Thank You for Shopping at Sears

Last month Sears declared bankruptcy. Today's news is that the company hopes to sell most of its profitable stores, perhaps to its biggest shareholder, to keep the business alive. We'll see how well that works.

I started working for Sears after graduating high school in 1977. (That's me behind the thick glass of the Cashier's Cage in this Spring 1978 Polaroid taken by a sweet CSUN coed working in the stationery/photo department across the aisle at the Sears in Northridge Fashion Center.) We were an "A" store, ranking among the biggest in the company. When something new happened at Sears, Northridge was among the first stores to do it. As an accounting student at CSUN I read the Wall Street Journal, which helped give me some insights into the company. Such as, Sears was already in trouble.

Granted, Sears was still the biggest department store by any measure. But K-Mart was moving up and Sears was not responding very well. I remember a front page WSJ story describing Sears' plans to overcome the competion. And then a year or so later, there was another front page story describing Sears' new plan, replacing the earlier, unsuccessful plan. I recall thinking as I read that new story, "Wait a minute; that earlier plan hasn't even been implemented in our store yet."

Throughout the '80s Sears tried several different strategies. The one that affected me most was the creation of the in-store "Sears Financial Network," where I spent the last 2½ years of my Sears employment at Sears Savings Bank, the company's California savings-and-loan, at the in-store Northridge SFC (Sears Financial Center) branch. SSB's branch operations that weren't sold to Citicorp or California Federal Savings were shut down at the end of 1987, shortly before I started seminary. Yes, I helped close a bank.

Kmart never caught Sears. Walmart would pass them both, becoming the top retailer in 1990. Kmart went bankrupt in 2002, emerging from bankruptcy the next year. In 2004, Kmart bought the now obviously struggling Sears, so today's Sears Holdings Corporation is, in a sense, really Kmart.

Why "Francis"

Pope Francis tells the press how he chose his regnal name:




Meanwhile, the Rev. Dr. R. Guy Erwin, Professor of Religion and History at California Lutheran University (and Interim Pastor at my home congregation) offers "this op-ed in Friday's Ventura County Star with an historian's perspective on the significance of a Pope named "Francis."

Customer Service?

Honest! I have a "confirmation e-mail" posted Dec. 24 at 12:21 pm:

Stop Date: December 27, 2012
Restart Date: January 5, 2013
Reason: Temp Stop - On Vac Pak
Action: Hold my papers

So, what is the first thing I find when stepping into the breezeway between the Parsonage and the Parish Hall on January 4 after a 9+ days away? Yup, individual copies of the Peoria Journal Star for every single one of those dates.

I wonder if they'll deliver my "Vac Pak" tomorrow?

Happy New Year!!

The HHS Mandate: What's at Stake?

"We don't ask people for their baptismal certificate, nor do we ask people for their U.S. passport, before we can serve them, OK? . . . We don't serve people because they're Catholic, we serve them because we are, and it's a moral imperative for us to do so."

That's Timothy Cardinal Dolan, the Archbishop of New York, in James Taranto's "Weekend Interview" in The Wall Street Journal entitled "When the Archbishop Met the President."  You can read the entire article here (unless it gets hidden behind the Journals paywall).

In the interview Cardinal Dolan speaks of his conversations initiated by President Obama regarding the Department of Health and Human Service's new mandate that all forms of birth control be covered by medical insurance plans, including the plans of those for whom some (or all) forms of contraception are morally repugnant.

Mr. Obama knew that the mandate would pose difficulties for the Catholic Church, so he invited Archbishop Dolan to the Oval Office last November, shortly before the bishops' General Assembly in Baltimore. At the end of their 45-minute discussion, the archbishop summed up what he understood as the president's message:

"I said, 'I've heard you say, first of all, that you have immense regard for the work of the Catholic Church in the United States in health care, education and charity. . . . I have heard you say that you are not going to let the administration do anything to impede that work and . . . that you take the protection of the rights of conscience with the utmost seriousness. . . . Does that accurately sum up our conversation?' [Mr. Obama] said, 'You bet it does.'"

The archbishop asked for permission to relay the message to the other bishops. "You don't have my permission, you've got my request," the president replied.

"So you can imagine the chagrin," Archbishop Dolan continues, "when he called me at the end of January to say that the mandates remain in place and that there would be no substantive change, and that the only thing that he could offer me was that we would have until August. . . . I said, 'Mr. President, I appreciate the call. Are you saying now that we have until August to introduce to you continual concerns that might trigger a substantive mitigation in these mandates?' He said, 'No, the mandates remain. We're more or less giving you this time to find out how you're going to be able to comply.' I said, 'Well, sir, we don't need the [extra time]. I can tell you now we're unable to comply.'"

Cardinal Dolan has more to say about controversy that has ensued, both within the Catholic Church and the nation in general, particularly regarding what appropriate and proper "ministry" of the Church is in our land.  

The archbishop sees a parallel irony in his dispute with Mr. Obama: "This is a strange turn of the table, that here a Catholic cardinal is defending religious freedom, the great proposition of the American republic, and the president of the United States seems to be saying that this is a less-than-important issue."

Strange indeed. Alas, that is also the current state of the Republic. Again, read the interview here -- it's really important.

Tip o' the hat to James Kushiner at Touchstone's "Mere Comments."

Letters to the Editor

I couldn't resist. After reading this from the Reader Forum of the Peoria Journal Star for last Friday, February 12...

Prayers aren't helping
We had World War I - and the people prayed.

We had World War II - and the people prayed.

We had the Korean War - and the people prayed.

We had the Vietnam War - and the people prayed.

We're having the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the people are praying.

We've had tsunamis, earthquakes, riots, famine, AIDS, 9-11, plane, ship and car wrecks, cancer, polio, dictators, gangs, rapes, sexual abuse of children, lying politicians, drug abuse - you name it - and the people prayed, and prayed, and prayed.

If you truly believe that God created the heavens and Earth and that He is a "loving" God, why has He done nothing in the history of the world to stop this madness? After hundreds of billions of dollars have been given to churches and their leaders, not one single prayer has been answered in the history of civilization. Try to prove me wrong.

Ask your religious leader about this and he'll spout the usual "God works in mysterious ways!" Really? Prove to me that He is going to stop wars and famine and cure cancer, and then I might listen.

What better mind control could there be than inventing "Heaven" and "Hell" to control the people? How many times have you been told, "Stop that or you'll go to Hell!"?

Wake up, people.

John Cullen
Peoria

...I couldn't help it, and I sent the following last Saturday evening.

Dear Editor:

re: John Cullen's "Prayers aren't helping" in the Reader Forum of last February 12

I am tempted to observe that the wars ended. However I expect that Mr. Cullen would, as he does in his letter, continue to list more and more things that aren't happening the way the "God" he envisions ought to do things. Those familiar with the Holy Bible know that both scoffers and believers have been making such lists for thousands of years. Frankly such discussions today better prove the skills of the debaters, rather than the subject being debated.

To his demand that "religious leaders ... prove to me that He is going to stop wars,... and then I might listen," this Christian pastor responds: Jesus Christ is risen from the dead.

And when he begins to get that, I pray that he will be ready to listen -- a become part of a long conversation.

Yours sincerely,

The Rev. Steven P. Tibbetts, STS
Zion Evangelical Lutheran Church
Peoria, Illinois

And leading off this morning's Journal Star Reader Forum, there it was, slightly edited, under the title "Proper beginning needed in prayer conversation."

South Side Memories

Last month Bonnie White was the lector for the Sunday services at Zion. This morning, readers of the Peoria Journal Star saw that Bonnie, whom many have seen in local theater productions over the years (often with her husband, Mel -- one of Zion's organists), can write, too. No surprise to those who receive her letters.

Why is it, as we grow older, that we think about our earlier years and the happiness that went with them?

My childhood and the first 21 years of my 62-year marriage were spent on the South Side of Peoria. I loved Garfield School and still keep in touch with some of my friends from those days.

I remember walking home and having lunch with my mother and sometimes with dad, since he did shift work at Commercial Solvents Corp. I doubt Dad got beyond the 4th grade, but it didn't keep him from working hard and being a wonderful parent. My best friend considered our house her second home and we're still best friends.

Read it all here.

While they moved out of the neighborhood 40+ years ago, Bonnie and Mel are often on the South Side, worshiping and serving the Lord at Zion, which has been on the north-east corner of Easton and Hayes for over 115 years. The church -- both the people and the building -- is a jewel in a place too few expect it.

It's been my home for over 17 years -- and good memories are still made here.

50 Stars: The Rest of the Story

The photo is a clipping of the first time I appeared in a church publication, the monthly newspaper of the old Pacific Southwest Synod, LCA. The date, as you can see (click for a larger version), is January 1971. The names aren't listed in the order we're standing: its Mr. Pfundstein, me, Bruce, Greg, Ken, and Jon. Here's the story.

I first went to camp when I was 11. It was one week in the summer of 1970 at Camp Yolijwa, the Synod's camp outside Yucaipa, California. That's in the mountains east of San Bernardino. I had never been that far "back east" before. I'd never been away from home that long before.

First thing every morning we'd all gather at the flag pole to raise the colors and say the Pledge of Allegiance. "Hey," I whispered to one of my friends the first day, "you notice anything about that flag?" The stars looked different. It was a 48-star flag! For boys who had been born the year Alaska and Hawaii were admitted to the Union, we thought it was pretty pathetic that the church camp would have an out-of-date flag.

Naturally that became an item of conversation when The Odd Squad -- Bruce, Greg, Jon, and I were all in the same Sunday School class, Ken was a year ahead (and who'd been trying to get all of us to Yolijwa) -- and we'd been we palling around Resurrection, were in the choir, etc. -- came home. I don't recall who gave us that moniker, but I'm thinking we were tagged with it shortly after The Mod Squad came on the air. None of us, of course, were anything as cool as Linc, Pete, and Julie.

Several weeks later, Pastor Gibson gathered us all together at church and took us to one of the Canoga Park mortuaries, where we were presented with a brand new 50-star flag. Which we then presented to Mr. Pfundstein, who came up to the Lutheran Church of the Resurrection in Canoga Park from the Synod Office.

I've intended at some point to tell that story here just because. The old Odd Squad doesn't have much contact with each any more. Bruce and his family would move away after we were confirmed and his dad got a new job in Ohio. He's an ELCA pastor in Reading, Pennsylvania. The rest of us stayed in the West Valley through high school. Ken went to ULCA and, after working a while at Hughes Aircraft, headed to Silicon Valley -- his older brother (Wayne) is an ELCA pastor in Port Byron, Illinois. Jon and Greg went to Humboldt State and made their lives elsewhere. Jon is the Director of the New York Aquarium.; Greg (last I heard) is with the Portland, Oregon, water works.

So why "the rest of the story?" That showed up Monday over at the pretty good lutherans blog, which I recently discovered as a fine source for ELCA news.

Robert Heft, the designer of the 50-star U.S. flag, died Saturday at Covenant Medical Center in Saginaw, Mich. He was 67.

Heft created the flag in 1958 for a high school project. He was 17-years-old and a junior at Lancaster High School in Lancaster, Ohio.

He received a B- for the project, but the teacher eventually changed his grade to an A.

“His interest in flags originally came from his volunteer work as a former Boy Scout,” his newspaper obituary said. “Bob was a very proud American. He devoted his life to inspiring others.”

President Dwight Eisenhower chose Heft’s design to replace the 48-star flag. At the time, Alaska and Hawaii were expected to soon make the country a 50-state nation.

Should you read it all here, you'll discover that Mr. Heft was -- a Lutheran.

Murder in the Church

I first learned about the murder of Dr. George Tiller early yesterday afternoon on while looking at ALPB Forum Online. Mine was a terrible sinking feeling, partly because this happened in the Narthex of a sister ELCA congregation, where Dr. Tiller was serving as an usher as the congregation was preparing for worship on one of the holiest of Christian holy days, Pentecost -- the 50th Day of Easter and the celebration of the coming of the Holy Spirit.

What, then, should a Lutheran Pastor say in this sort of situation? The best I've seen so far is this letter to the editor posted by three Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod pastors in northwest Wisconsin. As you read it, please do so with the same careful attention with which it was clearly written.

There is an old saying: Two wrongs don’t make a right. This does not appear in the Bible but it certainly reflects a scriptural idea. This concept, that two wrongs don’t make a right, is certainly true in the case of the murder of Dr. George Tiller.

Dr. Tiller was an infamous abortionist, who was one of the very few in the country who would perform late-term abortions. The Lutheran Church - Missouri Synod is strongly pro-life, and condemns the practice of abortion. Dr. Tiller, a former member of a Missouri Synod congregation, was excommunicated by that congregation for his abortion practice. (The congregation he was currently attending is part of another Lutheran body.) We stand by that action. Our sister congregation acted properly in disciplining Dr. Tiller. Such action is always intended to lead a person to see their sins and come to repentance. Excommunication is never intended to bring that person harm.

While we condemn Dr. Tiller’s actions as an abortionist, we just as strongly condemn the actions of the person who took his life. Murder, even of a murderer, is never acceptable. God teaches us in Romans 13 and other places, that the government is in place to enforce justice. We are never to take private vengeance. This is simply not given to private individuals. Murder in any circumstances is a grievous sin. It was our utmost desire that Dr. Tiller come to repentance, and perhaps in time he may have. We do not know. Only God sees all ends. Sadly, because of this heinous act of violence, Dr. Tiller no longer has that opportunity.

Rev. Jody R. Walter, pastor LCMS
Immanuel, Frederic

Rev. David Emmons, pastor LCMS
Zion, Turtle Lake/Immanuel, Clayton

Rev. Mark Schoen, pastor LCMS
Shepherd of the Valley, St. Croix Falls

There's a whole lot of careful theology and pastoral care in those 3 brief paragraphs. There will be more to say later on, but in the heat of the moment, these Lutheran pastors have said what needed to be said, no more and no less.

Peoria Journal Star: Holy Traditions

Check out the front page of this morning's Peoria Journal Star! Here's the entire article, posted it its entirety here for non-commercial use under a Creative Commons license.

---

Christians parade into Holy Week with Palm Sunday procession

By PATRICK OLDENDORF of the Journal Star
Posted Apr 05, 2009 @ 07:05 PM
Last update Apr 05, 2009 @ 10:02 PM
PEORIA — Sunday marked the start of Holy Week, the most somber seven days on the Christian calendar.

"The center of the Christian faith is Jesus' death and resurrection," said the Rev. Steven Tibbetts, pastor of Zion Evangelical Lutheran Church. "This is the week we remember the story."

The members of his congregation, like many other Christians, started the week with the celebration of Palm Sunday.

The service at Zion, 1534 S. Easton Ave., began with a procession in which members carried palms above their heads to symbolize the people of Jerusalem placing palms on the ground as Jesus entered the town five days before his death. They placed the palms down because they had proclaimed Jesus to be the son of David and a king, even if he wasn't acting like a typical one.

"Jesus road into town on a donkey," Tibbetts said to the congregation of about 50. "That would be like if when President Obama came to town, we parked an old Chevrolet at the airport and told him to drive himself."

he palm procession and other re-enactments that take place throughout Holy Week, such as acting out the passion of the Christ, are not new traditions, Tibbetts said.

"Christians have been doing this since the 200s and 300s, since before Christianity was legal," he said.

Holy Week is a somber remembrance of "everything Jesus went through," Tibbetts said.

By physically acting out the occurrences of Holy Week, Christians can actually show what they believe Christ went through.

"We do this to show it's not just words in a book," Tibbetts said. "We do it so people can actually see it with their eyes and feel it with their hearts."

On Thursday, Christians will remember the Last Supper, and on Friday, also known as Good Friday, they will gather to pray in remembrance of the day Jesus died.

"We focus on his death on Friday," Tibbetts said. "There are no decorations (in the church), everything is very sparse."

For its Easter Sunday celebration, Zion will start the day at 6:30 a.m., and the church will remain undecorated.

"We will bring things, like flowers, in as the sun rises," Tibbetts said. "It represents the resurrection of Christ."

Holy Week is a time that brings more people into the church.

"A lot of people came for Palm Sunday," Tibbetts said. "(Easter) Sunday will be big for us, too."

Patrick Oldendorf can be reached at 686-3196 or poldendorf@pjstar.com

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Oh, It's There!

I was a die-hard LA Herald-Examiner reader and subscriber (and still think real newspapers should be published in the afternoon), so I really hate it when the Los Angeles Times gets it right. Nevertheless, as a follow-up from yesterday's post, here's the beginning of today's Times story on the new Topanga Division LAPD station. Remember the question: Where is the police station?

LAPD opens new station in Canoga Park

Its 265 officers will serve the southwest San Fernando Valley. The department also celebrates its 140th anniversary.

By Ruben Vives

There was a lot to cheer about Saturday in Canoga Park.

The Los Angeles Police Department celebrated the opening of its 21st police station and launched the commemoration of the department's 140th anniversary.

Although the station is in Canoga Park, near the intersection of Schoenborn Street and Canoga Avenue, a panel of city leaders chose to name it the Topanga station in recognition of the Gabrielino-Tongva Indian tribe, which once inhabited the San Fernando Valley.

The station was going to be named the Northwest station but officials changed it after community members indicated that they wanted to honor the region's history, said Councilman Dennis Zine, whose district includes the area.

The 54,000-square-foot station was built at a cost of $36 million; the funds came from Proposition Q, a public safety facilities bond measure approved by voters in March 2002. Officials said the structure incorporates energy-saving light fixtures and other "green" features, including an efficient irrigation system.

About 265 officers assigned to the Topanga station will patrol the southwest portion of the San Fernando Valley, which includes Canoga Park, Winnetka, West Hills and Woodland Hills. The area has a combined population of 190,000, more than the cities of Green Bay, Wis.; Salt Lake City; or Topeka, Kan.

At least 40 volunteers also will help the station's officers, assisting in administrative and other duties, said the station's commander, Capt. John Sherman.

"We are starting a police-community partnership," Sherman said during a welcoming speech. "This is your police station."

Read it all here. But remember this -- by the third sentence, you knew exactly where the Topanga Division station is. Chalk up one for the [shudder] Times' reporting. Who? What? Where?...

Who? What? Where? When? (Uh, Where?)

The San Fernando Valley's Los Angeles Daily News (that would be the home town paper) for New Year's Day includes a very nice article about the new police station in opening in Canoga Park this weekend.

LAPD's Topanga station to open

By Brandon Lowrey, Staff Writer

CANOGA PARK - Capt. John Sherman of the Los Angeles Police Department was smiling as he paced the bare halls of the LAPD's new Topanga station, which will soon be his to command.

Sherman nodded to a veteran detective who, dressed in shabby clothes, rolled some red-orange paint onto an office wall.

The 47-year-old captain contemplated the placement of a map showing his station's domain. It would go on his wall, next to photos of his wife of 28 years and their three adult children.

Volunteers buzzed around Sherman while construction crews peeled a chain-link fence away from the front of the high-tech station, set to officially open for business Sunday after a community celebration Saturday.

Sherman, born and raised in the San Fernando Valley, said the new station has drawn more volunteers than he could have hoped for.

"There's new enthusiasm in this community that wasn't here before," said the captain who has served in the LAPD nearly 24 years. "This will clearly be one of my most memorable experiences - helping build Topanga. I'm pretty proud of that."

The criminal element, however, might be a little less enthused about Sherman's plans.

"There's a gang area right here that's going to get a lot of attention from the Police Department," he said.

One of the Valley's most active gangs, Canoga Park Alabama, is in the station's sights.

The Topanga Division is one of two new LAPD stations opening Sunday. The other, the Olympic Division, is located near Koreatown.

Read it all here.

Then try to answer the following question: Where is the new police station? I'm not looking for "all the news that's fit to print." I just want to know the key detail of the news story!

Fortunately, we web-savvy people can find the LAPD's own press release with the street address. Which is very helpful, since it turns out the new Topanga Division is near, but not on, Topanga Canyon Blvd.

At least it's in Canoga Park.

Proposition 8: The Wrong Battle?

Okay. Central Illinois is in many respects a different world than was the San Fernando Valley in which I came of age. But the debate over California's Proposition 8, where voters used the initiative process to reverse the state's Supreme Court's legal creation ex nihilo of same-sex marriage, has projected the perspective that gay men and lesbians would be content if only they could get married.

Now, setting aside for the moment that homosexuals have been marrying and raising families for as long as there has been homosexuality and marriage -- it's just that they did it the old-fashioned man-woman "thee I shall wed" way, and either setting aside their homosexual desires and performing spousal/parental duties or finding, uh, quiet ways of satisfying such desires, even with the full knowledge of the spouse -- so the debate isn't about the right to marriage at all, but the redefinition of marriage (on which I've posted earlier)...

...the "gay community" with which I was acquainted, whether it be the more "mainstream" perspective that one could catch reading The Advocate or various community/school lesbigay advocacy groups or "faith based" groups such as Lutherans Concerned was generally hostile to the institution of marriage. Sure, every once in a while someone would propose same-sex "marriage," but that was guaranteed to get a huge negative reaction from within the GLBTQ community. Now the passage of Proposition 8 (reversing a "right" created only 6 months ago) was turning into the new Stonewall or Christopher Street. Has the lesbigay mind on marriage completely and suddenly changed?

That's when Google News came to the rescue and the headline "Prop 8 – Did We Fight The Wrong Battle?" appeared on my screen. It's an op-ed published Monday by the poet Marc Olmsted in the cyber newspaper WeHoNews.com, "West Hollywood's ONLY newspaper - ONLY ONLINE!" And by the sixth sentence, traditional lesbigay thought had made its re-appearance.

Prop 8 – Did We Fight The Wrong Battle?
Monday, November 10, 2008 – Op-Ed By Marc Olmsted, West Hollywood

First of all, let me make it clear that I was against Prop 8.

I contributed money toward its defeat, volunteered in campaign offices in Silverlake, and attended a pre-election rally in West Hollywood Park where I watched two close friends tie the knot.

I believe that it is wrong and unfair that we are not granted marriage equality. I wanted us to win.

So it may seem utterly bizarre that I’m questioning the cause entirely. (To be fair, I’ve had these doubts all along but decided to put them aside for the sake of unity.)

I don’t think we’re looking for the protection of the law.

We have most of what we need with domestic partnership or civil unions, and with a fraction of the money spent on No on 8, we could certainly have pushed for any changes required to make sure we were according the same de facto rights under those agreements as under marriage, at least on the state level.

What we’re looking for, in my opinion, is validation.

We want the state to affirm that our relationships are equal to heterosexual unions, but we reject the state’s response as inadequate, because it is lacks the societal imprimatur of marriage.

In fact, what is lacking is the psychosocial approval inherent with the association of the religious bodies that have traditional overseen this realm.

I could have sworn that my coming out as a gay man, my inner self-affirmation, came about precisely as a result of the rejection of the principle whereby what I thought of myself was a function of what society or the church said was right and good.

Aren’t we barking up that same tree now? If we claim to know our relationships are equal to theirs and as sacred, why are we insisting on their benediction?

Other questions: Does any of us truly believe that of the 18,000 gay couples who have been married in California so far, the same proportion of them won’t be seeking divorce in 5 or 10 years as the straight couples wed at the same time?

Have you spent some time with someone going through a divorce lately? Is this what we want?

And what of our capacity, as the most gifted of tribes, to be on the cutting edge of developing entirely new paradigms for modern relationships?

Why are we seeking to imitate them instead of setting an example that they can imitate?

What I propose we pioneer is the contractual and renewable civil union, which would work like this. A couple would choose a time period with which they were comfortable—3, 5, 7, 10, 15, 20 years, or life, for the absolutely certain.

For that period, they would have all of the benefits of marriage. At the end of the term, they would be required to renew their contract at City Hall—hardly a burden for any couple who wants to remain together, in fact, a great way to reaffirm and strengthen their bond.

If either or both chose not to continue in the relationship, the union would lapse. Any parental obligations would remain whatever the spousal status, but sparing the children and the partners from the burden and stigma of divorce.

Of course parents that break up will always be difficult emotionally for children, but parents lapsing into unpartnered status would certainly be more likely to encourage a transition into friendship than the present adversarial atmosphere of divorce, in which the rupture must be sought out.

I contend that there is a significant proportion of the heterosexual population that would find a renewable contract a highly preferable alternative to the one-size-fits-all option they are faced with now if they want the legal and social benefits of marriage.

Anyone who has lived through divorce, whether as a child or as a spouse, wants nothing more than to avoid it again.

I can easily see a state of affairs where the civil union alternative eventually becomes the norm, as society finally recognizes legally that two human beings well suited to a partnership for life are far more the exception than the rule.

The passage of Prop 8 is a disappointment, but for us, it is also an opportunity. Marriage as it is presently constituted is a pre-21 century institution that lacks the flexibility and realism required of the modern age.

I say we stop approaching the powers that be demanding a place at the table. It’s time to build our own table and let them come to us.

No, Marc, it's not bizarre at all -- to anyone who is familiar with the discussion of marriage in GLBTQ circles from more than 3-4 years ago. Alas, as in so much that passes for debate on all sorts of issues in our culture, (political, religious, etc.) key, relevant history is forgotten or suppressed.

Or ignored. To be continued in a later post.

QC Times: Episcopal Property Conflict?

From today's Quad City Times:

Episcopal Church split might turn into conflict over property

By Deirdre Cox Baker | Monday, November 10, 2008 11:12 PM CST

Fallout from the weekend decision by the Diocese of Quincy, Ill., to leave the Episcopal Church of the United States may include litigation over millions of dollars’ worth of property and assets.

“We pray there will be no litigation,” the Rev. Ed den Blaauwen said Monday. Den Blaauwen, the rector of Christ Church in Moline, is also the newly appointed vicar general of the diocese that is now aligned with the Anglican Province of the Southern Cone, based in Argentina.

Church resources would be better used for Christian activities than in the courts, he added.

The Episcopal Church will protect its history and heritage, said the Rev. Charles Robertson, canon to the presiding bishop of the national church in New York City. Church officials will not give away property to a foreign province, he said, adding, “This is our heritage and, more than that, the heritage of those who have not even come our way yet.”

Well, given TEC's recent history, particularly since the election of Katharine Jefferts Schori as Presiding Bishop, such a hard line is not surprising.

The Episcopalian [sic] Church still exists in the Quincy Diocese, Robertson stressed. “Our first concern for followers is that they know that our church continues,” he added.

New alignments

Lines are being drawn in the church between liberal or moderate factions and traditional or conservative ones. Arguments center on the national church’s decisions to allow women in the clergy, which occurred in the 1970s, and to promote an openly gay minister to a bishop’s post in 2003.

Well, those are the flash points that reveal a deeper division over the place of the Scriptures and Christian doctrine in the Church's contemporary witness. But what do you expect when describing a debate over fundamental Christian truth in only one or two sentences?

The schism widened when the national church appointed Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori to the job. The Quincy Diocese, which numbers 24 churches (including those in Moline, Rock Island, Silvis, Geneseo and Kewanee) and 1,800 members, has never allowed women or gays to be part of the clergy.

“We are working to assist in the reorganization of diocesan affairs,” Schori said. It now appears that four churches, including St. Paul’s Episcopal Cathedral in Peoria, Ill., the largest in the diocese, will continue to align with the Episcopal Church....

Yes, that fits with some reports I heard. Things are going to get, uh, interesting here in Peoria.

...A new alignment called the Common Cause partnership is working to establish an Anglican province in the United States, according to the Rev. John Spencer, the press officer for the Quincy Diocese. That would include the alignments with the Southern Cone and other U.S. churches that have aligned with an organization including Anglican churches in the African nations of Nigeria and Rwanda.

The timeline for the new organizational structure would involve some kind of provisional recognition in late December or early January, he said. Formal approval of the new North American Anglican Province may come by early February, after the worldwide Anglican council meets in Egypt.

Read it all here. A prayers that cooler heads might be found and prevail.

It's Rudy Lugo Stadium

From Saturday's Los Angeles Daily News;

Canoga Park shows dedication to late coach Lugo

By Gary Miereanu Special to the Daily News

Seventy years of Canoga Park alums poured into the school Friday night for a homecoming game filled with emotions that resonated far beyond the Hunters' final winning tally.

The crowd of approximately 4,000 - including SRO stands on the home side of the field - paid open tribute to Rudy Lugo, dedicating the field in the name of their late head football coach, and retiring his No. 80 from his mid-60s playing days - the first football number to be retired in Canoga Park High history.

"The first time I saw the 'Rudy Lugo Stadium' (sign), I was taken aback," said Christopher Lugo, the late coach's son who now serves as a Hunters assistant coach. "I've been running on this field ever since, well, since I could walk. I'm very honored to have this stadium named for him, and to work at the same place he did. I know he's with me, watching me, helping me, and that makes this dedication that much more special."

Alums from 1938 to 2008 attended the game, including members of Canoga's City Championship teams from 1969 and 1981. But in a clear sign of the times, there was no candlelight ceremony - rather, the Canoga's student body president asked for everyone to open their cell phones, raise them over their heads in order to create an illuminated honor.

In between the festivities, there was a football game. Junior tailback Tom Wilson rushed for 300 yards and two touchdowns to lead Canoga Park (5-4, 4-1) to a 30-14 victory over Grant (4-5, 3-2) in East Valley League play.

Read it all here. Oh, and just to show how we can keep in "in the family," Gary Miereanu is Canoga Park High Class of 1978 (one year behind me) when he wrote for what was then the only weekly newspaper in the LA Unified School District, the Hunters' Call. And I've known Gary he and my sister started Kindergarten together when I was in Grade A-1.

And then there's Bill Plaschke's column in Thrusday's LA Times sports section:

It was a wonderful life for Rudy Lugo

Poor Rudy Lugo.

For nearly 40 years he coached on a football team that never sent a player to the NFL, never brought him a national honor, never even gave him a parking space.

For nearly 40 years he worked in an office with bars over the windows, lived in a home where kids trampled the lawn, hung out at a church where he prayed in darkness.

Poor Rudy Lugo.

As the head coach at perennially modest Canoga Park High in a cluttered corner of the San Fernando Valley, he lived a life as regionally invisible as the greasy garages and doughnut shops that surrounded him.

He was on television once. He made the headlines never. He earned a $3,500 stipend for teaching kids to play a sport that most of them would never play again, in a city that would never make any of them famous.

Poor Rudy Lugo.

He died of cancer two weeks ago, and Canoga Park will never be the same.

"It wasn't like the town lost just another person," former player Ricardo Hernandez said. "It was like we lost a member of our family."

At his funeral, mourners spilled out of Our Lady of the Valley Church and huddled on the front lawn watching monitors.

After the service, when the hearse drove Lugo around the Canoga Park High football field for the last time, dozens of players and fans rushed back to salute him.

At the school, students randomly hung signs on hallways and doorways, teenage writings filled with honor and angst.

"Rudy was much more than a coach," one read. "He was a man who dedicated his life to us kids."

In the downtown streets of this 70,000-person suburb, folks stepped out of thrift shops and bakeries to remember him.

"Best coach and teacher ever," said Felisha Ibarra, who works at a wireless store adjacent to a sidewalk plaque dedicated to Lugo. "It's like everybody around here has been affected by him in some way."

For the two weeks since his death, "Mr. Canoga's" booming voice has not been silenced, but replaced by those who speak in his honor.

Listen to the sobbing middle-aged construction worker who, while spending one football season in a juvenile detention center, received an inspirational letter from Lugo that he still holds today.

"We knew our father touched a lot of people," said his daughter Melissa. "But to actually see all this . . . we had no idea."

Read the entire column here.

Rudy Lugo Night at Canoga High is also covered here on the CPHS website, while tributes to Coach continue to show up on the Memoirs section of school's website.

Lugo Inspired Players for 4 Decades

More on what Rudy Lugo means for Canoga Park High School from today's Daily News:

His eyes were puffy and red, his heart heavy. Every step assistant coach Chris Lugo took out on the Canoga Park High football field Friday night made the lump in his throat grow bigger.

But this is where he was supposed to be. His father, longtime Canoga Park football coach Rudy Lugo, who died Tuesday at age 60 after a two-year battle with lung cancer, would want it that way.

"This field," said Chris Lugo, "is the place we shared the best times of our lives."

Both teams observed a moment of silence for Rudy Lugo before Canoga Park's game against Firebaugh of Lynwood on Friday night. The players on the other side of the field had probably never heard of the man known affectionately in these parts as "Mr. Canoga," the guy who grew up down the street from the school, starred for the Hunters as a baseball player and football player, came back to teach and coach just as soon as he graduated from college, then never left the sidelines for the next four decades. ...

Firebaugh High School is one of the newest high schools in the LA area, opening in 2005. Current seniors will make up its first graduating class -- a quaint detail for this football game at one of the Valley's oldest schools, no? More on Canoga High and Mr. Lugo...

Canoga Park has always been one of the Los Angeles Unified School District's smallest high schools. But most people here look at that as a good thing. The kind of place where four generations of the same family would go to school. Where guys like Danny Argott and his brother Arthur Argott come to cook hamburgers and hot dogs for the booster club every Friday night long after their own sons and daughters have graduated.

"I was born right down the street and you could hear the football games every Friday night," Danny Argott said.

For the past 40 years, Rudy Lugo was the patriarch of that big family. The guy parents trusted to teach their sons right from wrong, the guy a troubled kid went to for help when he got into a tough spot.

"To me, he was just my dad. I don't know if I ever understood the magnitude of the situation. How much everyone cared about him," Lugo's daughter Melissa said. "But I do now. Every day he lived his passion, every day he made a difference. ... You know how people say someone lived a good, long life. Well, my dad didn't live a long life, but he lived a good life."

In his obituary Wednesday, it was written that Lugo was a wrestling coach, football coach and teacher at Canoga Park. It's amazing how inadequate words can be sometimes.

"He was a great man, and he taught all of us to be men," senior football player Jeffrey Monico said. "He treated all of us like sons. And he taught us how to be men. He taught us about respect, about life, how to respect and treat women. He talked to us about being a good father."

As a coach he was tough, but respected. When he spoke, the entire locker room was silent. If he yelled, you could hear it from across the field.

Then later that night, you'd get a phone call around 10:30. It was Lugo, calling to apologize for yelling, making sure you knew he did it out of love.

"I got a few of those calls," Manary said. "When he'd yell at you, you'd get like the fear of God. But what he was saying was always right. And you knew he loved you."

It was a little strange then, to celebrate Lugo with a moment of silence.

That big, booming voice was as much a part of Lugo as his generous heart.

But maybe this was just one of his inspirational speeches. One that made every player in the locker room grow silent. On this night, in one quiet moment, the silence did the talking.

Read it all here. I'll confess to being slightly annoyed that I couldn't find the score at the Daily News. But that rather fits with this Jan. 14, 2003, article the paper links as part of "remembering Rudy Lugo."

Coach all right without all-stars

The Daily News recognizes the top high school football players and coaches in the region today with our annual All-Area team.

The group of standouts we've selected represents the best of the best this year from a region that consistently produces major-college standouts and future professional stars.

No one from Canoga Park High is on the team.

And as far as Hunters coach Rudy Lugo is concerned, that's perfectly fine.

While schools like Birmingham of Lake Balboa, Notre Dame of Sherman Oaks and Hart of Newhall produce championships and stars, Lugo's mission is to produce good people. If he succeeds, he reasons, he's as successful as any coach anywhere.

Sure, Lugo would like to win like those other guys. But the Hunters simply don't have the players. The school's relatively small size (2,000 students) and the fact open enrollment allows the best players to transfer to other schools make it a long shot to win a championship.

With that in mind, Lugo stresses the value of commitment, discipline, teamwork and effort with no guarantee it will ever be rewarded. And, every once in a while, little Canoga Park will upset a big, bad team to show the players it's OK to dream.

Making the most of a little, the Hunters finished 4-6 last season. Hardly a disgrace, particularly if you take Lugo's perspective.

"It would be nice to have Division I college players," Lugo said. "But that probably won't happen. So you work with what you've got, and there is nothing wrong with that. If you're working as hard as you can to be the best you can be, no matter how good that happens to be, you have nothing to be ashamed of. That goes for players and coaches."

As all good coaches do, Lugo painstakingly prepares his players for each game. The players might not know at the time but, if they're paying attention, they absorb a lot more than a series of schemes.

That's where the losses can come in handy, as tools to teach critical lessons that winning can't provide.

"Our responsibility is to help teach kids to deal with all the situations they'll experience in life," Lugo said. "It's attitude. It's about how do people react to situations. That's the most important thing because that enables a person to deal with the daily frustrations of life. So what they learn on a football team, which is a family, they can take to their own family should they encounter problems with finances or health or even disagreements among themselves.

"Hopefully, some of the habits and work ethic they take from their experience playing football will help them in the future."

Read it all here.

Oh, I found the score in the Long Beach Press-Telegram: "Canoga Park 26, Firebaugh 6: Tim Wilson ran for 190 yards and two TDs to lead the Hunters (3-6) over the Falcons (1-7)."

Meanwhile, folks are writing their remembrances, thank yous, and farewells on a board set up at the school.

And after Tuesday's funeral mass, all are invited to a funeral potluck meal at the school.

Yeah, that's my high school. We're Les Libres, the Class of 1977.

Rudy Lugo: Mr. Canoga

Eric Sondheimer writes in today's Los Angeles Times

Rudy Lugo, a teacher who coached football and wrestling at Canoga Park High School for many years, died Tuesday at his home in Canoga Park after a two-year battle with lung cancer. He was 60.

"They called him Mr. Canoga," said history teacher Richard Tibbetts.

Born Nov. 22, 1947, Lugo graduated from Canoga Park High in 1965 and played baseball at what is now Cal State Northridge.

After earning his degree, he returned to Canoga Park High as an assistant coach in 1969 and became a physical education teacher in 1972.

Lugo coached wrestling from 1975 to 1996, and became the head football coach in 1986, giving up the position after the 2006 season because of complications from lung cancer.

Read it all here. And, yes, that history teacher in my little brother.

In the Los Angeles Daily News, which is the San Fernando Valley's newspaper, Ramona Shelburne writes:

Rudy Lugo, the beloved teacher, football and wrestling coach at Canoga Park High, died Tuesday at his home in Canoga Park after a two-year battle with lung cancer. He was 60.

Lugo wore Hunters green nearly his whole life. He grew up around Canoga Park, starred as a football and baseball player there from 1962-65, returned to the sidelines almost as soon as he graduated from San Fernando Valley State (now Cal State Northridge) in 1969 and virtually never left until after the 2006 season, when he handed the program over to current head coach Ivan Moreno and his son Christopher Lugo, who is an assistant.

"He was Mr. Canoga," Canoga Park athletic director Lori Thomas said of Lugo. "He was my teacher, my friend, my colleague. I don't think there's anyone who didn't learn something from Rudy. He fought his cancer like he played his football games, he would never allow a running clock because that meant giving up. And he did the same thing with his cancer, he battled it all the way to the end."

Lugo's teams often took on his personality: Gritty, tough, hard-nosed and fearless. Canoga Park is generally one of the smallest schools in the district, but you'd never know it by the way its football and wrestling teams performed under Lugo. Or, in the tough kids Lugo made a point of trying to turn around.

"He was never afraid of anyone," said Jake Gwin, Canoga Park's boys' soccer coach and a close friend of Lugo's. "He had this great, deep reverberating voice that you'd swear you could still hear in the hallways after he spoke. When he talked to you in a stern voice, it got to your soul. And all those gangsters and hoodlums who heard that voice, man, it got to them because they knew there was a sincerity to it.

"You know, I think Rudy could be the world-record holder in converting gangsters and hoodlums into good, strong young men."

Read it all here, and check out some photos, too. Lori (Giacopuzzi) Thomas is (like Richard and me) also a second generation Hunter, being 2 years ahead of me at our K-12 schools. (Connections, connections, connections.)

A rosary for Coach Rudy Lugo will be held Monday at 7:30 pm Monday; his funeral is Tuesday at 10 am. Both will be at Our Lady Of The Valley Catholic Church in Canoga Park (just a couple blocks up Topanga Canyon from the school).

In lieu of flowers, donations can be sent to: The Rudy Lugo Fund, c/o Canoga Park HS Booster Club, 6850 Topanga Canyon Blvd., Canoga Park, CA 91303.

Veteran pianist takes reins

Mel White has been one of Zion's organists for some 17 years and, prior to that, accompanied Zion's choir for many, many years. The following article appeared in last Sunday's edition of the Peoria Journal Star, and is posted it its entirety here for non-commercial use under a Creative Commons license.

Veteran pianist takes reins

By THEO JEAN KENYON of the Journal Star
Posted Sep 27, 2008 @ 10:11 PM

PEORIA — Name a musical, any musical that's been performed in the Peoria area, and chances are you've heard Mel White at the piano or seen him on stage.

When White sits down at the piano for the Caterpillar Employees Mixed Chorus production of "The Music Man," opening Thursday at East Peoria Community High School, it will be his 157th show.

And he'll also be conducting the eight-piece orchestra.

Most of his shows have been performed in Peoria with Peoria Players and Corn Stock Theatre, but he's also performed as accompanist, director or actor in shows at Conklin's Barn II Dinner Theatre in Goodfield, the former playhouse in Farmington, at Bradley University and even one gig of 2 1/2 months in Venice, Fla.

Some of his favorite shows, he says, have been "My Fair Lady," "The King and I" and "G.I. Jukebox," a USO-style show performed earlier this year at Conklin's.

"It was all that music from World War II, about 90 percent music and 10 percent dialogue," White says of "G.I. Jukebox."

The Caterpillar Employees Mixed Chorus called him this spring to take over as accompanist and orchestra director for "The Music Man."

White previously had accompanied the mixed chorus shows for 26 years while working in the accounting department at Caterpillar Inc. until retiring after "32-plus" years.

He still thinks the chorus is a remarkable idea.

"They take everybody, and for a lot of people it may be their only chance to make it on stage," he says. "We've had a blind person in the show, and it took extra people to guide him on stage."

This year the show suffered a plague of summer colds during rehearsals, and White himself caught one from others in the cast.

But he showed up anyway.

"I've never missed a rehearsal," he insisted to music director Helen Ferguson.

"At 84, he makes us all look bad," says Ferguson whose husband, Alan Ferguson, is making his directorial debut with "The Music Man."

"I'm not a classical or technical player," says White. "I studied in grade school, where we had those cardboard keys, and I had a year and a half of private lessons."

"But my grandmother and the grandmother of Betty Merkel were in the same set, and when my grandmother heard that Betty had been enrolled in a dancing class, my grandmother enrolled me, too," he recalls of his early introduction to music and dance.

Merkel, who died in 2003, grew up to become a well-known local dance instructor and choreographer who owned and operated the Betty Merkel Ford Dance Studio in Peoria for more than 40 years.

White says of that early class he took with Merkel: "I do know dancing."

Although White graduated in accounting at Bradley University and made that his career, he has been playing and performing ever since on one stage or another.

White says "The Music Man" has "a wonderful score." He dug out the one he used when the Caterpillar chorus first produced it several years ago and found the new one has more pages and some changes, but noted that Willson's memorable songs are still in the same key.

Now in his 80s, White admits his back gives him some trouble when walking or standing.

"But sitting is no problem," he says, and he'll be sitting at the piano starting Thursday.

Theo Jean Kenyon can be reached at (309) 686-3190 or tkenyon@pjstar.com.

Original content available for non-commercial use under a Creative Commons license, except where noted. Copyright ©  GateHouse Media, Inc. Some Rights Reserved.

Faith vs. Science?

The headline to the story in the August 24 edition of the New York Times is "A Teacher on the Front Line as Faith and Science Clash." Looks to me, though, as if we have an even bigger problem with critical thinking than the Grey Lady ever imagined. See if you can find it:

By AMY HARMON
Published: August 23, 2008

ORANGE PARK, Fla. — David Campbell switched on the overhead projector and wrote “Evolution” in the rectangle of light on the screen.

He scanned the faces of the sophomores in his Biology I class. Many of them, he knew from years of teaching high school in this Jacksonville suburb, had been raised to take the biblical creation story as fact. His gaze rested for a moment on Bryce Haas, a football player who attended the 6 a.m. prayer meetings of the Fellowship of Christian Athletes in the school gymnasium.

“If I do this wrong,” Mr. Campbell remembers thinking on that humid spring morning, “I’ll lose him.”

In February, the Florida Department of Education modified its standards to explicitly require, for the first time, the state’s public schools to teach evolution, calling it “the organizing principle of life science.” Spurred in part by legal rulings against school districts seeking to favor religious versions of natural history, over a dozen other states have also given more emphasis in recent years to what has long been the scientific consensus: that all of the diverse life forms on Earth descended from a common ancestor, through a process of mutation and natural selection, over billions of years.

But in a nation where evangelical Protestantism and other religious traditions stress a literal reading of the biblical description of God’s individually creating each species, students often arrive at school fearing that evolution, and perhaps science itself, is hostile to their faith.

Some come armed with “Ten questions to ask your biology teacher about evolution,” a document circulated on the Internet that highlights supposed weaknesses in evolutionary theory. Others scrawl their opposition on homework assignments. Many just tune out.

With a mandate to teach evolution but little guidance as to how, science teachers are contriving their own ways to turn a culture war into a lesson plan. How they fare may bear on whether a new generation of Americans embraces scientific evidence alongside religious belief.

“If you see something you don’t understand, you have to ask ‘why?’ or ‘how?’ ” Mr. Campbell often admonished his students at Ridgeview High School.

Yet their abiding mistrust in evolution, he feared, jeopardized their belief in the basic power of science to explain the natural world — and their ability to make sense of it themselves.

Passionate on the subject, Mr. Campbell had helped to devise the state’s new evolution standards, which will be phased in starting this fall. A former Navy flight instructor not used to pulling his punches, he fought hard for their passage. But with his students this spring, he found himself treading carefully, as he tried to bridge an ideological divide that stretches well beyond his classroom.

A Cartoon and a Challenge

He started with Mickey Mouse.

On the projector, Mr. Campbell placed slides of the cartoon icon: one at his skinny genesis in 1928; one from his 1940 turn as the impish Sorcerer’s Apprentice; and another of the rounded, ingratiating charmer of Mouse Club fame.

“How,” he asked his students, “has Mickey changed?”

Natives of Disney World’s home state, they waved their hands and called out answers.

“His tail gets shorter,” Bryce volunteered.

“Bigger eyes!” someone else shouted.

“He looks happier,” one girl observed. “And cuter.”

Mr. Campbell smiled. “Mickey evolved,” he said. “And Mickey gets cuter because Walt Disney makes more money that way. That is ‘selection.’ ”

Later, he would get to the touchier part, about how the minute changes in organisms that drive biological change arise spontaneously, without direction. And how a struggle for existence among naturally varying individuals has helped to generate every species, living and extinct, on the planet.

For now, it was enough that they were listening.

He strode back to the projector, past his menagerie of snakes and baby turtles, and pointed to the word he had written in the beginning of class.

“Evolution has been the focus of a lot of debate in our state this year,” he said. “If you read the newspapers, everyone is arguing, ‘is it a theory, is it not a theory?’ The answer is, we can observe it. We can see it happen, just like you can see it in Mickey.”

Some students were nodding. As the bell rang, Mr. Campbell stood by the door, satisfied. But Bryce, heavyset with blond curls, left with a stage whisper as he slung his knapsack over his shoulder.

“I can see something else, too,” he said. “I can see that there’s no way I came from an ape.”

Read it all here, for there is a lot more to this article. But contrary to what Mr. Campbell and Ms. Harmon want us to think, Bryce the young football player is not the one thinking badly here. If you haven't figured it out yet, think of the "challenge" Mr. Campbell is issuing in his classroom. Meanwhile, here's some more about the teacher:

When Florida’s last set of science standards came out in 1996, soon after Mr. Campbell took the teaching job at Ridgeview, he studied them in disbelief. Though they included the concept that biological “changes over time” occur, the word evolution was not mentioned.

He called his district science supervisor. “Is this really what they want us to teach for the next 10 years?” he demanded.

In 2000, when the independent Thomas B. Fordham Foundation evaluated the evolution education standards of all 50 states, Florida was among 12 to receive a grade of F. (Kansas, which drew international attention in 1999 for deleting all mention of evolution and later embracing supernatural theories, received an F-minus.)

Mr. Campbell, 52, who majored in biology while putting himself through Cornell University on a Reserve Officers Training Corps scholarship, taught evolution anyway. But like nearly a third of biology teachers across the country, and more in his politically conservative district, he regularly heard from parents voicing complaints.

With no school policy to back him up, he spent less time on the subject than he would have liked. And he bit back his irritation at Teresa Yancey, a biology teacher down the hall who taught a unit she called “Evolution or NOT.”

Animals do adapt to their environments, Ms. Yancey tells her students, but evolution alone can hardly account for the appearance of wholly different life forms. She leaves it up to them to draw their own conclusions. But when pressed, she tells them, “I think God did it.”

Mr. Campbell was well aware of her opinion. “I don’t think we have this great massive change over time where we go from fish to amphibians, from monkeys to man,” she once told him. “We see lizards with different-shaped tails, we don’t see blizzards — the lizard bird.”

With some approximation of courtesy, Mr. Campbell reminded her that only a tiny fraction of organisms that ever lived had been preserved in fossils. Even so, he informed his own students, scientists have discovered thousands of fossils that provide evidence of one species transitioning into another — including feathered dinosaurs.

But at the inaugural meeting of the Florida Citizens for Science, which he co-founded in 2005, he vented his frustration. “The kids are getting hurt,” Mr. Campbell told teachers and parents. “We need to do something.”

The Dover decision in December of that year dealt a blow to “intelligent design,” which posits that life is too complex to be explained by evolution alone, and has been widely promoted by religious advocates since the Supreme Court’s 1987 ban on creationism in public schools. The federal judge in the case called the doctrine “creationism re-labeled,” and found the Dover school board had violated the constitutional separation of church and state by requiring teachers to mention it. The school district paid $1 million in legal costs.

Inspired, the Florida citizens group soon contacted similar groups in other states advocating better teaching of evolution. And in June 2007, when his supervisor invited Mr. Campbell to help draft Florida’s new standards, he quickly accepted.

During the next six months, he made the drive to three-day meetings in Orlando and Tallahassee six times. By January 2008 the Board of Education budget had run out. But the 30 teachers on the standards committee paid for their own gasoline to attend their last meeting.

Mr. Campbell quietly rejoiced in their final draft. Under the proposed new standards, high school students could be tested on how fossils and DNA provide evidence for evolution. Florida students would even be expected to learn how their own species fits into the tree of life.

Whether the state’s board of education would adopt them, however, was unclear. There were heated objections from some religious organizations and local school boards. In a stormy public comment session, Mr. Campbell defended his fellow writers against complaints that they had not included alternative explanations for life’s diversity, like intelligent design.

His attempt at humor came with an edge:

“We also failed to include astrology, alchemy and the concept of the moon being made of green cheese,” he said. “Because those aren’t science, either.”

The evening of the vote, Mr. Campbell learned by e-mail message from an education official that the words “scientific theory of” had been inserted in front of “evolution” to appease opponents on the board. Even so, the standards passed by only a 4-to-3 vote.

Mr. Campbell cringed at the wording, which seemed to suggest evolution was a kind of hunch instead of the only accepted scientific explanation for the great variety of life on Earth. But he turned off his computer without scrolling through all of the frustrated replies from other writers. The standards, he thought, were finally in place.

Now he just had to teach.

Again, read it all here. And ask, just what is Mr. Campbell really teaching? Let's look at his Mickey Mouse Challenge again.

On the projector, Mr. Campbell placed slides of the cartoon icon: one at his skinny genesis in 1928; one from his 1940 turn as the impish Sorcerer’s Apprentice; and another of the rounded, ingratiating charmer of Mouse Club fame.

“How,” he asked his students, “has Mickey changed?”

Natives of Disney World’s home state, they waved their hands and called out answers.

“His tail gets shorter,” Bryce volunteered.

“Bigger eyes!” someone else shouted.

“He looks happier,” one girl observed. “And cuter.”

Mr. Campbell smiled. “Mickey evolved,” he said. “And Mickey gets cuter because Walt Disney makes more money that way. That is ‘selection.’ ”

Er, no, Mr. Campbell. That is actually...

...

......

[someone's gonna really hate this]

.........

............

..............intelligent design.

On the part of Walt Disney, who kept redesigning his creation.

Mr. Campbell may have "helped to devise the state’s new evolution standards." But looks like we need to be more concerned about thinking standards among Florida's leading teachers and America's leading media.

Hat tip to Gary North's Specific Answers.

Gen. Petraeus and the Chaplain's Book

Gen. David Petraeus is under fire for the blurb a military chaplain has been using since last year to promote a book about Christianity in the military.

On the back cover of Under Orders: A Spiritual Handbook for Military Personnel, the incoming Centcom commander is quoted saying that Army chaplain William McCoy's paperback "should be in every rucksack for those moments when Soldiers need spiritual energy." (The version on Amazon has been modified, but you can still see the original back cover via Barnes & Noble.)

Thus begins a story in USA Today which has picked up the story from Military.com. Here's how that story begins:

Petraeus Book 'Endorsement' Draws Fire
August 20, 2008
Military.com|by Bryant Jordan

Gen. David Petraeus is used to controversy surrounding the war in Iraq, but his publicized thoughts on an Army chaplain's book for Soldiers put him squarely in the middle of the ongoing conflict over religious proselytizing in the U.S. military.

The book is "Under Orders: A Spiritual Handbook for Military Personnel," by Army Chaplain (Lt. Col.) William McCoy, and according to Petraeus' published endorsement of the work, "it should be in every rucksack for those times when soldiers need spiritual energy."

But the endorsement - which has spurred a demand by a watchdog group for Petraeus' dismissal and court martial on the grounds of establishing a religious requirement on troops - was a personal view never intended for publication, the book's author now says.

"In the process of securing … comments for recommending the book I believe there was a basic misunderstanding on my part that the comments were publishable," McCoy said in an Aug. 19 email to Military.com. "This was my mistake."

In addition to Petraeus, Maj. Gen. Mark Hertling also is quoted plugging the book in press releases and advertisements and on the jacket.

McCoy, writing in response to Military.com's Aug. 18 inquiry to Petraeus' office for comment, said the two generals' endorsements "were intended for me personally rather than for the general public."

Turns out the the book was first published in 2005, that edition including a cover blurb quoting Gen. Hertling. General Petraeus' jacket blurb appears in a later edition published last year.

Making the complaint is Mikey Weinstein, head of the Military Religious Freedom Foundation. Says the Military.com article,

Weinstein is a former Air Force judge advocate general and White House counsel during the Reagan administration. His group has been fighting in the courts to keep improper proselytizing out of the military. Now, he said, he intends to incorprate the Petraeus and Hertling endorsements into an ongoing lawsuit against the Pentagon for an alleged pervasive and permicious "pattern and practice" of religious liberties violations in the military.

Then the article gets really interesting:

With his plug for "Under Orders," Weinstein said in a statement to Military.com, Petraeus - one of the most widely recognized officers in the American military - is endorsing religion as something all Soldiers should have and, specifically, the Christian religion.

"General Petraeus has, by his own hand, become a quintessential poster child of this fundamentalist Christian religious predation, via his unadulterated and shocking public endorsement of a book touting both Christian supremacy and exceptionalism," Weinstein told Military.com Aug. 16.

And by endorsing a book that argues only those who believe in God can fully contribute to the military mission or unit, Weinstein contends that Petraeus insults ""the integrity, character and veracity of approximately 21 percent of our armed forces members who choose not to follow any particular religious faith."

He said that even if Petraeus offered his comments personally, that's a distinction without a difference. "Privately he's denigrating 21 percent of troops," Weinstein said. Suppose he privately denigrated women, African-Americans or Jews? Weinstein asked.

"He should still be relieved of duty and court martialed," he said.

Read it all here.

Pretty serious stuff, no? And given some of the controversies a few years ago with Evangelicals at the Air Force Academy (see here and here ) something worth looking into -- even though Gen. Petraeus has a fine reputation.

But then, at the end of the article we learn something else: Chaplain McCoy is an ELCA pastor.

"Fundamentalist Christian religious predation" from an ELCA Chaplain? Methinks Mr. Weinstein and Military.com don't know anything about Lutherans.

News from Lutheran CORE - August 2008

CORE Connection -
News from Lutheran CORE - August 2008

[Note: Additional links by Pastor Zip]

Headlines:

• ELCA Synods renew their commitment to Scripture


• Lutheran CORE Steering Committee makes plans for future


• Article by Lutheran CORE leader printed by Lutheran magazine


• Bishop permits pastor to preside at same-sex marriage


• Newspaper: "A New Wave of Gay Seminarians"


• German Lutherans do not elect gay bishop


• Texas ordination defies ELCA teaching and policy


• New California bishop challenges ELCA teaching and policy


• Resources available to help in responding to sexuality draft

A PDF version is available online here. You are encouraged to copy the newsletter and to share it widely.



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ELCA Synods renew their commitment to Scripture

Nearly two-thirds of the ELCA's 65 synods reaffirmed their commitment to Scripture and to reading and studying the Bible at their 2008 Synod Assemblies.

These reaffirmations came in response to a five-year initiative approved by the 2007 ELCA Churchwide Assembly called "Book of Faith: Lutherans Read the Bible."

Through a resolution approved by their synod assemblies, 41 synods made a commitment to become a "Book of Faith Synod."

Synods have committed themselves "to live in and from the Word of God in all our meetings, assemblies and events, so that as we regularly and increasingly hear, read, study, share and are engaged by God's Word, we lead by example in faithful service and holy living." The synods also asked their congregations to make similar commitments.

Synod assembly voting members were asked to "covenant together to begin a regular practice of Bible study and prayer, gathering with others in their congregation and/or community to speak and hear the Word from one another."

The resolution explains the purpose of this effort is "in order to become more fluent in the first language of faith &mdash the language of Scripture &mdash that we might live into our calling as a people renewed, enlivened, empowered, and sent by the Word."

"This is an initiative and not a program," explained Dr. Diane L. Jacobson, director of the Book of Faith initiative and professor of Old Testament at Luther Seminary in St. Paul, Minn. "It's really a matter of you taking the vision and deciding as a congregation how you're going to have Scripture become more a part of the culture of your congregation."

"The enthusiasm for the Book of Faith initiative is palpable," Jacobson said. "There is a groundswell of interest in this initiative. It's an enormous opportunity that we have."

Lutheran CORE is very supportive of this effort and all efforts to recommit the ELCA, its synods, congregations, and members to Scripture and to regular Bible study. Lutheran CORE's mission is to seek to preserve within the ELCA the authority of God's Word according to the Lutheran confessions.

The ELCA has a strong commitment to Scripture in its Confession of Faith which is included in the churchwide, synod and congregational constitutions: "This church accepts the canonical Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments as the inspired Word of God and the authoritative source and norm of its proclamation, faith, and life."

As the source of the Church's proclamation, faith, and life, Christians draw their understandings for faith and life from the Bible. As the norm of the Church's proclamation, faith, and life, Christians look to the Bible to define what is a faithful interpretation of the Christian faith.

Lutheran CORE offers resources for studying and discussing the authority of Scripture that may be helpful to ELCA members and congregations especially during the "Book of Faith" emphasis.

These resources are available at www.lutherancore.org in the education resources section:

A Lutheran Statement on the Authority and Interpretation of Scripture in the Church explains the significance of the debate on the authority of Scripture in the ELCA and Lutheran CORE's commitment to the authority of God's Word.

Rightly Explaining the Word of Truth: A Bible Study on the Authority and Interpretation of Scripture, a five-session Bible study by Pastor Steven King of Holy Cross Lutheran Church, Maple Lake, Minn.

Lutherans Approach the Bible, a summary of the confessional Lutheran approach to the authority and interpretation of the Bible by the Rev. Dr. Roy A. Harrisville III, pastor of Our Savior's Lutheran Church, Menomonie, Wis.

We encourage members of ELCA congregations to use these resources as a part of their continued study of Scripture and its authority.



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Lutheran CORE Steering Committee makes plans for future

The Lutheran CORE Steering Committee met July 15 at Zion Lutheran Church in Brentwood, Pa.

Steering Committee actions included:

+ Reviewed the five emphases of Lutheran CORE and efforts in each area.

+ Discussed Draft Social Statement on Human Sexuality and importance of submitting responses by Nov. 1.

+ Discussed the need to encourage congregations that have stopped attending synod assemblies because of frustrations with the politics and theology of more radical synods to re-engage in their synod and the ELCA and to support our efforts.

+ Planned to encourage Synod Councils to request that any change in ELCA ordination standards require a two-thirds vote.

+ Received report on ELCA Church Council meeting and plans to have a Lutheran CORE representative attend Church Council meetings.

+ Received reports from member organizations including WordAlone and LC3.

+ Discussed fund-raising and need to coordinate fund-raising with member organizations.

+ Received reports from Lutheran CORE Synod Coordinators.

+ Received report on Lutheran CORE Advisory Council meeting. Advisory Council suggested consideration of a "confessing movement." They also recommended drafting an Open Letter on sexuality draft. The next Advisory Council meeting is March 9-10.

+ Discussed Lutheran CORE table at ELCA Global Mission Event in La Crosse, Wis.

+ Discussed concerns over reductions in ELCA missionaries. A group is being formed to send missionaries. Lutheran CORE will work with both the ELCA and with alternative mission organization.

+ Asked the Rev. Paull Spring to prepare a "pastoral letter" to Lutheran CORE constituency.

+ Discussed plans for 2009 ELCA Churchwide Assembly.

+ Discussed plans for Lutheran CORE gathering Sept. 25-26, 2009.

+ Endorsed Sola Publishing and will encourage the use of its materials.

The next meeting of the Steering Committee will be Sept. 23 at Holy Trinity Lutheran Church in Abington, Pa.



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Article by Lutheran CORE leader printed by Lutheran magazine

An article by the Rev. Paull Spring, chairman of the Lutheran CORE Steering Committee, was printed in The Lutheran magazine for August.

Spring, the retired bishop of the Northwestern Pennsylvania Synod, responded to a question that asked, "What's at stake for Lutheran CORE and the ELCA?"

"My reply was that we in Lutheran CORE (Coalition for Reform) are concerned for the interpretation of the Bible as God's word of law and gospel and for the confessional integrity of the ELCA as a Lutheran church body. I added that what truly troubles us in Lutheran CORE is the question, ‘Who's in charge of the church?' Is it private opinion and the relativistic mood of the times &mdash does the world set the agenda for the church or is it Scripture and the confessions of our church?"

"Biblical authority as God's word of law and gospel is CORE's chief concern. We hope Book of Faith, the current ELCA initiative to study the Bible, will move our church toward a more Lutheran approach to the Bible," Spring wrote.

He also highlighted Lutheran CORE's efforts to uphold the standard for marriage as a lifelong union of one man and one woman, traditional Trinitarian language for God, evangelism, and global mission.

"We in Lutheran CORE pray regularly for our church and our synodical and churchwide leaders. We are neither liberal nor conservative &mdash but centrist. We focus on the role of Scripture and confession. Most of all, with the Spirit's help, we seek to lift up the work of Christ and his word for our church.

We could not obtain permission from Augsburg Fortress to reprint the entire article. It can be read online at http://www.thelutheran.org/article/article_buy.cfm?article_id=7316.



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Bishop permits pastor to preside at same-sex marriage

An ELCA pastor in California will preside at a same-sex marriage with permission of his bishop, reports the Ventura County Star.

"In a fight where Scripture is often used against gay marriage, the Rev. Brian Elster says God is calling on him to preside over the wedding of two men," the article says.

The July 4 article &mdash headlined "Same-sex unions divide faithful: Pastors struggle to reconcile law with Scripture" &mdash highlights the debate between traditional Christians and those who believe God supports same-sex sexual relationships.

Elster, 54, is the pastor of the Lutheran Church of Our Redeemer in Oxnard, Calif., near Los Angeles.

"Knowing he would be asked by two of his congregants to perform their marriage, he asked for the approval of higher-ups. He said Bishop Dean W. Nelson gave his OK as long as Elster's own congregational leaders also approved it. That council met twice and voted to sanction Elster's involvement in the wedding. It wasn't unanimous," the article reports.

"What it says is that there is a division in opinion in the congregation that reflects the division of opinion in the community."

"I'm going out on a limb. There are people who firmly disagree with what I'm going to do," Elster told the reporter. "When it comes to two people who say they want to enter into a covenant of faithful commitment to each other, what should we do but stand up and applaud."

Elster told the reporter "his role as a pastor is to recognize God's presence in people's lives. And if that presence is nurtured by the union of two people, it's his job to bless that union."



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Newspaper: ‘A New Wave of Gay Seminarians'

In a July 16 story headlined, "A new wave of gay seminarians prepares to take the pulpit," City Pages, an alternative newspaper in Minneapolis, told the stories of four students from Luther Seminary in St. Paul, Minn. &mdash the ELCA's largest seminary.

The story says that Lauren Wendt heard a voice in church saying, "Go to seminary" and "You're gay. Get over it." Wendt later pursued a same-sex relationship and became a student at Luther.

Margaret Kelly is seeking ordination through Extraordinary Lutheran Ministries because she refuses to abide by the conduct standards for ELCA pastors. She is serving an internship at an ELCA congregation in Washington, D.C.

Brenda Froisland, a woman in a same-sex relationship, is serving as a lay minister at an ELCA congregation in Minneapolis. The 2005 graduate's approval for ordination has been "postponed indefinitely" by the Minneapolis Synod awaiting a change in policy regarding the ordination of practicing gay and lesbian persons.

Also featured was Dustin Nelson, a Master of Arts student who is not seeking ordination.



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German Lutherans do not elect gay bishop

The Rev. Horst Gorski, a gay activist, was one of two finalists to be the Lutheran bishop of Schleswig in northern Germany.

The election attracted significant media attention in Europe and North America. News reports suggested that the election of Gorski could result in a division in the Lutheran World Federation similar to that in the Anglican Communion.

The Rev. Gerhard Ulrich was elected bishop of the Schleswig Diocese, one of three dioceses of the Northelbian Evangelical-Lutheran Church. Ulrich defeated Gorski 77-56 in the July 12 election.

Even though news reports showed opposition to Gorski based on his sexual behavior, Gorski told reporters that homosexuality played no part in the vote. Rather, he said it was more of an urban-rural debate.



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Texas ordination defies ELCA teaching and policy

Lura N. Groen &mdash a woman who was not approved for ordination by the ELCA because she refused to abide by ELCA standards for pastors &mdash was ordained Saturday, July 26, at Grace Evangelical Lutheran Church in Houston, Texas. The congregation voted to call Groen on April 27.

The Rev. Arnold Tiemeyer, a retired ELCA pastor from Audubon, Pa., presided at the ordination. The Rev. Dr. Stephen Ray, a United Church of Christ pastor and professor at Garrett-Evangelical Theological Seminary in Evanston, Ill., preached.

"Calling someone who is not on the ELCA clergy roster is in violation of the congregation's constitution (C6.03.c). It is also a breach of their covenant with the other ELCA congregations," Texas-Louisiana Gulf Coast Synod Bishop Michael Rinehart wrote in a June 13 message to synod leaders. "Calling a pastor who is not on the ELCA clergy roster could open them up to disciplinary action."

"She will not be considered an ELCA pastor . . . she would not be ordained into this church or any other church we are aware of." Rinehart wrote.

"Accepting this call could jeopardize a future application to be on the ELCA clergy roster," he said.

"We don't know how the bishop will respond," Groen said in a TV interview. "He has the freedom to not discipline us or to discipline us. That is his choice. He has spoken to me personally on a personal level and been very warm and welcoming.

"He has told the congregation not to expect discipline," she said.

The ordination was planned as a media event with "a designated area for the press at the service" and time scheduled for media interviews. A $100/plate fund-raising dinner was held following the ordination.

"To be quite honest, availability for press interviews just prior to the event and preferred seating for the press left me and others with the feeling of a publicity stunt," Rinehart wrote.

This was the second unauthorized ordination of a person who refused to abide by ELCA standards for ordained ministers this year.

Three former ELCA bishops &mdash the Revs. Darold Beekmann, Lowell Erdahl, and L. David Brown &mdash were among the ELCA pastors who participated in the unauthorized ordination of Jennifer Nagel, a woman in a same-sex relationship, Jan. 19 in Minneapolis.

The participants in these ordinations have acted in ways that violate the ELCA constitution. The ELCA constitution states that "Ordained ministers shall be subject to discipline for . . . willfully disregarding the provisions of the constitution or bylaws of this church" (C20.21.01).

Neither woman was approved for ordination in accordance with the standards and process outlined in the ELCA constitution (C7.31.13).

Groen, a graduate of the Lutheran Theological Seminary at Philadelphia, was "approved for call" by Extraordinary Lutheran Ministries, an organization that "approves" the ordinations of individuals who refuse to abide by the ELCA's standards for the sexual conduct of pastors.

Vision and Expectations &mdash Ordained Ministers in the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America explains: "The expectations of this church regarding the sexual conduct of its ordained ministers are grounded in the understanding that human sexuality is a gift from God and that ordained ministers are to live in such a way as to honor this gift. Ordained ministers are expected to reject sexual promiscuity, the manipulation of others for purposes of sexual gratification, and all attempts of sexual seduction and sexual harassment, including taking physical or emotional advantage of others. Single ordained ministers are expected to live a chaste life. Married ordained ministers are expected to live in fidelity to their spouses, giving expression to sexual intimacy within a marriage relationship that is mutual, chaste, and faithful. Ordained ministers who are homosexual in their self-understanding are expected to abstain from homosexual sexual relationships."

Extraordinary Lutheran Ministries reports that it "credentials and rosters qualified candidates of all sexual orientations and gender identities for ministry." Its web site reports 38 "rostered clergy," five people "approved for call" and three seminarians.

Some ELM-rostered clergy are serving as pastors in ELCA congregations in violation of ELCA constitutional standards. ELM reports that there have been 14 unauthorized ordinations of pastors in the ELCA's 20-year history and one ordination in the Evangelical Lutheran in Canada.

The ELCA has more than 17,000 pastors and 10,000 congregations.



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New California bishop challenges ELCA teaching and policy

A newly-elected ELCA bishop has been publicly challenging ELCA teaching and policy regarding same-sex sexual relationships since being elected bishop.

The Rev. Mark Holmerud was elected bishop of the Sierra Pacific Synod on April 26 and was installed as bishop on July 12.

Holmerud spoke at the Lutherans Concerned Assembly July 3-6 in San Francisco. Lutherans Concerned is one of the organizations advocating change in ELCA teaching and policy on same-sex sexual relationships. Lutherans Concerned is working for the acceptance of the sexual behavior of "lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender" people.

The Lutherans Concerned Assembly included worship and workshops led by individuals removed from the ELCA clergy roster for misconduct and those ordained in defiance of church policy and procedure.

Holmerud also was a part of the Lutherans Concerned entry in the San Francisco "LGBT Pride" Parade on June 29. The parade is well known for extravagant displays of homosexuality.

"Bishop Holmerud and his wife Debbi rode on the back of a convertible leading a group of 45 Lutherans Concerned supporters," reported an internet blog that posted a photo of the bishop in the parade. It is believed to be the first time an ELCA bishop has participated in the event which celebrates LGBT sexuality.

In a June 13 letter regarding same-sex marriages in California, Holmerud explained that even though he understands that ELCA teaching and policy does not allow an ELCA pastor to preside at a same-sex marriage, he does not "have intentions to bring charges for discipline against a pastor who chooses to solemnize a same-gender marriage."

At his installation service, Holmerud promised to "discharge (his) duties in accordance with the Holy Scriptures and the Confessions of the Lutheran Church and in harmony with the constitution of this synod."

According ELCA synod constitutions bishops are to:

+ "Preach, teach, and administer the sacraments in accord with the Confession of Faith of this church" (S8.12a).

+ "Practice leadership in strengthening the unity of the Church and in so doing:

"1. Exercise oversight of the preaching, teaching, and administration of the sacraments within this synod in accord with the Confession of Faith of this church;

"2. Be responsible for administering the constitutionally established processes for the resolution of controversies and for the discipline of ordained ministers, other rostered leaders, and congregations of this synod" (S8.12h).

Vision and Expectations: Ordained Ministers in the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America &mdash the document that articulates the ELCA's expectations of its pastors &mdash explains that individual pastors, congregations, or synods must be faithful to the teaching and practice of the ELCA:

+ "Pastoral identity carries with it expectations and accountabilities that are determined by the whole Church and not simply by a given congregation, synod, institution, or agency served by the ordained minister.

"The Evangelical Lutheran Church in America has high expectations for those who serve within the ordained ministry of this church. It does so because it recognizes that when offense is given by an ordained minister, the witness of the gospel may be impaired and the ability to carry out public ministry is threatened."

+ "It is essential for an ordained minister to be able to understand and faithfully interpret the Scriptures and the Christian tradition. In this question the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America asks that its ordained ministers assume responsibility for upholding this church's doctrinal tradition through faithful preaching and teaching. All who have been ordained and who serve as pastors in this church are expected to accept and adhere to the Confession of Faith of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America. . . .

"In identifying specific documents as normative for preaching and teaching, this church expects its ordained ministers to understand that the faith of the church is corporate, not individualistic; catholic, not sectarian; orthodox, not heretical. The Evangelical Lutheran Church in America expects that its ordained ministers teach nothing ‘that departs from the Scriptures or the catholic church' (Conclusion to the Augsburg Confession)."



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Resources available to help in responding to sexuality draft

Lutheran CORE has provided resources to assist ELCA members as they respond to Draft Social Statement on Human Sexuality. Lutheran CORE encourages ELCA members to submit a response to the statement by the Nov. 1 deadline.

Links to detailed reviews of the draft statement and to other helpful documents on human sexuality are available at www.lutherancore.org in the marriage and family educational resources section.

An Open Letter calling for major revisions to Draft Social Statement on Human Sexuality was prepared by Lutheran CORE. ELCA members are invited to add their names to this Open Letter as a part of their response to the draft social statement.

The first draft of the social statement was released in March. You may request a copy by calling 1-800-638-3522, ext. 2996. Members of ELCA congregations have the opportunity to respond to the draft until Nov. 1. A response form is provided in the draft document. A link to the draft and to the ELCA's online response form is available at www.lutherancore.org.

Links to these resources are available in the marriage and family resource area of www.lutherancore.org:

+ An Open Letter to the Task Force for ELCA Studies on Sexuality and the ELCA Church Council and Conference of Bishops

+ Lutheran CORE's summary response to Draft Social Statement on Human Sexuality

+ A Response from Lutheran CORE to Draft Social Statement on Human Sexuality by retired ELCA bishops Kenneth Sauer and Paull Spring

+ "Some Questions and Answers about the ELCA Sexuality Discussions"

+ "Keeping Faith" &mdash arguments that support upholding the biblical norms for sexuality

+ "A Critique of the Draft Social Statement on Human Sexuality" by the Rev. Dr. Carl E. Braaten

+ "A Sexual Ethic for Teletubbies, or Lutherans Embrace a Formless World" by Dr. Robert Benne

+ "Some Critical Observations on the Use of Scripture in the ELCA Draft Social Statement on Human Sexuality" by the Rev. Dr. Stephen Hultgren

+ Open Letter to the ELCA sexuality task force and the ELCA bishops about the Draft Social Statement on Human Sexuality" by the Rev. Dr. Stephen Hultgren

+ "What Are They Talking About?" two reviews of Draft Social Statement on Human Sexuality by the Rev. Jonathan Jenkins

+ "A Pastoral Letter on the Continuing Discussion in the ELCA Concerning Homosexuality" by the Rev. Tom Renquist

+ "The Bible and Sexual Boundaries" by the Rev. Dr. Craig R. Koester

+ "New Testament on Homosexuality: Denying God's Purpose" by the Rev. Dr. Walter F. Taylor Jr.

+ "Law and Sexual Behavior" by the Rev. Dr. Gerhard O. Forde

+ "The Normative Character of Scripture for Matters of Faith and Life: Human Sexuality in Light of Romans 1:16-32" by the Rev. Dr. Gerhard O. Forde

+ "Is Orientation the Issue?" by the Rev. Dr. James H. Burtness

+ "Is it lawful to marry?" by the Rev. Philip Nesvig

+ "The Authority of Scripturein the ‘Homosex' Debate" by the Rev. Dr. Robert A. J. Gagnon

+ "How Bad Is Homosexual Practice According to Scripture and Does Scripture's Indictment Apply to Committed Homosexual Unions?" by the Rev. Dr. Robert A. J. Gagnon

+ "The Bukoba Statement" by the Bishops of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Tanzania

+ "Sexuality: Some Common Convictions," ELCA Church Council Message (1996)

+ "Vision and Expectations &mdash Ordained Ministers in the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America"

+ "Sex, Marriage and Family," A Social Statement of the Lutheran Church in America (1970)

+ "Human Sexuality and Sexual Behavior," a Social Statement of The American Lutheran Church (1980)

+ "Teachings and Practice on Marriage, Divorce, and Remarriage," a Social Statement of The American Lutheran Church (1982)

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CORE Connection
News from Lutheran CORE

Published monthly by
Lutheran CORE - Coalition for Reform
2299 Palmer Drive, Suite 220
New Brighton, MN 55112

The Rev. David J. Baer, editor
editor@lutherancore.org

Please copy and share this newsletter widely.