Posted by
Playful Walrus on Wednesday, February 24, 2010 3:51:11 PM
It's a shame when any Christian organization moves away from Biblical principles. The Evangelical Lutheran Church in America is dealing with the issue, via trying to accommodate open homosexual behavior in leadership. Associated Press writer Patrick Condon brings us the latest news. His article starts out with a side story about a Wisconsin Reverend who is being accused of being a lesbian. She says she isn't. This doesn’t really deal with the heart of the issue, because the policy shift has to deal with openly practicing homosexual behavior, and she clearly isn't. Quite likely, the accusers are guilty of gossip and slander, which the Bible definitely condemns. But let's get to the real story.
Last week, a conservative Lutheran group announced its plans to establish the North American Lutheran Church, a new denomination that will recruit dissident congregations.
Some people will attack this as division, but the division was sown when a decision was made to move away from what God has clearly taught. Sexuality and church leadership is not a minor matter.
Pushing plans for the new Lutheran denomination is Lutheran CORE, an activist group that led opposition to the gay clergy policy. Critics say liberalizing policies toward homosexuality directly contradicts scripture.
Exactly. The qualifications for church leaders are fairly clear. A church leader is to reserve sexual expression for marriage, just like congregants. If a leader unrepentantly violates that, they should be removed from leadership.
The Lutheran CORE effort isn't coming together quickly enough to be viable, said the Rev. Kurt Rau, whose Calvary Lutheran Church in Kalispell, Mont., instead opted to affiliate with Lutheran Congregations in Mission for Christ.
"They're a little slow to the party," Rau said.
His church's new, much smaller denomination itself split from the ELCA in 2000 over perceptions that the bigger congregation was getting too liberal, and so far has been the chief receptacle for congregations leaving the ELCA.
While there hasn’t been a huge rush yet, Lutherans have some real choices that allow them to reject the ECLA's shift in position and still identify as Lutherans. And not all of them are new choices.
At St. Luke's Lutheran Church in La Mesa, Calif., the congregation also voted to ditch the ELCA — although the Rev. Mark Menacher said that had less to do with gay clergy and more to do with other long-standing theological disputes. St. Luke's is affiliating with yet another small denomination, the Fellowship of Confessing Lutheran Churches.
Of course, it would be better if everything was united, but unity can't come at the cost of essentials like the principle that God has authority over us.