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 »

Sudden acceleration.

February 24, 2010 by Pastor Dan.

I am reading and watching politics more often lately, and I am absorbed by the similarities between the Religious Reich and the political right wingnuts.

Yes, I know they are in bed together, or they are really the same people. We’ve known that since the days of the Moral Majority (Hmmm. They still have a website is up but it hasn’t been updated in 2½ years! See highlightd above.) and the politically opportune ascent of a B-rated actor named Ronald Reagan to become Governor of California as his first public elected office.

But what fascinates me is that religious, social and political conservatives use the exact same technique to promote their views, as if they are all reading the exact same playbook. Is there a modern-day Machiavellian book like The Prince that the entire right wing is circulating? (See this cynical reference; don’t bother to scroll down.)

What I refer to is this 24/7 streaming of public outrage, which seems to be rapidly accelerating in our society. We “get it” that outrage achieves results. People love to get over-excited, as if their dreary daily lives offer no rewards whatever, and it takes an interactive, 3-D action film to get them out of bed in the morning.

But the media, including blogs etc. also exaggerate the effectiveness of outrage. A few weeks ago, the election of Scott Brown as a darling conservative to replace the late Senator Ted Kennedy, the “Lion of the Senate” was supposed to prove that independent voters were outraged with the Obama administration. Now with less than three weeks in office Senator Brown has voted with the democrats on an Obama jobs bill and the right wing is outraged against their own darling.

The outrage I see is more than Rush Limbaugh’s putrid opinions calculated to “stoke indignation” as MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow observed. But probably the easy access to media, the explosion of blogs and Twitter, etc., have all aided and abetted noisy anger over everything. The new American paradigm is one continuous, relentless confrontation which continues to accelerate with no responsible “recall” in sight. 

• Road rage on public streets, highways and freewaysguy slams his Toyota vehicle directly into a Toyota dealership, claiming the vehicle had an episode of sudden acceleration which Toyota should have fixed.
• “Light up the Border” outrage (not outage) over illegals coming into America.
• Outrage over the fact that McCain lost and Barrack Hussein Obama is president of the United States.
• Fred Phelps & co.
• Neighborhood gangs who take offense at the slightest slight.
• Making everything into a culture war. (incidentally, www.culturewar.com is probably for sale if you want to trivialize, market, and profit from it. And www.publicoutrage.com is definitely for sale.

• Making people’s private lives (right to marry, adoption of and caring for children) into a a public fury, Armageddon-moment.soggy-brained tea-party Republicanswhite supremacists, neo-Nazis, NRA, and hothead/ red-faced rednecks
• The noisy derision and resistance of the 2010 Census because, after all, it is being done by The Government.

(I don’t count Dick (”heart attack”) Cheney among the professional stokers of indignation. He seems to be more proficient at sneering than stoking anything.)What I find especially ironic, of course, is that the vast majority of this outrage and indignation in American society is coming from what social and religious conservatives still insist on labeling as a “Christian nation.” Is there something about being Christian, or about Christian doctrine, which is inherently angry, indignant and outraged? Did I miss something when I got the message that God is love, and that we are to love one another as a sign of following Jesus? Help me out here, folks.

—Pastor Dan

Posted in Go figure!, wingnuts, Violence, Lesbian/Gay Marriage, Public Affairs, LGBT Rights, Uncategorized | Print | No Comments »

This “new look.”

February 15, 2010 by Pastor Dan.

Indwelling Spirit looks different again — I’m still looking for a satisfactory template from my blog provider which looks vaguely spiritual, and doesn’t screw up the layout of these columns.

My apologies if you thought you were in the wrong place.

 The last template, with the spreading tree, seemed to generate huge problems for no particular reason (kind of like many other things in our society, such as government regulations, prices going up, most of the doors on public buildings locked during business hours, and people texting/yakking/putting on lipstick while driving insanely.  Tonight, for example, we had to wait a full 10 minutes to get a table in a chain Mexican restaurant while I count easily count 11 empty tables from the entraway, and the officious-looking host did everything except seat people.  Problems for no reason.  Perhaps I expect too much from society…)

Very little of the American life style actually makes sense.  I am reminded of that frequently when I meet a visitor from elsewhere in the world, such as Nepal last week or Germany last fall.  Visitors are usually polite about enjoying their visit to America, but if the conversation lasts more than 3 minutes I find myself feeling apologetic for the inanities of 21st century America.  This country doesn’t make any sense to anyone I think, but since I was born here and live here, I am routinely oblivious to it.   But what can I do when I am vastly outnumbered by the totally insane disciples of pop culture, pop politics, pop religion, pop prejudice and pop economics?  And they call me a a nerd!

Anyway, I am testing this new layout and template and main graphic (”Key visual” — 1and1.com won’t let me upload my own) to see if I can live with it.

Please use this site, and comment when you can.  I’d like feedback on links, pages, and especially on the issues you struggle with.  They’re probably a lot more important than screen layout and color scheme.

— Pastor Dan

Posted in Go figure!, Environment, Public Affairs, Uncategorized | Print | No Comments »

One screwball after another.

February 1, 2010 by Pastor Dan.

Why didn’t I think of it? Queerty, who is more than a little irreverent over LGBT things, is still working on why the Chinese evangelical Christian known as Hak-Shing William Tam wants to get out of the Perry v. Schwarzenegger trial (Proposition 8). Could it be that as a defense witness he is doing more damage to the defense of Prop 8 than their already-weak case can stand?

Why Does William Tam Want Out of Perry? Because His ‘Sex With Kids’ Claim Is Hurting the DefenseHak-Shing William (”Bill”) Tam, who has, hilariously, so far not been granted his request to leave the Perry Prop 8 lawsuit, which he volunteered to join as an intervenor, became the star of yesterday’s courtroom when his public letter to Chinese-Americans church groups — arguing gay marriage was only a stepping stone in the radical homosexual agenda to get to the ultimate goal of legalizing sex with children — was presented.

And if California didn’t pass Prop 8? Then “other states would fall into Satan’s hands,” the letter read, as footage of Tam giving a deposition last month played for the court.

David Thompson, representing the defendants ProtectMarriage.com, argued that Tam wasn’t part of the official Prop 8 campaign, and thus his letter wasn’t valid to attach homophobic animus to the case. You know, notwithstanding that ProtectMarriage.com handily added Tam to the list of five defendants- intervenors in Perry.

Oh, so it’s Tam’s ridiculous characterization of the gay agenda that has the defendants looking to remove him? Got it.

Forty-eight days before the election, Tam sent this letter, according to Queerty, to Chinese -American Christians. It is utterly amazing. Dear Friends:This November, San Francisco voters will vote on a ballot to “legalize prostitution”. This is put forth by the SF city government, which is under the rule of homosexuals. They lose no time in pushing the gay agenda — after legalizing same-sex marriage, they want to legalize prostitution. What will be next? On their agenda list is: legalize having sex with children. I hope we all wake up now and really work to pass Prop 8. We have only 48 days left. Even if you have church building projects, mission projects, concert projects, etc, please consider postponing them and put all the church man/woman power to work on Prop 8. We can’t lose this critical battle. If we lose, this will very likely happen……

1. Same-Sex marriage will be a permanent law in California. One by one, other states would fall into Satan’s hand.

2. Every child, when growing up, would fantasize marrying someone of the same sex. More children would become homosexuals. Even if our children is safe, our grandchildren may not. What about our children’s grandchildren?

3. Gay activists would target the big churches and request to be married by their pastors. If the church refuse, they would sue the church. Even if they know they may not win, they would still sue because they have a big army of lawyers from ACLU who would work for free. They know a prolonged law suit would cripple the church. They had sued the California government many times before. They sue until they win. They would not be afraid to sue a church. The church would have to spend lots of money in defending the case. The court fight would be long and the congregation would be discouraged and leave — how long are they willing to shoulder the law suit costs. The church may give in and accept them, their membership would grow and take over the church. Then a righteous pastor would have to leave. Such scenarios have happened in Scandinavian countries. At that time, churches would keep quiet, hoping that they won’t be picked as the next target.

If your church is sued, don’t expect others to help your church. You would be in the battle alone, and chances are you would lose. If that happens, whatever nice building your church have built now would become meaningless.

In order not to let this happen, we better team up at the current battle to defeat same-sex marriage. Collectively, we have a chance to win. Right now, each church sacrifice a little. For 48 days, delay your projects, put your resources ($ and manpower) into Prop 8. We’d have great power if we pool our resources together. Let’s win this battle. After victory, your congregation would be energized and go back to the original projects with joy and cheer. They may want to give more and build a bigger building to thank God. Our God would be pleased and bless us more. But if we lose, our congregation would lose heart. They might not want to work as hard. Our opponents would be overjoyed. They would do more and change more laws so as to persecute us easier. Churchs would have a much much harder time to survive. We would be collecting offerings to fight law suits instead of building new buildings. I pray that day would not come. The choice is yours. Talk to the leaders of your church. Your actions would change the history in either direction.

Thanks for your efforts,

Bill Tam

Traditional Family Coalition

June 16, 2008, Del Martin and Phyllis Lyon became the first lesbian couple to wed legally in California. (Heterosexual) San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom looks on from behind the camera. Who would have guessed that these women, who were together for more than half a century, really wanted to have sex with children?

What can I possibly do to dismantle the right wing’s flaky case any more?

— Pastor Dan Hooper

Posted in Lesbian/Gay Marriage, Go figure!, Sex, History, Public Affairs, Uncategorized | Print | No Comments »

Pink Mountain? How’d I miss this?

January 31, 2010 by Dan Hooper.

This one really twists the mind. A communist legislator?… advocating for gay tourists?… to get married? It gives a whole new meaning to “commie pinko.” (And for the record, the full insult is “commie pinko fag” – there’s a site where you can purchase mugs, t-shirts andmagnets!) If you’re interested, you can read the U.S. State Department’s overview on Nepal (which hasn’t been updated since October). The world she is a changin’. – P.D.

Nepal to legalize gay marriage, offer weddings on Mt. EverestBy Ruth Schneider, 365gay.com .  01.29.2010 2:24pm EST

Want to get married on top of the world? Not a problem, says a travel agency promoting gay marriage in Nepal.

In May, the country is set to ratify a new constitution that legalizes same-sex marriages, according to a report in The Telegraph.

Sunil Babu Pant, a Communist legislator and leader of the country’s gay rights movement, launched Pink Mountain, a travel agency offering wedding ceremonies on Mount Everest, the world’s tallest peak.

Pant’s company will offer regal, elephant-back processions and wedding ceremonies at the mountain’s base camp.

“Most Asian countries don’t welcome gay visitors, so we can have the maximum benefit for the Nepal economy which is fragile after years of war,” Pant told the Telegraph. “The government is hoping to increase the number of tourists from 400,000 to one million next year and has taken a positive attitude to welcoming gay and lesbian visitors to help meet their ambitious target.”

Posted in Go figure!, Lesbian/Gay Marriage, LGBT Rights, Public Affairs, Uncategorized | Print | No Comments »

Pastors, polygamists and beastialists, oh my!

January 30, 2010 by Pastor Dan.

Proposition 8: Pastors Say Prop. 8 could lead to Polygamy, Bestiality

Huffington Post sometimes has bad or misplaced headlines, but this one, posted January 25, is a doozy. Apparently, though, conservative clergy are worried about polygamy. For the record, Proposition 8 cannot lead to polygamy, and what Huffington should have said was overturning Proposition 8 could.

Or at least in the views of the pastoral wing-nuts out there:

Earlier Monday, a team of lawyers led by prominent litigators Theodore Olson and David Boies rested the plaintiffs’ case after spending more than nine days presenting evidence on the meaning of marriage, the nature of sexual orientation, and the role of religion in shaping attitudes about both.The last volley in their attempt to prove Proposition 8 was a product of anti-gay bias and served no legitimate public interest was videotape of a simulcast in which supporters of the ban said gay marriage would lead to polygamy and bestiality.The footage was shown as an example of the work of San Diego pastor Jim Garlow, who helped organize evangelical Christian support for the ballot measure.In one video rally led by Garlow, an unidentified pastor warned “the polygamists are waiting in the wings, because if a man can marry a man and a woman can marry a woman, the polygamists are going to use that exact same argument, and they probably are going to win.”

It appeared the lawyers were introducing the material to demonstrate the campaign for the ban appealed to religious-based, anti-gay bias to scare voters into supporting the measure.

Proposition 8 sponsors objected to the video, saying the content of the simulcast was not controlled by campaign managers or leaders.

However, Chief U.S. Judge Vaughn Walker allowed the material to be put into the record because the coalition of religious and conservative groups behind Proposition 8 paid for Garlow’s work.

Garlow wants to project an aw-shucks kind of attitude. His 2,500 member Skyline Church is really in La Mesa. He has a Protect Marriage link on his site, but doesn’t plaster it with anti-gay or pro-marriage materials. According to the Los Angeles Times article he barely mentioned the gay marriage issue when Proposition 22 was on the California ballot. but in June 2008 he took the lead to enlist a thousand conservative pastors and call for a 40-day fasting period to stop gay marriage.

Even more fringy, Garlow is trying to keep himself in the limelight—on health care reform! On Right Wing Watch, watch this:

Prayercast: Jim Garlow .  Submitted by Kyle on December 17, 2009 - 9:36amPastor Jim Garlow explains how health care reform legislation violates just about every one of the Ten Commandments:

On Wednesday December 16, Reps. Michele Bachmann and Randy Forbes and Sens. Jim DeMint and Sam Brownback will be joining forces with the likes of Lou Engle, Tony Perkins, Jim Garlow, and Harry Jackson for a “prayercast” organized by the Family Research Council during which they will seek God’s intervention to prevent the passage of healthcare reform. . . .

I‘m still looking for details on what Garlow was paid, and whether that is a violation of the church’s non-profit religious exemption under law.

But the last word in the 2008 story seems to underscore the point that was being made in the Perry courtroom in the last few days:

The dueling messages of the state’s clergy reflect passionate divisions in many faiths about the question. But in the political arena, there is no question that opponents of same-sex marriage will rely heavily on religious leaders to carry their message about marriage and to mobilize their congregants to vote.Civil marriage has been taken away because one specific religious point of view decided to enforce it’s concept of marriage. My constant question is why don’t open-minded and open-hearted clergy have the same energy to organize their voices?

—Pastor Dan Hooper

Posted in Go figure!, Lesbian/Gay Marriage, LGBT Rights, Public Affairs, Uncategorized | Print | No Comments »

More weight tipping the scale.

January 12, 2010 by Pastor Dan.

On the heels of the no vote in New Jersey (where they only needed 4 or 5 more votes in the Senate), little by little, the objections to same-gender legal marriage continue to wither in other countries. This past week, the Parliament of Portugal voted to permit gay marriage, according to an Associated Press story.

This unites the Iberian peninsula, because Spain already did this five years ago. Although both are heavily Roman Catholic countries, they have not fallen off into the Atlantic for their left-leaning liberalism! At what point will the international change reach a tipping point for the United States too? Why are we so, well, anal?

Last summer, according to the Huffington Post, Portugal’s highest Constitutional Court upheld a ban on same-sex marriage and rejected a suit by two lesbians, Teresa Pires and Helena Paixao. the high court considered the appeal brought from a lower court, and “the Constitutional Court said in a statement posted on its Web site that the constitution does not state that same-sex marriages must be permitted.”

But catch the prophetic outlook of one of the plaintiffs, which seems to anticipate this week’s shift:

The court said the question before it was not whether the constitution allows same-sex marriages, but whether the constitution compels them to be accepted, which it does not.       Paixao told The Associated Press by telephone she regarded the decision as “a victory” because the split decision demonstrated that attitudes are changing in Portugal. “It shows there’s a change coming. Bit by bit people will come around” and accept gay marriage, she said.www.Change.Org carries Michael Jones’ commentary from last Wednesday, “Portugal, Gay Marriage, and a Visit By Pope Benedict XVI“: Prime Minister Socrates made legalizing gay marriage a big component of his re-election campaign last year. When he won, in September, gay marriage activists saw the marriage equality writing on the wall. By the end of this week, the writing may be all over the country’s laws.       Meanwhile, even the Catholic Church is Portugal is sounding a bit conciliatory. Lisbon’s Catholic Cardinal Patriarch Jose Policarpo weighed in and said that same-sex marriage was “parliament’s responsibility,” and not something that Portugal’s Catholic Church should focus on. Ah, would that this philosophy spill over to the U.S. Catholic Church. Instead of leaving marriage up to state legislators, the U.S. Catholic Church gets involved regularly (hello Maine, hello California, hello New Jersey) in the same-sex marriage debate.

Meanwhile, Australian Catholic Cath News notes that the parliament rejects allowing gay couples to adopt children. And further meanwhile, Aljazeera (!) notes that it was as recently as 1982 that homosexuality was a crime in Portugal. Is there any doubt that we are clamoring to a tipping point when (a) decriminalization to legal marriage is only 28 years apart; (b) Aljezeera news carries an objective news story on this without calling for death to the “infidels”?

— Pastor Dan Hooper

Posted in Catholic matters, Lesbian/Gay Marriage, Ecumenical Issues, Public Affairs, Uncategorized | Print | No Comments »

Living and fighting AIDS, Hollywood remembers.

December 1, 2009 by Pastor Dan.

Here we are again at another World AIDS Day (begun in 1987), and 25 million people have died of this disease. Progress in fighting it has been so remarkable that people don’t use the term “pandemic” any more, which is good.

But the burden and the horror of AIDS has shifted — from white homosexual males who transported HIV around like so much airline baggage, and shared freely if unwittingly — to the third world, to women, to children, and to minorities. The bad side of this generation-long struggle against AIDS is that access to health care is not fair, justice or equal. Those who can afford health care have gotten access to today’s wonderful medications which allow them to manage the immune deficiency and get on with their lives.

Those who cannot get access to such medications (including the millions in third world nations who can’t even get clean water) still suffer the same pain and the same potential future as those whose names are on the AIDS Memorial Quilt.

I am proud to be on the Board of Directors of a fairly new local non-profit entity here in Los Angeles, Hollywood Remembers. Two nights ago, in anticipation of World AIDS Day, Hollywood Remembers staged its third annual consciousness– and fund-raising event, premiering the new rock/blues musical “Red Ribbon,” conceived and written by Joe Lawrence and directed by Jerry Craig. It tells the courageous story of six people whose lives were so heavily impacted by HIV and AIDS in the early 1990s just as the red AIDS ribbon was becoming a national symbol of the fight.

At the end of the evening our Board present $2,500 to Women Alive L.A., a grass-roots organization helping mostly minority women in their struggle against HIV and AIDS. Executive Director Carrie Broadus was here to speak to the audience—preach, really, about the fight we will not give up until AIDS is conquered—and to receive the check. I am hopeful that when our annual accounting is done, we’ll be able to send Women Alive even more. Much of our work has been generously underwritten by corporate and other non-profit sponsors, including Thrivent Financial for Lutherans and Lutherans Concerned/Los Angeles, but many small donations at the door provided more than a thousand dollars and proof that people still care.

During the intermission, ushers collected scribe tickets on which people in the audience wrote the names of loved ones they have lost to AIDS. Every year I get teary just jotting down a few of the names of those friends I lost, but I was overwhelmed again this year to see that the enormous red ribbon on the banner (pictured above) being hoisted to the ceiling was not big enough to hold the names. Perhaps the heart of God is bigger than our banners, bigger even that the AIDS Memorial Quilt itself, which is the largest work of folk art in the world (nearly 1.3 million square feet).

If you’re in the Los Angeles area, the 576 square feet on exhibit at Hollywood Lutheran Church will be up through Sunday, December 6. Come and pay your respects, light a candle, and make a donation. It will be well used to help people with HIV/AIDS continue living and fighting.

—Pastor Dan Hooper

Posted in Hollywood, HIV and AIDS, Living by Grace, History, PRAYERS, Public Affairs, Uncategorized | Print | No Comments »

I lift your names prayerfully.

August 21, 2009 by Pastor Dan.

I am still trying to grasp the enormity of this action in Minneapolis today, where one of the major Protestant churches in the United States reached its “tipping point” about the presence of lesbian and gay pastors in its churches, not just lesbian and gay people.

The tipping points, plural, were four resolutions on “Ministry Policies.” (Votes were taken in a different order than originally proposed, so if you’re following these from the original “Recommendation on Ministry Policies” published months ago, the resolutions were addressed today in this order: 3, 1 , 2, 4.) And the tipping points were 77%, 60%, 55% and 69%.

The actions essentially readdressed policy change that came before the prior biennial Assembly in Chicago in 2007, when the vote went ever-so-slightly in favor of the status quo (celibacy as a life sentence for LGBT clergy). Sociologists and historians will chart today’s actions when they write the ful story of how a homophobic society has continually and inexorably liberalized about homosexuality to the degree that every institution in it will eventually find a way to recognize and get in sync with the change.

But because this issue affects me so personally and specifically, I am sort of in a daze right now. Earlier in the day, I met with another gay pastor who has felt compelled to leave the Lutheran ministry, but has been waiting to see whether the ELCA will finally welcome his gifts and his energies. Now I am thinking and feeling—with a kind of stunned quietude—of the efforts and the sacrifices of countless people for nearly 40 years who would have rejoiced to see this day.

Joel, Don, Marc, Bryan, especially, I remember you and salute you in your heavenly place where you can fully know the heart and mind of God while we in this world struggle to discern what is right and where we are being led. Of these friends, the youngest of whom has been gone 14 years, all died of HIV/AIDS. One was a Lutheran pastor, two were seminarians never ordained, and one was a layman of extraordinary faithfulness to a church that had rejected him.

From the ELCA news release late today:

“Allison Guttu of the ELCA Metropolitan New York Synod said, ‘I have seen congregations flourish while engaging these issues; I have seen congregations grow recognizing the gifts of gay and lesbian pastors.’”

Now the church lately begins to recognize the gifts of gay and lesbian pastors, and I thank God for their insight. But I am mindful of the decades (including those long before my time) when the validity of ministry on behalf of sexual minorities was scarcely even thought of. For years and years, gay pastors quietly and often secretly ministered to gay Christians while the institution ignored and despised both. The Word was proclaimed, confessions were offered and absolutions pronounced, the bread and wine were blessed and given, and all of us quietly, faithfully continued to hope for this day.

— Pastor Dan Hooper

Recap of the 4 resolutions on Ministry Policies:

In the order considered today and voted upon . . .

Resolution # For/Against Total Votes Cast Percentage of Majority

3                      771 – 230                  1001                    77%

1                       619 – 402                 1021                     60%

2                        559 – 451                 1010                     55%

4                       667 – 307                   974                     69%

Posted in LGBT Christian, Ecumenical Issues, HIV and AIDS, Lesbian/Gay Marriage, Faith, History, ELCA, Ministry, PRAYERS, Public Affairs, Uncategorized | Print | No Comments »

A mid-day cliff hanger.

August 21, 2009 by Pastor Dan.

I thought it was all going to be over by now. At 9:15 a.m. (Los Angeles time) two resolutions had passed, by 77% and 60.6% majorities. Two down, two to go. But since I am not in Minneapolis, I am missing the procedural stuff. Apparently the agenda got postponed, ran over-time or something, and now the remaining two resolutions (re: my life, my integrity, my ministry and that of hundreds of others like who are lesbian or gay and partnered or hope to be partnered someday) are dangling from the cliff of Roberts Rules of Order. See the ELCA News Release below.

A thousand people are gathered in a huge room in downtown Minneapolis to politely argue with or attempt to persuade/cajole/manipulate one another into changing their point of view! Truly the ELCA is now in the middle of the road. As I said recently, the UCC and the Episcopal Church are clearly on its left flank. The United Presbyterian Church USA is on its right flank. Our churchbody is in a relationship of full communion with those other Protestant church bodies. And yesterday, the same ELCA Assembly voted 958 to 51 (a 95% majority) to enter into full communion with the United Methodist Church, which is way right of us on human sexuality. Last I checked they were still defrocking even straight Methodist clergy just for participating in a blessing ceremony for two lesbians or two gay men.

The problem of being in the middle of the road, you know, is that you get sidewsiped—from both sides. So as we dangle from the cliff, stay tuned!

—Pastor Dan Hooper

ELCA News Service  09-CWA-32-MRC

August 21, 2009

ELCA Assembly Takes First Steps on Ministry Policies Document

“MINNEAPOLIS (ELCA) — Voting members of the 2009 Churchwide Assembly of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA) are in the middle of taking steps to make it possible for the Lutherans in same-sex relationships to serve as professional leaders in the denomination.”The churchwide assembly, the chief legislative authority of the ELCA, is meeting here Aug. 17-23 at the Minneapolis Convention Center. About 2,000 people are participating, including 1,045 ELCA voting members. The theme for the biennial assembly is “God’s work. Our hands.”

“Voting members have begun considering four distinct resolutions Aug. 21, which are designed to change current ELCA policy that requires the denomination’s professional leaders to abstain from “homosexual sexual relationships.”

“The resolutions are contained in a report and recommendation on ministry policies developed by the Task Force for the ELCA Studies on Sexuality.

“A majority vote is required to pass each of the four resolutions.

“With a 771-230 vote, the assembly amended and approved a resolution that states “that in the implementation of any resolutions on ministry policies, the ELCA commit itself to bear one another’s burdens, love the neighbor, and respect the bound consciences of all.”

“With a 619-402 vote, the assembly approved a second resolution that commits the ELCA “to finding ways to allow congregations that choose to do so to recognize, support, and hold publicly accountably life-long, monogamous, same-gender relationships.”

“Prior to considering the two resolutions, voting members defeated a “substitute” motion with a 344-670 vote to strike out all four resolutions and replace it with the following: ‘rostered leadership of this church who are homosexual in their self understanding are expected to abstain from homosexual sexual relations and practicing homosexual persons are precluded from rostered leadership in this church.’ Albert Quie, voting member from the ELCA Minneapolis Synod, made the substitute motion.

“As voting members were considering resolution two, Edward A. Kirst, voting member from the ELCA Northeastern Ohio Synod, made a motion to require a two-thirds vote—instead of a majority—for approving the remaining resolutions. That motion was defeated with a 407-576 vote.

“During the afternoon plenary, voting members will consider the two remaining resolutions—that the denomination find a way for Lutherans in same-sex relationships to serve as ordained ministers and other professional leadership roles in the church, and that the denomination consider a proposal for how it will exercise flexibility within existing structures and practices to allow for Lutherans in same-sex relations to be approved for professional service in the church.”

Information about the 2009 ELCA Churchwide Assembly can be found at http://www.elca.org/assembly on the Web.

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 LGBT Christian, Ecumenical Issues, Sex, LGBT Rights, History, ELCA, Ministry, Uncategorized | Print | 1 Comment »

Tornado of the Spirit?

August 20, 2009 by Pastor Dan.

I had wanted to be there. I had hoped it would be a watershed event, a tipping point in the history of the church, or at least of our church, the Lutheran church.

As many of you know, we couldn’t go this time, primarily because of my spouse’s serious back injury just before Holy Week. (He is recovering well, after a disastrous fall which fractured 7 vertebrae —not 4 as previously stated— and 2 ribs, but after 19 weeks still has to wear a rigid neck and body brace for periods of each day.)

So I am dependent upon the reports of others as to how and when the Spirit is moving among us as the Church is gathered in it formal biennial Assembly in the Mini-Apple.

LC/NA Communications Director Phil Soucy’s e-mails have been most helpful, especially as he colored in details of the day: that while the debate was storming inside the Convention Center on Wednesday about the proposed and amended social statement of the church Human Sexuality: Gift and Trust, a real live tornado swept through downtown Minneapolis, violent enough to send order people to the basement.

“And then there was the Scripture text for tonight’s Goodsoil worship service at Central Lutheran Church, across from the Convention Center. Mark 4: 35-41. The story of crossing the Sea of Galilee during which Christ calmed the seas. The story in which it is said that ‘A great windstorm arose…’ And it did.”We had a tornado, with not a lot of warning. The problem with being deep inside a large structure like the Convention Center is that you are completely insulated from what is going on outside. Suddenly there was a shrill lip whistle heard in Goodsoil Central and an authoritative voice said that “no option, you are required to go to the lowest level of the center and stay there. Tornado coming.”"And it did, a real tornado. Came down on 12th Street between the Hilton Gardens we are staying in and Central Lutheran. All the tentage, tables, and chairs of the meal service and Pub that Central Lutheran had been using to support the assembly were pushed down and thrown around. Some of the tables ended up on the roof of the Convention Center. We were hustled to the bottom floor of the Convention Center. The Assembly kept meeting. Guess they thought the Assembly was safe enough where it was. Luckily no one was injured near the Convention Center, and none of debris penetrated the substantial glass on the Center.”

He goes on to recount the “storm” inside the center as amendments to this pivotal document were considered. In the end, amendments which would have weakened the progressive tone of “Gift and Trust” were not adopted. And then the vote was taken.Mind you, under ELCA rules, the Churchwide Assembly is the highest legislative authority — not the bishops or the Church Council. When more than 1,000 voting members (not delegates: they can vote their own conscience independent of the people who elected them) gather and vote, we must say that the Church has spoken. “There was one brief moment when it looked like we were going to move without debate straight through the amendment we were working on to the actual Social Statement and vote without any parliamentary debate at all - just vote on the amendment then just turn right around and vote on the Social Statement, done. The motion was defeated, but it gave everyone a scare.”All the efforts to change the Social Statement to make it reflect a-man-and-a-woman bias, an exclusive bias, were defeated.”The vote apparently was a cliff-hanger of the highest order, and will certainly be recounted in the future either with great joy or with much hand-wringing, depending on which side you’re on. The vote: “The time for debate had to be extended past the scheduled end time to allow for as much debate as had been scheduled. As the additional time was running down, finally a motion was made to call the question. And a vote was had, 676-338.”So:  Total ballots cast: 1,014.  Needed to pass, a two-thirds super-majority. [Math computation: 1014 x 2 ÷ 3 = 676.]   Human Sexuality: Gift and Trust was adopted by a 2/3 or 66.67% majority exactly, or 676 votes. Was this the workings of the Spirit? “Ross Murray [LC/NA Director of Youth, Young Adult, and Family Ministry] said someone asked him if it was a sign from the Holy Spirit that a great wind arose when the question of the Social Statement was taken up in earnest. He said he replied that, yes, it could have been just as much a sign as was the sun coming out when the Social Statement passed.”

My gut instinct is to think, no, this new “Gift and Trust” is not the coming of the Kingdom [sic] of God, nor the collapse of the Berlin Wall or the walls of Jericho. It will not automatically open every door to lesbian, gay, bisexual, transsexual, queer or questioning individual. But it will provide a better theological and theoretical basis for the policies and the ministries of the whole church.

I am emotionally and spiritually unprepared to think much of anything grander about such progress in my church, because I have spent the better part of 35 years listening to negative decisions and action, and more than a truckload of rejective, punitive, and hurtful if not hateful speech. But the Spirit tells me, quietly, to remain open and not to be cynical.

Today’s Assembly action, as reported in an ELCA news release, was that the voting members adopted “implementing resolutions” by a 71% majority vote (695 to 285):

“MINNEAPOLIS (ELCA) – Congregations of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America have been asked to implement the newly adopted social statement on human sexuality by continuing the study of sexuality, assist members to welcome people who are gay and lesbians, encourage comprehensive sex education programs in public schools, support the church’s work to combat HIV/AIDS and to take the “spirit of this statement” into all appropriate activities.”Most notable among these resolutions reported in the news release: “The resolutions also asked the ELCA’s Board of Pensions to amend its benefit policies to bring them in line with the social statement, presumably to provide benefits for partners of ELCA employees who are in same-gender relationships.”Okay, so maybe Jericho has thrown open a couple of gates after all. Maybe it’s just as well I couldn’t be there. I might have gotten very emotional at that point. Stay tuned.—Pastor Dan Hooper

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The first hurdle was the biggest.

August 18, 2009 by Pastor Dan.

As I mentioned recently, the ELCA Assembly’s biggest hurdle right now to openings its gates for lesbian/gay/partnered clergy is whether the recommendation before the Assembly, meeting right now in Minneapolis, will have to be adopted by a 2/3 supermajority or just a simple majority. 

The ELCA is certainly not all of the same mind about what to do with LGBT people who are Christians, let alone what to do with LGBT clergy.

The people on the extreme right, shouting “Armageddon” have a plan, of course. Either the homosexuals have to get out or the conservatives have to get out. Pity they won’t be around to here the stories of their own children and grandchildren who come out of their closets as faithful children of God and who need understanding and compassion, not judgment and rejection. Personally, I doubt that these few congregations (perhaps 100 out of 10,000 in the ELCA nationwide) will move to the right and join the Missouri Synod or the Wisconsin Synod, which are more to the right and righter of the ELCA. Those heavily German synods are culturally so stuck in their 19th century roots they refuse to even live in the world that exists today. So if there is a schism, the small break-away group will likely float out there as another tiny sect for a generation or more.

“Not all of the same mind” is of course an understatement. Like many other segments of American society right now, the church is almost evenly divided over homosexuality and its related issues. This is not a simple red-state/blue-state division for the ELCA, either, since the majority of its membership nationally lives in the heartland states, while the majority of the American population lives in the coastal states and large cities.
 A less controversial but important ecumenical issue before the Minneapolis Assembly is whether or not to adopt a “full communion” status with the United Methodist Church, a much larger and more conservative church body in America with high percentage of its churches in small towns spread throughout the heartland. What drives the division of the house on sexuality, of course, is what also drives the so-called “culture war”: LGBT people, when they wake up to their sexuality, sexual orientation or gender identity, are less likely to stay on the prairie but take the high road to the nearest big town.

If the ELCA is pretty much divided, it could mean that “the vote” on the Ministry Recommendations could come close to the 50% majority line, and tip either way. But the first hurdle is that change (dropping the present anti-gay policies) not require a 2/3 majority for passage.

So the first, big hurdle? Associated Press reports, through 365Gay.com, “Lutheran gay clergy proposal passes 1st hurdle.”

“(Minneapolis) Leaders of the country’s largest Lutheran denomination prayed for unity Monday as they waded into a weeklong debate over homosexuality and the clergy, while a rule change that would allow people in same-sex relationships to serve cleared its first hurdle.
 

“The Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, which is meeting this week in Minneapolis, is debating a proposal to allow individual congregations to hire gays and lesbians in committed relationships as clergy. A final vote is not expected until Friday.
  “But delegates on Monday rejected a move by critics of the proposal to require approval from a two-thirds supermajority instead of a simple majority when the measure comes to the final vote.
  “Supporters of the supermajority said a higher hurdle was needed to signal wide support for what they called a major change in the church’s approach to homosexuality. But the move received support from just 43 percent of the 1,045 voting delegates.
  “ELCA Presiding Bishop Mark Hanson said earlier in the day that the outcome of the majority versus supermajority vote shouldn’t be seen as strongly indicating the ultimate outcome of the debate.
  “The ELCA delegates gathered at the Minneapolis Convention Center also will consider a broader statement on human sexuality, a 34-page document that tries to establish a theological framework for differing views on homosexuality. Critics say it would simply liberalize the ELCA’s attitudes. A vote on that document is scheduled for Wednesday.
  “At 4.7 million members and about 10,000 congregations in the United States, the ELCA would be one of the largest U.S. Christian denominations yet to take a more gay-friendly stance on clergy.
  “In 2003, the 2 million-member Episcopal Church consecrated its first openly gay bishop, deepening a long-running rift over homosexuality in the worldwide Anglican Communion and leading to the formation of the more conservative Anglican Church in North America, which claims 100,000 members.”

The sex and culture wars, according to numerous commentators, is triggering a slow but sure realignment of religious beliefs in America. People will get up and switch congregations, or church bodies, until the find a new comfort zone where their beliefs are reinforced and their prejudices not challenged. I left in the last two paragraphs of the AP story to illustrate the size factors in this debate. Stayed tuned on that also!

—Pastor Dan Hooper, Los Angeles

Posted in Doctrine, Sex, Ecumenical Issues, LGBT Christian, ELCA, Ministry, Uncategorized | Print | No Comments »

“Sex! Schism! Sky is falling! Armageddon! Oh my!”

August 16, 2009 by Pastor Dan.

Above, presiding Bishop Mark Hanson, right, leading Assembly worship

I have postponed talking about the Churchwide Assembly of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America until the last possible moment, and for good reason. This mother of all Lutheran conventions opens tomorrow in Minneapolis, and with all the religious hype and theological terror of the Book of Revelation, if not the special effects of such apocalypse.

Because sex is on the agenda again, there are conservative voices who have been threatening to start the Armageddon war right there on the prairie. The “sky is falling” flag of Chicken Little is being carried most openly by the Word Alone Network of New Brighton, Minnesota. Their last conservative knee-jerk convention was held in another hotbed of activism, Golden Valley, Minnesota.

“God’s authority is being hijacked in the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America,” wrote Betsy Carlson, the Editor of their Network News in the July-August edition.  I thought conservatives still believed that women are to remain silent in the church (1 Corinthians 14:33-35), but I guess they are just as good as casuistry as anybody.

Word Alone officially thinks that the ELCA is “moving toward schism,” much the same as observers of the Anglican /Episcopal Church USA impasse think so. But when a chunk falls off an iceberg into the sea, however, one cannot attribute the split-off to the iceberg. It is not the ELCA which is moving toward or causing a schism, but the little piece of it which has defined its mission around crying: “Sex! Schism! War! Sky is falling! Oh my!”

Seriously, nobody wants to see splits or disunity, but perhaps it would be best, even in God’s compassionate gaze, if the statistically minor group which cannot stand the thought of homosexuals in the larger fellowship would just take themselves and their particular slant on Christian faith elsewhere. God love ‘em, God bless ‘em. They are never going to be happy trying to keep unity, if they’ve spent the better part of the last 8 or 10 years planting the seeds of schism, building their mass mailing lists, raising funds and producing their DVDs filled with alarm.

It reminds me of those few but unhappy times when I was having something very ugly going on in my stomach. (If you are faint of heart, skip down a paragraph.) I felt absolutely terrible until my stomach involuntarily forced a vomit. It always amazed me that after that brief and icky moment how much better I felt almost immediately. (The Scriptures are not afraid of such graphic language, incidentally; the word occurs 12 times in the NRSV; cf, Ecclesiasticus 31:21.) I suspect the ELCA will feel considerably better when those within it who cannot stomach gay and lesbian Christians serving Christ in their midst simply eject themselves.

So what is at stake this year are two major things: first, a major teaching or Social Statement on Human Sexuality is up for a vote. So far the ELCA has adopted nine such teaching documents on these topics: abortion, church in society, the death penalty, economic life, education, the environment, health and healthcare, peace and race, ethnicity and culture. “Our Calling in Education” was adopted with a few amendments by the Churchwide Assembly two years ago, but I think I yawned right through the vote. Education is probably more important to society as a whole than individual sexual behavior, but it doesn’t stir the passions (no pun intended).

“Human Sexuality: Gift and Trust” is a responsibly prepared social teaching that of course has flaws everywhere. More truthfully than in the past, the entire process that led to its drafting has been transparent about the lack of consensus on controversial matters of sexuality. You can find the proposed statement here, even if it is a bit buried on the ELCA web site.

The 2007 ELCA Assembly heard a progress report on “Gift and Trust” and delegates demanded that the study commission not avoid talking about gay and lesbian people serving as pastors and lay professional leaders, but “directed the task force assigned to develop the social statement on human sexuality to ‘specifically address and make recommendations to the 2009 Churchwide Assembly on changes to any policies that preclude practicing homosexual persons from the rosters of this church.’” the commission also has brought in a Report and Recommendation on Ministry Policies, a four-footed beast that will take some careful husbandry to get into the barn. The recommendations include the lifting of the ban against partnered lesbian and gay people from serving as pastors or lay professionals, which would reverse the odious 1990 Vision & Expectations and Guidelines for Discipline which the ELCA’s church council had put into place quickly and furtively to block the ordination of three highly qualified but openly gay seminary graduates. The fourth and final of these recommendations, unfortunately, is a cumbersome 67-lines long and almost defies summary of its 7 “Resolveds.”

The first order of business that concerns us beginning tomorrow is whether or not the these liberalizing recommendations will require a 2/3 majority vote for adoption. That will be a decision about the Rules, which must be agreed upon along with the Agenda. What we have been told, however, is that to require a 2/3 majority for passage would itself require a 2/3 majority vote on such an Assembly rule, so it seems unlikely.

In my deepest safe places of the heart, I know I should be at prayer about these matters. If these recommendations pass this Assembly, the wheels would be put in motion to remove the ban that has kept me off the ELCA clergy roster since 1991. But closer to the surface, I just want it all to be over with quickly. I remain neither hopeful nor optimistic, but I do put my trust in the Holy Spirit.  Stay tuned.

—Pastor Dan Hooper, Los Angeles

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

Out of the closet, out of the bottle.

August 8, 2009 by Dan Hooper.

Thank you to Billy Glover for forwarding the link to this. It is one of the wisest and most cogent arguments presented, not only sympathetic to same-gender marriage, but with serious a serious critique of the failure of opponents to offer anything meaningful. By the end of it, I found myself close to tears.

—Pastor Dan Hooper, Los Angeles

A Moral Crossroads For Conservatives: The genie that gay-marriage opponents still hope to stuff back into the bottle is out for good.

by Jonathan Rauch • Saturday, Aug. 8, 2009

Last October, Bill Meezan, my cousin, left his home in Columbus, Ohio, for a business trip to Philadelphia. Bill is the dean of Ohio State University’s College of Social Work, and he travels quite a bit. In Philadelphia, he thought he felt an old cold coming back. Then he developed a nasty cough. On October 31, he went to the hospital.He remembers nothing of that day, but Mike Brittenback recalls sharply how doctors in Philadelphia called him in Columbus to say they suspected pneumonia. Mike, an organist and choirmaster, is Bill’s partner of 30 years. A few hours later that Friday, they called back to confirm the diagnosis. Mike was concerned but not alarmed.  At 3 a.m. the next day, the phone woke him up. It was a doctor in Philadelphia. Mike needed to come to Philadelphia immediately. Bill had gone into septic shock and might not survive more than a few hours. . . . National Review has a cover story this month by Maggie Gallagher, a prominent anti-gay-marriage activist, subtitled: “Why Gay Marriage Isn’t Inevitable.” She is right, in a sense. Most states explicitly ban same-sex marriage, often by constitutional amendment, and the country remains deeply divided. The national argument over marriage’s meaning will go on for years to come. 

In another sense, however, she is wrong. Never again will America not have gay marriage, and never again will less than a majority favor some kind of legal and social recognition for same-sex couples. The genie that gay-marriage opponents still hope to stuff back into the bottle is out and out for good.

Read the full article: http://www.nationaljournal.com/njmagazine/st_20090808_9125.php

Maggie Gallagher, by the way, is out to hurt us. While the referenced article above form the National Review is not on line, by another one with her muck-filled views, “Redefinition Revolution: Gay marriage is about more than Adam and Steve”, can be found here.

Posted in Lesbian/Gay Marriage, "The Closet", LGBT Rights, Public Affairs, Coming Out, Uncategorized | Print | No Comments »

Episcopals and Lutherans dialogue on the same issues.

July 15, 2009 by Pastor Dan.

The General Convention of the Episcopal Church U.S.A. is going on this week in Anaheim, California. They have their hands full of controversy this year, as a number of congregations and an entire diocese have tried to leave the Episcopal Church because they are still upset that Gene Robinson was elected and consecrated Bishop of New Hampshire six years ago. Underlying this controversy, to a degree, is the fact that some conservative Episcopalians still haven’t gotten over the ordination of women two generations ago.

On Monday, the Bishops voted 99 to 45 (with two abstentions) to affirm the calling to ministry of gay men and lesbians in committed relationships. Lay delegates (House of Deputies) adopted a nearly identical statement earlier. A final version is expected to be adopted before the convention closes Friday.

All this in spite of pressure from other Anglican bodies around the world to back down on liberal gay issues and sustain a “moratorium” on consecrating any more homosexuals as bishops— and the hand-wringing and misgivings of the Archbishop of Canterbury who is trying to keep this worldwide Anglican communion together on his watch.

(Is it fair to ask as an aside: what good is a “moratorium” against more homosexual bishops when there are several sitting bishops who could be outed or just come out that would probably give Nigeria’s Archbishop Peter Akinola a terminal heart attack?)

While many other Christian entities will watch the Episcopal Church carefully, this vote will undoubtedly be noted by the voting members (delegates) of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America’s Churchwide Assembly next month in Minneapolis, whether positively or negatively. I expect to be there as a registered visitor, not a voting member.

The ELCA and the Episcopal Church U.S.A. have had a relationship of full communion for the last ten years, since the adoption of “Called to Common Mission.” The ELCA’s own statement on ecumenical relations and full communion quotes Article VII of the Augsburg Confession of 1530, “For the true unity of the church it is enough to agree concerning the teaching of the Gospel and the administration of the Sacraments.”

The ELCA has full communion agreements not only with the Episcopal Church, but with the Moravian Church, the United Church of Christ, the Presbyterian Church USA and the Reformed Church in America. Our church body does not even begin to have the same mind about all aspects of church life, doctrine and theology, or the same mind about controversial issues which the churches all face. We have very different histories, different resources, different burdens, different insights from the one Holy Spirit of God.

On matters of human sexuality, the United Church of Christ and the Episcopal Church are more to the left of the ELCA and the Moravian, Presbyterian and Reformed churches are very much to the right. What is important is that, from individual congregations right up to the national and international level, we continue to affirm our agreement in proclaiming the Gospel and carrying out the commands of Jesus Christ regarding the Sacraments. If we are anchored in the same place on the same key foundational parts of our faith, there should be no worry about any other issue becoming divisive. If another issue becomes divisive, either at a congregational level or the national level, that is evidence that such an issue is supplanting the Gospel itself as the defining measure of faith and unity. For this to happen, someone or some group has to be forcefully pushing the Gospel aside and placing this issue onto center stage, And that would be evidence that the individuals who cry the loudest about disaster, controversy, or controversy are allowing themselves to be sidetracked from the mission of every Christian—to proclaim the Good News of God’s grace in Jesus Christ, and to let that grace shape their lives as living testimonies.

Peter Akinola and Martyn Minns

This probably sounds naive on my part, but I firmly believe that we should just watch who screams the loudest about disunity, division and disfellowship, and they will be the ones who are pushing, pulling and jerking the rest of the church around trying to fulfill their own prophecy of dissent and disunity. One of the people to watch, for example, is Rev. Martyn Minns, who was also quoted in this morning’s Los Angeles Times story on the General Convention. N.T. Wright, the Bishop of Durham, England is another right-wing voice who writes today on the coming schism. Check out the full article here, but be prepared to sputter at his dismissive, conservative reasoning.

For years now I have been covertly grateful that I am not Episcopal and I don’t have a dog in their fight. But now that the gloves are off, and our two general conventions are scarcely a month apart and facing the same issues, it is time to stand with the Episcopal Church U.S.A. and admit that we are in this together.

—Pastor Dan Hooper, Los Angeles

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