had not taken action,” he said.

And what will happen if St. John fails to achieve a two-thirds majority at its second vote in January? Graham paused when asked that question. He said he will have some decisions to make about his own future in the ELCA.

“We’ve had publicity about this, and it’s not the kind I’m proud of. It’s a hard thing to convince people that were not anti-homosexual. We’re trying to convey a deep love for the Word of God. It breaks my heart that my own denomination would make decisions based on other factors,” he said.

About five congregations have taken two votes to leave the ELCA so far this year, the ELCA secretary reports. Of those, the largest was Community Church of Joy, Glendale, Ariz., which formally left Sept. 27. Only 129 of its 6,800 baptized members were present for the second vote, which was unanimous.

Some Choose to Withhold Funds. Some ELCA congregations, unhappy with the assembly’s actions, have stopped sending funds to support synod and churchwide ministries. The funds are used, for example, “to plant and renew congregations, to raise up and train leaders in seminaries and campus ministries, to send missionaries, to respond to hunger at home and abroad, and to rebuild communities after natural disasters,” said the Rev. Mark S. Hanson, ELCA presiding bishop, in a Sept. 23 letter to the church’s professional leaders.The ELCA Constitution requires the churchwide organization, synods and congregations “to share in the responsibility to develop, implement and strengthen the financial support program of this church.” Similar required language appears in the ELCA’s Model Constitution for Synods and the Model Constitution for Congregations, yet, decisions are being made in some places to direct funds elsewhere.

The congregation council at 250-member Peace Lutheran Church, Rockdale, Texas, suspended its benevolence payments to the ELCA shortly after the congregation’s pastor, the Rev. Janice A. Campbell, returned from the assembly where she was a voting member. Instead, it sent its September funds to support a Lutheran orphanage in Tanzania and will send funds for the remainder of 2009 to a local food bank and Lutheran Disaster Response, a collaborative ministry of the ELCA and the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod. Peace’s annual benevolence is nearly $21,000, according to the 2009 ELCA Yearbook.

Campbell told members from the beginning that she didn’t want anyone to leave, and she urged the congregation members to respond together. Campbell said she is concerned about a member and a family that may leave the congregation. “I don’t want to lose those people. It is important that we listen to one another,” she said.

Some members are talking about joining Lutheran Congregations for Mission in Christ (LCMC), she said. “I don’t know if I’m going with them or not. LCMC is not for me,” she said. Campbell said she has been a strong supporter of the ELCA Southwestern Texas Synod in the past. Global relationships are more valuable to Campbell than is the denomination, she said. In particular Lutherans in Africa have much to teach the ELCA, she said. Campbell said she was not happy that objections to the sexuality proposals voiced by Lutheran churches in Africa were “skimmed over” and not shared with voting members at the assembly.

“I wish there was a way for the ELCA to come to realization that this was a catastrophic (theological) error,” she said of the actions on sexuality. “I will continue to pray for the ELCA, for the synod and for the bishops.”

The congregation council at St. Luke Lutheran Church, Cottage Grove, Minn., made a similar decision. St. Luke’s senior pastor, the Rev. Timothy J. Housholder, a churchwide assembly voting member, declined to be interviewed for this story. But he wrote to his congregation earlier this month that, since the assembly, he had received more than 100 communications, most expressing concern about the decisions. The council redirected remaining 2009 benevolence funds away from the ELCA Saint Paul Area Synod and the churchwide organization, he said, “to allow time for St. Luke to ‘breathe’ and discern what the ELCA’s recent actions mean for us.” Lutheran Social Services and Lutheran World Relief will be sent St. Luke’s funds, Housholder reported. St. Luke has 2,200 baptized members, and gives about $43,000 annually in benevolence funds.

Not all are in agreement. Two members of St. Luke, Rebecca and Alan Holz, wrote to the South Washington County Bulletin newspaper saying that the decision to withhold the funds was made without approval of the church’s members. “My husband and I feel strongly that this act is counter to what St. Luke’s prior statement to the community was of ‘the Welcoming Church,’ and we are deeply disappointed we were not allowed to express our views prior to the council’s decision,” their Oct. 14 letter said.

Member Natalie Seim also wrote the paper’s editor to point out that the council’s vote to begin “discernment” was not shared by all members. The council has scheduled a forum for St. Luke members on Nov. 1.

For information contact: John Brooks, Director (773) 380-2958 or news@elca.org

http://www.elca.org/news ELCA News Blog: http://www.elca.org/news/blog

Posted in "The Closet", LGBT Christian, Ministry, ELCA | Print | No Comments »

Crocodile tears and sincere prayers.

October 13, 2009 by Dan Hooper.

California church gives up property after diocese split

Associated Press ~ 10.13.2009 10:05am EDT (via 365Gay.com)(Los Angeles) A conservative Los Angeles-area church that broke away from the Episcopal Church over theological differences and the consecration of a gay bishop is giving up its property.  St. Luke’s Anglican Church in La Crescenta is being returned Monday to the Episcopal Diocese of Los Angeles. A judge ordered the move, and the state Supreme Court refused to hear an appeal.

The congregation voted to leave the national church three years ago. The diocese sued to retain the property.   

In his sermon Sunday, the Rev. Rob Holman said fighting for principles is more important than a building.  The congregation has rented a chapel in Glendale and joined the new Anglican Church in North America, which was founded last year by breakaway Episcopal parishes.

 

This is going to sound a bit flippant, but it’s what comes to mind immediately:

A small boy was scolded by his dad for pulling the cat’s tail. “I’m not pulling the cat’s tail,” he said matter-of-factly. “The cat’s doing all the pulling.”

In recent weeks, especially since both the Episcopal Church and the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America took decided turns for the left at their summer general Convention (a.k.a. Assembly), we’ve heard how disenfranchised the conservatives feel, as if they are losing their churchbody, or they are being forced to leave in order to make room for the homosexuals.

Excuse me, but who is doing all the pulling? I have noted this before, but it stands true. When LGBT people were in the persona non grata position, we did not all just cry that we were being rejected and walk away. Thousands of us remained faithful. We kept giving or tithing, preaching, praying, volunteering—and playing the church organ and arranging the altar flowers. We did not, repeated, did not complain that the presence of heterosexuals in the Christian church was forcing us to leave.

If you’re interested in the legal battle, St. Luke’s has posted a page on it.

Compassionate and Understanding One, we pray for those who cry unnecessary tears, and who cannot yet recognize in the changes of this world that your wide embrace includes all people. Forgive us if we have driven others away, and remind us of our mission in Christ to welcome, forgive, and show kindness to any sister or brother who may seem “weaker” in faith. In Christ’s holy name, Amen.

—Pastor Dan Hooper

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Systemic change comes to the Lutherans.

October 7, 2009 by Pastor Dan.

We’ve been laboring for fundamental change in the Lutheran church for decades. I personally got involved in the late 1970s, and started serious writing in the mid-1980s. But its still startling to see the results of the work of hundreds of faithful people to lead and guide (not push) their fellow believers to a genuine tipping point.

If you’ve been following the LGBT/clergy debate in the Lutheran or any other denomination, or if you’re just Googling in, you probably have heard that the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America was not quick to embrace sexual minorities. Officially, it made tentative gestures of welcome more than 15 years ago, but in 1990 it built a fence around the ranks of its ordained clergy.

No matter what we did to try to open up the gate in that fence, all that the ELCA would do is study the issues. I spoke to the first study task force on Human Sexuality in July 1990, for example. The only thing that came out of that months-long study was that, after the director had threats made on her life (we’re talking about a large Protestant church denomination here, folks, they simply withdrew the study documents from further consideration, and waited another decade until the national Assembly (convention)—the ELCA’s highest legislative authority—ordered the church to undertake another study.

In the midst of this, lay people and pastors and one Bishop Emeritus of the church were arrested for blocking the sidewalk with their protest signs at one of the national Assemblies.

The tipping point never came in 2007. Hundreds of us were in Chicago’s Navy Pier as visitors to watch the proceedings, pray for results, and lobby voting members (delegates). But then in Minneapolis this past August, the tipping point was reached. A respectable majority of members in the Assembly voted to lift the restriction against non-celibate lesbian and gay people from being or becoming Pastors of the church.

Two other denominational leaders were immediately enraged, although their warnings were grave and measured, one from President Gerald Kieschnick of the Lutheran Church–Missouri Synod (it figures) and the other from Archbishop Wilton Gregory, President of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops (and that figures, too).

But this week, the real tip finally occurred. At its Bishop’s meeting October 1–6, national church staff people sat down with Bishops and (for the first time ever) with representatives of Lutherans Concerned/North America, Extraordinary Lutheran Ministries, and Goodsoil to discuss the implementation of the changes which were called for in August.

LC/NA’s Executive Director Emily Eastwood: “We are pleased that at long last we are being talked with, instead of just being talked about.” That is fundamental to the discernment process in which the church has always recognized the power of the Holy Spirit to move the Christian community forward. So even with the threat of continued controversy over its liberalizing decision last August, the ELCA is finally trusting the process which is modeled from the beginning of the Christian church (see Acts 15, again),and talking with the believers who are most affected by decisions being made. This is genuine systemic change.

ELM’s President, Rev. Erik Christensen: “Challenging conversations are ahead of us, but these are the challenging conversations waited for twenty years.”

Yet to be discussed, of course, is how the ELCA’s new standards will apply to those of us who have been admitted to the extraordinary (extra ordinem) Lutheran clergy roster, Extraordinary Lutheran Ministries. After being removed from the ELCA’s roster in 1991, I applied for and was admitted to the extraordinary roster in 2002 (known then as the Extraordinary Candidacy Project). None of us knows yet whether the ELCA’s executives, Bishops and Church Council will move to accept our roster into their roster as a whole, or whether they will expect each one of us to go through the protracted process of applying for certification alone.

I am adopting a wait-and-see attitude on that, because I am disinclined to reapply if I must prove myself again to some credentialing committee. I have been ordained for 35 years, and serving in my present position for more than five years. Yes, we have wait for conversations about the larger church’s ordination standards, but we have also moved forward in mission and ministry without the larger church’s permission or interference because the Gospel and the Spirit are driving the church, not the other way around.

—Pastor Dan Hooper

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The institutional and the theological high ground.

September 24, 2009 by Pastor Dan.

This summer has been a tipping point for the ELCA, the largest of the Lutheran churchbodies in the United States. Somehow, while many observers weren’t paying much attention, but the Holy Spirit was near, this largely Midwestern-based Protestant church slipped from the conservative column to the liberal. Its actions in Assembly a month ago in Minneapolis are still being weighed and measured for significance.

Yesterday, Presiding Bishop Mark S. Hanson (who is also the President of the Lutheran World Federation) issued a “pastoral letter” on the tipping point — what he thinks about how Lutherans should feel about the major change in the ELCA’s view of same-gender relationships and lesbian/gay clergy.

For review, there was no official prior policy against same-gender relationships. No Lutheran pastor has been defrocked or disciplined by the ELCA for officiating at a lesbian wedding. Not so for the Presbyterians and the Methodists, who have drawn their line in the sand way to the right of the Lutherans.

But there was an official policy against rostering (ordaining, commissioning or hiring) out lesbian and gay clergy who are in same-gender relationships.

And there was no policy to forbid gay or lesbian persons from being clergy if they promised to be celibate forever, although the defacto rule is that any congregation that blanched at the thought of a homosexual pastor with a same-sex spouse would have blanched at the thought of a celibate homosexual pastor, too.

You can read Hanson’s pastoral letter on my other web site where I store bigger documents. In it, he takes the institutional high ground, and at times is almost eloquent in reminding the denomination that we have a mission to accomplish and we are only hurting ourselves and our mission if we get into a schism over lesbian/gay clergy.

For the record, the schism will proceed as previously scheduled. Hanson’s letter is not likely to convince anybody to change their mind. But the schism will be small—perhaps 100–200 congregations may bolt, out of a total of nearly 10,000 congregations.

But it still hurts when people we thought understood the Gospel as well as Lutherans do decide to say “we’re out of here,” like where Paul says, “the eye cannot say to the hand, `I have no need of you.’” (1 Corinthians 12:14–27)

Hanson reminds the church that Lutherans have always deftly distinguished Law and Gospel, what he says Martin Luther called “the highest art among Christians.” To make this important distinction and apply each appropriately is in fact nothing less than interpreting the Scriptures rather than shooting them from a gun at a social issue.

My turn: Hanson speaks in generalities, but I would have been a bit more specific, in reminding the whole church that heterosexuality is neither Law nor Gospel. The Christian Church long ago gave up trying to make “be fruitful and multiply” into a commandment that must be obeyed by all believers in Jesus. Heterosexual love, or sexual expression, or even reproduction, cannot be commandments, as Jesus and Paul both made clear.

But neither is heterosexuality Gospel. No one will be saved or redeemed or put on God’s right side by heterosexuality. No one earns a heavenly mansion by virtue of heterosexual behavior. We are saved by grace (Romans 3:23–24; Ephesians 2:4), regardless of Paul’s curious take on women being saved by bearing children. He even says, in 1 Corinthians 7:16, that a woman or man might save the unbelieving spouse —salvation by marriage?  But his broadest theme, over and over, is that we are saved by grace alone.  Sex, sexual orientation, sexual expression, are not part of the equation at all.

I have continued to say this wherever possible: the ELCA’s ~ or the Episcopal Church’s ~ action to open its doors and its ministry fully to LGBT people is not a departure from traditional or correct Christian doctrine because human sexuality, in all of its perplexing diversity, is not part of Christian doctrine. Christian doctrine is about Jesus Christ and what he has done. It is not about us and what we have done, whether sublime or perverse. No one, whether Jew or Greek, circumcised or uncircumcised, heterosexual or homosexual, “has a leg up” before God.

Yes, I know the conservative rant to the contrary. But it is a hopeless stretch to insist that any one or another specific sexual behavior is a sin which disqualifies one from God’s love – and yes, you can find Bible verses to attempt to so insist – because there are other Bible verses that blow that thesis away!  Jesus said “Anyone who comes to me I will never drive away” (John 6:37); and “Very truly, I tell you, whoever believes has eternal life” (John 6:47).  There is just no extra credit for being heterosexual.  There are millions of people of faith out there who are not heterosexual. They have come to Jesus and they believe in his message of hope and grace. Regardless of what a congregation or an entire churchbody may say, Jesus will not drive them away, but because they have put their faith in God’s grace through Jesus Christ, they have eternal life.

Moreover, since no one is without sin (Romans 3:23), no one, including no heterosexual has the right to cast the first stone.

No one has the right to judge.

No one.

Just say No, when homophobic people start to rant that they are now being driven out of the church. No, they are walking away all by themselves.  They are doing, or preparing to do, what millions of LGBT Christians have not done, even when our churches would not welcome us if we were open. We remained faithful to Christ and to his church. Now we rejoice that the ELCA is being faithful to us. If others cannot accept that, perhaps they never did understand the Gospel after all.

— Pastor Dan Hooper

Posted in Sex, Lesbian/Gay Marriage, Gay Catechism, "The Closet", Doctrine, Bible & Interpretation, Ministry, Faith, LGBT Christian, ELCA | Print | 1 Comment »

“Shut up” becomes open wide, oh my.

August 27, 2009 by Pastor Dan.

Now Jericho was shut up inside and out because of the Israelites; no one came out and no one went in. • The LORD said to Joshua, “See, I have handed Jericho over to you, along with its king and soldiers. • You shall march around the city, all the warriors circling the city once. Thus you shall do for six days, • with seven priests bearing seven trumpets of rams’ horns before the ark. On the seventh day you shall march around the city seven times, the priests blowing the trumpets. • When they make a long blast with the ram’s horn, as soon as you hear the sound of the trumpet, then all the people shall shout with a great shout; and the wall of the city will fall down flat, and all the people shall charge straight ahead.” — Joshua 6:1–5

This week is a milestone of sorts. Tuesday I observed, with very mixed feelings, the 35^th anniversary of my ordination into the Lutheran ministry. In 1974 it was unimaginable how my life would unfold. In 2009 it is almost unimaginable how different that world was, and what happened in those years.

If anyone then had tried to predict that by now I would be happily married and my man would be standing by me to cut the cake—openly, in front of a supportive Lutheran congregation—I would not have believed it.

I certainly would have hoped so, thinking then with youthful naivete that our generation was going to change the world. We set out to do so, of course. But looking back over three and a half decades, it is obvious that our generation also tried to stop change. Idealism, pragmatism, and inertia belong to all generations.

Yet the biggest surprise came in the last week before this personal anniversary. With the ELCA’s decision to lift its outright ban against lesbian/gay clergy, the wall of resistance has simply collapsed. Goodsoil and the cooperative GLBT-positive movements which have circled the ELCA since 1988 have sent up a great short, the wall has fallen down flat, and now . .. do we charge straight ahead? Is it our next goal to enter, pillage, rape and destroy?

For 35 years I have heard the outcry of reactionary and homophobic Christians, seen their hand-wringing, and worked behind the scenes to chip mortar out of the wall of their resistance. They are still of the mind (people like Solid Rock, CORE, Word Alone, etc.) that our purpose is to destroy the faith itself.

Nothing could be more wrong. If we (myself included) had wanted to destroy the Lutheran church or the Christian church, we could have done that more easily the way millions of others have done: as soon as you’re old enough that your parents don’t make you go to Sunday School and church, you run for the nearest exit and don’t look back. If we had wanted to destroy our “Christian society,” we wouldn’t need to go through the trauma and drama of being lesbian or gay. We could have just gotten married and raised the next generation of kids with no values whatever. Church and society can be destroyed with indifference, and anomie.

To be honest, the illustration from Joshua is not totally on target, for the LGBT people who have now succeeded, with the Lord’s power, in flattening a wall of resistance, have done it from within—by marching around and around inside the walls. We are not outsiders clamoring to get in. We are insiders—from infancy, childhood, baptism, confirmation, youth groups on—who did not exit, did not run, but stayed in this church, “shut up inside and out” because we have heard the Gospel’s truth and sensed the power of God even in this buttoned-down institution.

—Pastor Dan Hooper

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