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  And meanwhile the Northeastern Iowa Synod Council has rescinded two very anti-gay resolutions it had previously adopted.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 »

Enveloped on the mountaintop.

February 14, 2010 by Pastor Dan.

Today being the feast of the Transfiguration of Our Lord, it deserves some comment. I had to preach on it this morning.

It’s a difficult thing no matter whether you’re a cynic or deeply pious. As the story is told it’s too supernatural–ranks right up there with the Ascension on the list of things no one really believes as narrated.

Yet the narrative tries to convey something intensely mystical and meaningful. In the midst of his public ministry, Jesus seemed profoundly different to his disciples. Something happened that allowed/permitted/forced them to see him in a new and blinding light.

Typically we call that a “mountaintop experience,” and it must have been for Peter James and John, the “inner three” who get lot of attention in the Gospel stories but we are never fully told why. As told in Luke 9, the three of them were “weighed down with sleep” (and you will remember that in Matthew and Mark, the same three disciples are with Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane and, yup, there they fell asleep too).

Just like the other nine disciples, these guys were not perfect. They had feet of clay. They were as flawed as any human being alive right now—but: the witness of these disciples is that a veil was ripped away, and they saw Christ Jesus as God sees him. They were overshadowed and enveloped by a Cloud— a glory they could not understand and could hardly describe— but the Jesus who came out of the transfiguring Cloud with them was not One to be afraid of, or One to hide from, but One who was to lay down his life for them.

I cannot guarantee you a mountaintop experience. You will find your own mountain, and it probably won’t be a pretty picture in the piney woods with postcard views from the top. For some of us, it may be the mountain of our own failures, or sorrows, or mistakes, or addictions, pain or internalized homophobia. But if we climb the mountains we have heaped up in our lives, there, at the top of these heaps of human experience, we encounter the Cross. And it is not a trigger for terror. It is the revelation of the One True God of grace, forgiveness, compassion and lovingkindness. It may be Law which drives us up the mountain of despair, but it is pure Gospel to find the love of Jesus Christ awaiting us at the top.

— Pastor Dan Hooper

Posted in Homophobia, Gay Catechism, Doctrine, Bible & Interpretation, Living by Grace, LGBT Christian, Spirituality | 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 »

The bridge between faith and rights.

February 5, 2010 by Pastor Dan.

Full disclosure: this column is not about Sarah Palin or any other bridge to nowhere that politicians may have built.

Some of us who have been active in the LGBT rights movement for a long time can remember when activist organizations competed viciously against one another, or were torn apart internally because of strident competition between gay men and lesbians. Worse still, there seemed to be this unbridgeable chasm between civil and political activism and the world of faith and religion. No one built a bridge nor even wanted a bridge between them.

I have lived a significant period of my life with a split personality — keeping the “Christian self” apart from the “gay self”; I avoided situations where I would have to come out as gay to a Christian community or as Christian in the LGBT communities. There was something unspoken in me–in many of us–that believed these two distinct selves would never communicate.

It was not altogether accurate, however, and also not true to my faith to suppose that I could not be honest in both communities. As I have matured in faith, I am far less insecure in telling other LGBT people that I am not only a Christian, but a pastor of a Christian congregation.

In recent years we’ve begun to see much more cross-over between LGBT activism in the public/civil/political realm and the faith/spirituality/religion realm. It has probably come about because of another “tipping point” in social change when both camps realized how much we need one another. Case in point, the outcry from the religious communities of America against the evil and draconian legislation proposed in Uganda to annihilate all homosexuals. (For Christ’s sake, even our traditional enemies at Focus on the Family have spoken against it!)

Both the Human Rights Campaign and the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force have reached out especially to the LGBT/Christian movement for one clear and compelling reason: it is obvious that Christian extremism on the right (the Religious Reich) is the biggest single obstacle in America to LGBT people achieving the full and equal rights and benefits of a democratic society.

From the HRC Religion & Faith web site: “The Human Rights Campaign Religion and Faith Program mobilizes people of faith to advocate for gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people. Learn more about HRC’s Religion and Faith Program and about the members of its Religion Council.” the site includes news, articles and resources.

The Revs. Eger, Robinson, Russell and Voelkel

HRC’s Religion Council of 13 significant faith leaders include two from the Los Angeles area: Rabbi Denise Eger, who for 18 years has served as the Rabbi of Congregation Kol Ami in West Hollywood, and Rev. Canon Susan Russell, who is Senior Associate for Pastoral Life at All Saints Episcopal Church in Pasadena. Both are extremely strong leaders in our environment; both continue to play important roles nationwide, as does Rt. Rev. V. Gene Robinson, Episcopal Bishop of New Hampshire.

Under the leadership of Harry Knox, HRC’s Religion and Faith Program has been issuing weekly preaching helps for ministers of welcoming Christian churches to proclaim the full breadth of each week’s Common Lectionary readings.

The Task Force keeps a “Faith” tab on its web menu, and hosts the Institute for Welcoming Resources and the interfaith National Religious Leadership Roundtable. I especially commend the brief “article of faith” by Rev. Rebecca Voelkel, “Why the pro-LGBT movement should welcome religion“, which this blog entry echoes:

“As LGBT religious folks, we often find ourselves in the midst of a squeeze-play between our religious communities and our colleagues in the secular LGBT movement. But, I believe that we, as LGBT religious folks, have a unique and powerful role to play.”In particular, our movement, as it engages our opponents who are overwhelmingly religious, must claim the theological and moral authority of our pro-LGBT voice….”Voelkel, an ordained minister in the United Church of Christ, is also on the HRC’s Religion Council and serves as Director of the Task Force’s Institute for Welcoming Resources, representing the open/welcoming/affirming/reconciling religious caucuses and movements in faith traditions. There is a wealth of resources on this site.This blog often keeps watch on the weirdos, but we need to keep watch with those strong people of faith who are moving us forward. I hope you will explore these links and plug in wherever is appropriate for you.—Pastor Dan Hooper

Posted in LGBT Christian, Ecumenical Issues, "The Closet", Faith, History, Coming Out, Public Affairs, Ministry | Print | No Comments »

The devil you say.

January 20, 2010 by Pastor Dan.

I guess I am not through lambasting Robertsonian Christianity (fundagelical-blame-the-victim-praise-Jesus-cash-the-check theology). When I wrote recently, “Is he still totally nuts?” I hadn’t yet absorbed the fullness of the history lesson that wasn’t even in my college history textbooks.

Pat Robertson insinuated a “what do you expect?” view of the disastrous earthquake which has collapsed most of the infrastructure of Haiti, the poorest nation in the Western Hemisphere. The ex/wannabe reverend Robertson, who takes in hundreds of millions of dollars annual and has a personal fortune estimated to be near one billion dollars, is said to be quite compassionate for the people of Haiti: he called for prayer for them. Not he sent funds to help emergency life-saving efforts. He called for prayer.

Robertson gives a bad name to prayer and an evil name to what it means to be Christian. Why is he being singled out for criticism? For his remark that Haiti’s slaves in 1791 “made a pact with the devil” to obtain their freedom from the French. Mind you—this was a man who launched a campaign to run for President of the United States. Imagine how his foreign policy views would have shaped up.

Thank God for Elizabeth Palmberg’s blog entry on the Sojourners blog last week (and in posting it here I reproduce her important hyperlinks):

“So Pat Robertson, to whom the media are still inexplicably willing to pay attention, is saying that Haiti is being punished for an alleged pact with the devil?

“This might be a reasonable time to point out that, when Haiti threw out the French, it was the latter who were on the side of evil — first, as slave-owners (Haiti was the only modern nation created by a slave revolt). And then, when Haitians had finally attained freedom from plantation chattel slavery, France forced Haiti to pay reparations to the former slave-owners, to compensate them for their loss of ‘property.’

“You read that sentence right — the ex-slaves were forced to pay their former masters, the equivalent of $21 billion (billion-with-a-b) in today’s dollars. It took the tiny nation from 1825 to 1947 — that’s right, over a century — to finish paying off this “debt,” a crushing burden which bled away resources for education and economic development.

“I’ll leave it up to you to decide where the devil is in that history. But if you want to be on the side of the angels — and God’s Jubilee economics, as laid out in the Old Testament — then surf over to Jubilee USA and see their advocacy points for Haiti today.”

Now, what has this to do with an LGBT/Christian blog? It is not Pat Robertson’s inanities which need to be shamed somehow. But it is important that we who are open-hearted, “progressive” and compassionate Christians—whether sexual minorities or not—absolutely divorce ourselves from the evil theology that uses Jesus as a commodity to make money for the preacher not for ministry. Robertson is only an emblem of this kind of profitable evangelism. He is not the only one. But his misuse of Scripture and of God Above to blame the victim, shame gay/lesbian people, and now malign an entire nation, is irredeemably shameful.

—Pastor Dan Hooper

Posted in Fundamentalism, Violence, Go figure!, LGBT Christian, History, PRAYERS, Public Affairs, Ministry | Print | No Comments »

Letters from prison.

December 21, 2009 by Pastor Dan.

This week I am trying to send out a few Christmas cards — I have essentially given up on that gracious communication with the bulk of our friends, because I get weighed down with everything else, more and more, as Christmas approaches. But I am writing now to several inmates in California prisons, to men who have written to our church from time to time. These men (all men, so far) have written because of one of our own community who is doing time now for a parole violation, and he has told other inmates that, yes, there is a church in Los Angeles which welcomes gay people. So, although the communication is a bit “stiff” in prison letters because every word going out and coming in is pre-read by prison staff, I can only assume that the guys writing to us are probably gay.

A couple of weeks ago, one of them wrote from Kern County. He isn’t ready to tell me what he did that got him convicted, or even how long he is in prison for. But he says this is his first time in prison, and it’s December and I realize he will spend Christmas in a cell.

“Since my imprisonment I have become ever stronger in Jesus Christ and God and church and hold my Christian beliefs even more dear to my heart than ever before.

“What I need: is someone — some church– and some church members to help me and take me under their wings and into their church and allow me to prove myself as a person, as a fellow church member and child of God.”

This young man’s plea is as clear as any I have ever heard. It seems risky for upstanding church-goers to be concerned about convicts who will have to prove themselves in order to be accepted again in society. But as to being a child of God, he has no need of proof. The church is the community of those who put their faith in Christ. Regardless of the division of people into categories—Jew or Greek, male and female, young or old, imprisoned or free, LGBT or straight, there are no subcategories for the children of God.

How can I be so sure of that? Because each of us is made a child not by something we do or accomplish, or avoid doing, or even repent, but by the gracious act of God alone. We are God’s children just because God says so. It’s about love, not “Brownie points,” sexual conformity, or the lack of a criminal record. It’s about a love so strong that nothing can tear us away from it.

In his Letter to the Romans, St. Paul agonizes about all of the things in life (he mentions “hardship, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword” as examples) that may conspire to cause pain, failure, regret or worry, but then he says, “In all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.”

I am open-hearted enough to read his phrases very broadly, where he says “in all these things” and especially “things present nor things to come (like our modern world). Can we not see that, if Paul were writing today, he might have mentioned other examples: “poverty, racism, gangs, homophobia or sexual orientation, divorce, unemployment, drugs or alcohol, obesity, health problems or gun violence,” and still come to the same conclusion: “I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.”

To my friends in prison: may God keep watch with you at Christmas, knowing that not even bars and walls can separate us from the love which is given to us freely. Keep the faith you have in God’s gracious acceptance. And may the people of God keep faith with you!

—Pastor Dan Hooper

Posted in Homophobia, Gay Catechism, Violence, Doctrine, LGBT Christian, Public Affairs, Living by Grace, Faith, Recovery | Print | No Comments »

Is God indulgent or hard-hearted?

December 9, 2009 by Pastor Dan.

“Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved.”   Joel 2:32; Acts 2:21; Romans 10:13
“Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,” will enter the Kingdom of heaven.” Matthew 7:21

These clear contradictions seem to stymie us nowadays, and Christians still argue whether God is lenient or hard-hearted, visiting the iniquities of the fathers upon the children to the tenth generation or very indulgent and forgetful of our offenses. Is heaven a place where only a handful will ever get in, or where the gates are never shut?

These apparent contradictions seem to say to us that the ancients and the early Christians were not all of the same mind on the charity and lovingkindness of God. It is not just we who cannot agree on the meaning of Scripture, for Scripture itself gives us different images which seem to contradict (speak against) one another.

Yet for me the overwhelming weight of the Biblical message, not just of spot passages and bumper-sticker length verses, is of God’s endless grace and acceptance. (Forgiveness is one metaphor for God’s grace and compassionate acceptance.)

Seriously, folks, can we actually say (and be theologically correct) that God loves everybody? As we know a certain unmentionable preacher-type from Topeka who argues against this vehemently. If God doesn’t love everybody, then why should we put up with or tolerate or condone anybody who doesn’t toe the line or walk the talk?

But we are the progressive (liberal) Christians, we think. We get it, even if those fundagelicals and Talibangelists don’t.

Alas, the full implication of the phrase “Everybody’s welcome” usually goes over our heads. It doesn’t merely mean that if everybody is welcome, then I am welcome—as reassuring and good as that seems. It doesn’t merely mean the invitation to receive God’s love is to me and to people like me. “Everybody” is an impossibly dangerous, radical word. If everybody is welcome, it means that even people I don’t particularly like or approve of are also welcome. It means that God’s unearned and unlimited grace does not have to be vetted by me personally before it is offered to everybody else in the world.

This takes some degree of self-examination to sink in thoroughly. It doesn’t penetrate our skulls as easily as the mantra “God loves me,” or “I am Jesus’ little sunbeam.”

—Pastor Dan Hooper

Posted in Gay Catechism, Doctrine, LGBT Christian, Living by Grace | Print | No Comments »

Good news, religious lunacy.

November 30, 2009 by Pastor Dan.

The web newscaster www.365gay.com does a cool job of monitoring AP news releases as well as publishing its own reports. One AP post recently (which I’d missed) is probably the best little tidbit of news I’ve seen in awhile, indicating that there is no smoking gun of gay priests behind the widespread Catholic sex abuse scandal.  Read the story:

Report: Homosexuality no factor in abusive priests 

by The Associated Press • 11.18.2009 9:22am EST

The report, commissioned and financed by the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops to the tune of $2 million, did not find that the homosexual orientation of priests was any predictor of who would be involved in sexual abuse. In spite of a policy coming from the Vatican itself a year or so ago to essentially “weed out” homosexually-oriented candidates for the Catholic priesthood, the behavioralists and criminologists who have extensively studied sexual predation and pedophilia do not find a gay = child molester link.

According to the AP report, Margaret Smith of John Jay College of Criminal Justice reported to the Bishops meeting in Baltimore: “If that [Vatican anti-gay] exclusion were based on the fact that [a gay person] person would be more probable than any other candidate to abuse, we do not find that at this time.”

Also another finding from other reports, that I see as good news, is that clergy sexual abuse cases are on the decline ever since the 1980s. Most of the cases still shaming churches and emptying their coffers stem from abusive behavior in the 1960s and 1970s. Perhaps the “transparency” and media attention of more recent times is telling pedophiles and sexual opportunists that they won’t be able to hide their behavior as well as they once did.

On the down side, there is nothing on the horizon to suggest that the Roman Catholic Church will any time soon become more realistic about human sexuality in its moral theology. Its rule of celibacy (a rule of the Church, not a Christian doctrine) for clergy and its iniquitizing of any sexual activity outside of a heterosexual-and-procreative context continues to make its moral teaching seem ridiculous in the larger world and puts many Catholic faithful into a hypocritical bind.

Most ridiculous of all (another rule, not dogma) is to continue to ban women from the priesthood while male priests are deserting the ranks of the clergy if not bankrupting the Church. It has been reported that one-fourth of all Catholic parishes world wide have no priest. The numbers who have quit the priesthood to get (heterosexually) married continues to climb. And the molesters, guilty of some 14,000 sexual abuse cases since 1950, have cost the Church an estimated $2.3 billion in the same time period, according to the AP story.

I know that many of the rank-and-file are outraged at by all of this. The expenditure of money alone (yes, a lot of it paid by insurance companies) is appalling and disgusting. You would think the Church would be broke, but somehow it still finds the funds to fight against civil rights for gay and lesbian couples in California and Maine, too. What else can we do but shake our heads in astonishment and resignation to this religious lunacy. — Pastor Dan Hooper

Posted in Sex, Lesbian/Gay Marriage, Catholic matters, Go figure!, Doctrine, Ecumenical Issues, Public Affairs, LGBT Rights, LGBT Christian, Ministry | 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

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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

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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

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Berlin: let your light so shine.

November 10, 2009 by Pastor Dan.

“Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God. Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness’ sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. “Blessed are you when people revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account.

“You are the light of the world. . . .No one after lighting a lamp puts it under the bushel basket, but on the lampstand, and it gives light to all in the house. In the same way, let your light shine before others. . . .” —Matthew 5

This week’s news includes the 20^th anniversary of the Berlin Wall, and I keenly remember the events as the world rapidly changed in the late 80s— early 90s.

When my spouse and I went to Berlin 10 years ago on a concert trip with the Gay Men’s Chorus of Los Angeles, we walked through the Brandenburg Gate easier than you could a turn-stile in an amusement park. We saw the thin bronze strip laid into the asphalt streets signifying where the famous Wall had stood.

Last night you could have knocked me over with a feather when I heard an NPR story about what led up to the break-through and the collapse of the Berlin Wall. It began with peaceful street demonstrations not in Berlin, but in Leipzig on September 4, 1989. What NPR said was that a Lutheran pastor, Christian Fuhrer, the pastor of St. Nicholas Church, known as “Nikolai Kirche” at the crossroads of two main streets on the main square in Leipzig, began holding Monday night “peace prayer” services, and they began to draw people from all over the city.

Within a few weeks, each time the parishioners spilled out into the Leipzig Karl Marx Square, they took their prayers and candles with them and began to keep a public vigil for peace. Before many Mondays went by, it was thousands of people carrying candles from the church, in non-violent protests against the government.

The STASI, the state police, held back, unwilling to cause a massacre. One of them later said “we were prepared for anything” that the crowds might do. But we were not prepared for prayers and candles.

Nikolai Kirche   ~   Montagsdemonstration

Pastor Fuhrer’s peace prayers drew a crowd of 10,000, and within weeks, 70,000—this in a city of half a million. By October 16, the Monday night crowd had swelled to 120,000, and the following week, to more than 300,000.

The most interesting note I found in the story of the Monday night demonstrations was this quote, from a cabaret artist Bernd-Lutz Lange, who said, “There was no head of the revolution. The head was the Nikolaikirche and the body the centre of the city. There was only one leadership: Monday, 5 P.M., the Nikolaikirche.”

My point is very simple and direct:  Never, never, never underestimate the power of one person, or one church, to make a huge difference in the world.

Within the first month of the peaceable demonstrations in Leipzig, Western Germany television was reporting what was happening. Viewers in East Germany learned of the candlelight marches, and Pastor Fuhrer’s vigils began to happen in other Easter German cities.

The context in which the first Monday night prayers for peace started was a mood of either resignation or hopelessness. This one Lutheran Pastor could not have dreamed that he would launch a movement to bring down the German Democratic Republic. But he did what he could do, and the people of Leipzig knew from the witness of this one church that the Lutheran Church supported their yearning for change.

“You are the light of the world.” Jesus tells us to put our lights up and out there like a lamp on a stand. “In the same way, let your light shine before others.” That light may be a candle. But it almost always includes other forms of courage, determination, sacrifice, strength and risk. If we are not stuck in a mood of resignation or hopelessness or powerlessness, any one of us has the ability to change the world.

— Pastor Dan Hooper, Los Angeles

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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

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Lasting Peace: the Unsplit Life

October 23, 2009 by Pastor Dan.

On the train to Riverside today I finally picked up a book I had set aside last July: the anthology “Wrestling with the Angel” [Brian Bouldrey, ed.; New York: Riverhead Books, 1995]. Today I came to Andrew Holleran’s chapter in which he wrestles with Catholic guilt more than any angel.

Holleran (Eric Garber) is a gay novelist and essayist roughly my contemporary in age but far more advanced in finding his voice as an activist. You can Google for a lot about his life and work if you like.

So much of what he writes about religion parallels my own awareness if not experience, and I can’t help wondering if it is more because he was Catholic and I Lutheran that he left most of the faith behind and I never did. Holleran identifies, at least he did in 1995 in “The Sense of Sin” as a “cafeteria Catholic,” taking what he wants from the religious smorgasbord and leaving the rest behind. But his chief insight in his brief autobiography of confession reveals that he could neither abandon his childhood and adolescent Catholic faith nor fully embrace it.

“The sense of Sin is, of course, missing in some people, keen, more keen, keenest in others. When I drew up a list of my own one evening, I was surprised to see that all of mine amounted to sins that did not include homosexual acts themselves but the consequences of hiding them from people who loved and expected more out of me, perhaps than I’d given the world. In other words, I suspected myself of shame, withdrawal, and finally that most classic of Catholic sins, despair. Still, none of them seemed correctable; I hadn’t any more faith in homosexuality’s virtues, really, than I did in the existence of God—though the latter was no something I could bring myself to entirely disbelieve, either.”For me, this no-man’s land, this love-hate experience is what happens when one has absorbed the Religion of Christianity without ever finding a manner in which to live out the Christian Faith. Guilt truly is the gift that goes on giving, and we have good reason to jokingly insist that the Lutheran persuasion is “Catholic Lite: one third less guilt.”As a young writer and preacher I was always more than a bit brash, but taking the longer view now in mid-life and mature years I notice with enormous gratitude that I did not pick up much guilt about sex and sexuality in childhood and adolescence. Lutheran preachers were far too conventional and inhibited even to mention that sexuality exists. There were no warnings or scoldings from Sunday School teachers. Luther’s Small Catechism sticks to the basics of the Christian faith —faith in God and Christ and the Spirit and the Sacraments— rather than building moral fences and trying to provide guidelines to control our daily impulses. So to this day I insist that attitudes about human sexuality and homosexuality cannot, in and of themselves “split the church.” Opening our minds about gay and lesbian people and relationships is not an “abandonment of the historic faith” because, the Lutherans would insist, the true Christian faith does not contain doctrines about sex in the first place.

Holleran’s dilemma is that he cannot live with the dire ultimatums which either Catholicism or fundamentalism presents to him, but he realizes at mid-life that homosexuality and sexual liberalism are not a substitute faith, either. Even as a fallen child of his Church, he sees his sexuality in Catholic vocabulary: “a cross one had to bear.”

“That one kept thinking in Catholic phrases was, of course, part of the legacy of a Catholic childhood. The gay Catholic operates on two levels, I suspect; on the one hand, he believes it is quite moral to act on his sexual orientation, to form a sexual bond, of whatever duration, with another man; that the antihomosexual tenets of Christianity are parochial, culture-bound, and heterosexual; that the active gay man has acquired, and provided others, a human dimension available uniquely in erotic intimacy; that kindness, beauty, tenderness, love can be experienced only through the medium of another person. On the other, he suspects that he has turned sex into a form of fast-food junk, that he is trapped in a way of life from which there is no escape and no real chance of finding any lasting peace of mind. In other words, this was cognitive dissonance as a way of life.”All that I can counter is that I do not suffer that dissonance and I preach to dismantle its power over others. But my understanding is not to trivialize the core message of Jesus nor to re-Puritanize sexual expression. That I have remained not celibate but monogamous is not because I have struck some self-devised compromise with God or have internalized homophobic guilt about having casual or anonymous sexual experiences. It is because I have experienced the greatest personal and spiritual growth in relationships (one man, one Lord) which are long-lasting and able to grapple with the tension most human beings live with between the superficiality of the flesh and the overwhelming depth of the soul.If all of that is really a cross one has to bear, it is the cross I have chosen not because of a bifurcated life (hiding my sexuality from the church and hiding my faith from the boys at the gay bar), but because of my awareness that I live only one life and will struggle to keep it integrated. If I can live without splitting my life, then maybe the Church can live without splitting itself apart.—Pastor Dan Hooper

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