ELCA News Service: Elizabeth Eaton elected ELCA presiding bishop

ELCA NEWS SERVICE
August 14, 2013

Elizabeth Eaton elected ELCA presiding bishop

13-56-MRC

     PITTSBURGH (ELCA) - The Rev. Elizabeth A. Eaton, bishop of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA) Northeastern Ohio Synod, was elected Aug. 14 presiding bishop of the ELCA at the 2013 ELCA Churchwide Assembly. She was elected on the fifth ballot. There were 889 votes cast, and 445 votes were needed for an election. Eaton received 600 votes and the Rev. Mark S. Hanson, ELCA presiding bishop, received 287. Eaton is the ELCA's first woman presiding bishop-elect.

      The churchwide assembly, the chief legislative authority of the ELCA, is meeting here Aug. 12-17 at the David L. Lawrence Convention Center. The theme for the triennial assembly is “Always being made new.” This year marks the 25th anniversary of this church.

     “We are a church that is overwhelmingly European in a culture that is increasingly pluralistic. We need to welcome the gifts of those who come from different places, that is a conversation we need to have as a church,” Eaton told the assembly shortly after the election.

     Prior to becoming synod bishop, Eaton served as pastor for ELCA congregations in Ohio. She earned a Master’s of divinity degree from Harvard Divinity School in Cambridge, Mass., and a Bachelor’s degree in music education from the College of Wooster in Wooster, Ohio.

     An assembly schedule is available at www.ELCA.org/assembly and up-to-the minute news entries at http://blogs.ELCA.org/assemblynews.

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About the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America:
The ELCA is one of the largest Christian denominations in the United States, with more than 4 million members in nearly 10,000 congregations across the 50 states and in the Caribbean region. Known as the church of “God's work. Our hands,” the ELCA emphasizes the saving grace of God through faith in Jesus Christ, unity among Christians and service in the world. The ELCA's roots are in the writings of the German church reformer, Martin Luther.

For information contact:
Melissa Ramirez Cooper, Manager of Public Relations
773-380-2956 or Melissa.RamirezCooper@ELCA.org
http://www.ELCA.org/news
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/Lutherans
Living Lutheran: http://www.livinglutheran.com

The Digital Story of the Nativity

Tip o' the hat to Pr. Paul McCain at Cyberbrethren.

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.

Lutherans to Lead Evening of 40 Days of Prayer for Peoria

Zion Evangelical Lutheran Church of Peoria hosts Day 25 of the 40 Days of Prayer for Peoria beginning at 6 pm the evening of Saturday, January 24, 2009. The Rev. Steven P. Tibbetts, STS, Pastor at Zion, will lead the ecumenical prayer service using the contemporary Lutheran rite for Evening Prayer, which is traditionally called Vespers or Evensong. The 40 Days of Prayer services have been held at 6 pm each evening since December 31 at First United Methodist Church, 700 Main Street, Peoria. The 40 Days will continue through February 8.

The 40 Days of Prayer for Peoria was first held last year as a response by area churches and ministries to Peoria Mayor Jim Ardis’ invitation to include prayer as part of the fight against violent crime. Zion co-hosted one evening of prayer last year with St. Andrew’s Anglican Church. Since the initial 40 Days last year, continued prayer efforts in the city have been coordinated by Push for Peace Peoria (website www.pushforpeacepeoria.org) which has organized this year’s second effort. The prayer services reflect the wide variety of Christian practices available in the Peoria area, yet center on the whole church’s common prayer for the city.

A congregation of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America Zion has been proclaiming the Gospel from the South Side of Peoria since 1894. The church is located at the corner of Easton Avenue and Hayes Street, one block west of the intersection of Jefferson and Western, on the South Side of Peoria. For more information call (309) 637-9150 or view Zion’s web site at www.zionpeoria.org.
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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.

Breaking Faith

From the current Chapter News page of Lutherans Concerned/Los Angeles:

Faith Lutheran, Canoga Park Votes Unanimously to Join RIC Program

In a wonderful new development for the reconciling and welcoming ministries in the Los Angeles region, Faith Lutheran Church voted unanimously at its July 6 congregational meeting to adopt an Affirmation of Welcome to LGBT people and to join the Reconciling in Christ program of Lutherans Concerned.

Pastor Wayne Christiansen is overjoyed, having worked very hard for this step for years. The congregation, which owns and operates two campuses in Canoga Park, is heavily involved in growing a new Spanish language mission, with the able ministry of Pastor Cesar Arroyo. Along with Angelica Lutheran Church in downtown Los Angeles, Faith becomes the second Latino-oriented Lutheran ministry in our region to unequivocally open its doors to lesbian and gay people. Congratulations, people of Faith!

I mentioned Faith Lutheran at the conclusion of this post a couple of months ago, though not by name. I figured that, between my homepage and the linked list of Lutheran churches whose pastors would perform a legal same-sex marriage, you could figure it out for yourself.

Meanwhile, for what's it's worth, at both of the congregations that merged into Faith Lutheran Church in the year 2000, Resurrection (where I was baptized, confirmed, and ordained) and Epiphany, homosexual Christians had been finding open doors and hearts for years before Pastor Christiansen came on the scene. But RIC isn't about "welcoming" gay and lesbian people. It's about excluding those who take seriously what the Holy Scriptures (in both Old and New Testaments) and the Church catholic have had to say about marriage and relationships -- and thus continue to ask for the theological case for the blessing of homosexual relations to be made.

Just about 3 years ago, Los Angeles Daily News staff writer Holly J. Andres opened Five Decades of Service: Congregation Plans Special Celebration for Sunday writing, "Proud to say, 'This is your grandmother's church,' Faith Lutheran Church will mark 50 years of spiritual and outreach ministry on Sunday with a special service and celebration." Frankly, even then I was no longer sure that it was "your grandmother's church" any more. ("Ghandi Day" at a Lutheran church?) Now, sadly, it is clear that it is proud to have become something else.

Farewell, Good and Faithful Servant

Michael Miller writes in last Saturday's "Faith & Values" section of the newspaper:

As of this past Monday, my 29 years at the Journal Star ended.

But, open doors being what they are, I have decided to go through this one, trusting that this is what God wants me to do (uh-oh, I can see the comments on pjstar.com already piling up about "superstitious nonsense"; I'm sure it will somehow morph into a discussion of the separation of church and state or the Christian/Deist/secular/pagan origins of the nation).

The whole JS ride has been interesting, especially the past 16 years, which I've spent on the religion beat. I've gotten to know many, many wonderful people in the community who I otherwise may not have - make that, would not have - met.

When I first got the chance to do religion, it was tentative. My main job was to put together TV Week, back in the days when it was 20 pages and had editorial content.

But, little by little, that changed. (Hey, there's that word!) And it was, well, for the good, wasn't it? The religion beat and then the Faith & Values section slowly became my main responsibilities. I established relationships with several faith communities. I learned how to like even those people with whom I strongly disagree.

Hmm, I guess I changed.

Maybe this change business isn't always bad.

I'm not happy to be leaving the Journal Star. It was an enormously hard decision, one I had to take down to the wire, finding all kinds of reasons to stay until I simply couldn't deny anymore that it was time for a change, time to go to another good place to work.

You can read his entire column here.

I hadn't realized that Miller had begun editing the religion page only shortly before my arrival in Peoria. I'd met him fairly early in my ministry here at a meeting of the now defunct Peoria Clergy Fellowship and at that time the page was, as far as the paper was concerned, very much a sidelight to the TV section. But the Journal Star made the space available and it was interesting to read over the years Miller grow as a religion (or "faith") reporter and columnist. And I'd say that even if he had never quoted me or asked me a question every now and again.

Newspapers aren't much like they used to be. Once upon a time a pastor's sermon was considered newsworthy. As a boy I could read Archbishop Fulton Sheen's column regularly in the old Hollywood Citizen-News and as I grew older John Dart edited an excellent religion section in the LA Times weekly. Few newspapers do anything like that anymore and, hopefully, the folks who run the Journal Star will not let the "Faith & Values" page turn into a page of church announcements or even disappear into just occasional feature stories.

Thanks Michael for your vocation these last several years. We'll miss you.

Our Bishop Ackerman on International Stage

There is nothing in the Lutheran church quite like the Lambeth Conference, that once-a-decade gathering of all the Bishops in the entire Anglican Communion. Actually, to follow the news of what has been happening in the Anglican Communion (that TitusOneNine link in my Blogs for Faithful Churchmen is one good place to do that), it looks like there isn't anything quite like the Lambeth Conference in the Anglican Communion, either, as a goodly number chose not to attend as part of the continuing protest over Gene Robinson being Bishop of the New Hampshire Diocese.

For a local angle on this international stage, catch this section of a report from the BBC:

After the service as hundreds of bishops milled around in the cathedral close, I spoke to two.

Keith Ackerman, bishop of Quincy, Illinois, came because, as he put it: "An empty chair can't speak": he thought it important that the conservative view was represented.

He voiced the unease of many traditionalists when he accused liberals, in effect, of trying to rewrite the Bible.

"Why is it that people are determined to change the faith delivered to the saints?"

The conservatives feel the ground shifting beneath them and they find it deeply unsettling.

"The faithful of yesterday have become the dissidents of today," in the words of Archbishop Greg Venables.

He was one of the 200 Anglican bishops and primates who met in Jerusalem a few weeks ago and founded what is, in effect, a breakaway organisation - the Fellowship of Confessing Anglicans.

Though he came to Canterbury and participated in the service, he was one of several bishops who did not take communion, arguing that he is no longer in communion with many of his colleagues.

Picnic

Two hours later on the outskirts of Canterbury, the man whose ordination as bishop of New Hampshire helped create the present crisis was at a picnic and open-air service organised by gay and lesbian activists in the Church.

Gene Robinson has explicitly not been invited to the conference itself for fear that his presence would be divisive.

But he was here on the conference fringe, accompanied in a show of solidarity, by many of his fellow North American bishops.

The priest who presided over the service, Colin Coward, was unambiguous in his response when I put to him the traditionalist argument that the Bible explicitly condemns homosexuality as a sin, and that an avowed sinner should not, could not, be a bishop.

"I just don't believe it; we are all men and women, straight or gay, created by God."

Read it all here. Thanks to TitusOneNine for bringing this to my attention.

Bishop Challenges Pro-Choice Catholic (?) Governor

Archbishop Joseph Naumann of Kansas City, Kansas, writes the following in the May 9 installment of his weekly column, "Life Will Be Victorious," in The Leaven, the Archdiocese's newspaper. The Kansas City Star seems unhappy (see here and here) that the Archbishop dares to exercise genuine pastoral care with one of his flock.

Governor’s Veto Prompts Pastoral Action
On the day of my return (Monday, April 21) from the exhilarating experience of participating in Pope Benedict’s pastoral visit to the United States, I learned that Governor Kathleen Sebelius had vetoed the Comprehensive Abortion Reform Act (HS SB 389), which had been passed by significant majorities in both chambers of the Kansas Legislature. Last week, an attempt to override the governor’s veto failed in the Senate by two votes.

Governor Sebelius in her veto message claimed: “For years, the people of Kansas have asked their elected officials to move beyond legislative debates on issues like abortion.”  From her veto message, I received the impression the governor considered it a waste of the Legislature’s time to pass a statute that attempts to protect some women by making certain they have the opportunity to be well-informed: 1) about the development of their unborn child; and 2) about abortion alternatives available to them. Evidently, the governor does not approve of legislators devoting energy to protecting children and women by making it possible to enforce existing Kansas laws regulating late-term abortions.

The governor’s veto message demonstrated a lack of respect to the members of the Kansas General Assembly who had carefully crafted and resoundingly passed the Comprehensive Abortion Reform Act, as well as to the many Kansans who find it more than an embarrassment, in no small part due to several previous vetoes by Governor Sebelius of earlier legislative efforts to regulate abortion clinics, that Kansas has become infamous for being the late-term abortion center for the Midwest.

What makes the governor’s rhetoric and actions even more troubling has been her acceptance of campaign contributions from Wichita’s Dr. George Tiller, perhaps the most notorious late-term abortionist in the nation. In addition to Dr. Tiller’s direct donations to her campaign, the governor has benefited from the Political Action Committees funded by Dr. Tiller to support pro-abortion candidates in Kansas.

In her veto message, the governor took credit for lower abortion rates in Kansas, citing her support for “adoption incentives, extended health services for pregnant women, providing sex education and offering a variety of support services for families.” Indeed, the governor and her administration should be commended for supporting adoption incentives and health services for pregnant women.

However, the governor overreaches by assuming credit for declining abortion rates in Kansas. Actually, lower abortion rates are part of a national trend. Our neighboring state of Missouri has actually had a steeper and longer decline in its abortion rate.

Governor Sebelius’ inclusion of public school sex education programs as a factor in the abortion rate decline is absurd. Actually, valueless sex education programs in public schools have been around for years, coinciding with increased sexual activity among adolescents, as well as increases in teen pregnancy and abortion. On the other hand, the governor does not acknowledge the significant impact of mass media education programs, such as those sponsored by the Vitae Caring Foundation, or the remarkable practical assistance provided by Crisis Pregnancy Centers which are funded through the generosity of pro-life Kansans.

What makes the governor’s actions and advocacy for legalized abortion, throughout her public career, even more painful for me is that she is Catholic. Sadly, Governor Sebelius is not unique in being a Catholic politician supporting legalized abortion.

Since becoming archbishop, I have met with Governor Sebelius several times over many months to discuss with her the grave spiritual and moral consequences of her public actions by which she has cooperated in the procurement of abortions performed in Kansas. My concern has been, as a pastor, both for the spiritual well-being of the governor but also for those who have been misled (scandalized) by her very public support for legalized abortion.

It has been my hope that through this dialogue the governor would come to understand her obligation: 1) to take the difficult political step, but necessary moral step, of repudiating her past actions in support of legalized abortion; and 2) in the future would use her exceptional leadership abilities to develop public policies extending the maximum legal protection possible to the unborn children of Kansas.

Having made every effort to inform and to persuade Governor Sebelius and after consultation with Bishop Ron Gilmore (Dodge City), Bishop Paul Coakley (Salina) and Bishop Michael Jackels (Wichita), I wrote the governor last August requesting that she refrain from presenting herself for reception of the Eucharist until she had acknowledged the error of her past positions, made a worthy sacramental confession and taken the necessary steps for amendment of her life which would include a public repudiation of her previous efforts and actions in support of laws and policies sanctioning abortion.

Recently, it came to my attention that the governor had received holy Communion at one of our parishes. I have written to her again, asking her to respect my previous request and not require from me any additional pastoral actions.

The governor has spoken to me on more than one occasion about her obligation to uphold state and federal laws and court decisions. I have asked her to show a similar sense of obligation to honor divine law and the laws, teaching and legitimate authority within the church.

I have not made lightly this request of Governor Sebelius, but only after much prayer and reflection. The spiritually lethal message, communicated by our governor, as well as many other high profile Catholics in public life, has been in effect: “The church’s teaching on abortion is optional!”

I reissue my request of the faithful of the archdiocese to pray for Governor Sebelius. I hope that my request of the governor, not to present herself for holy Communion, will provoke her to reconsider the serious spiritual and moral consequences of her past and present actions. At the same time, I pray this pastoral action on my part will help alert other Catholics to the moral gravity of participating in and/or cooperating with the performance of abortions.

Sexuality Statement Hijinx

You won't find it on its web site, but the "Amen Corner" down the the left column of the "Faith & Values" main page in last Saturday's Peoria Journal Star featured the color ELCA logo near the bottom, with a headline in bold red ink underneath:

SEXUALITY
STATEMENT

    The Evangelical Lutheran Church in America will soon release a draft of its social statement on human sexuality, including proposed teaching on gay relationships.
    The document "Free in Christ to Serve the Neighbor: Lutherans Talk about Human Sexuality" is scheduled to be made public on Thursday by the Task Force for ELCA Studies on Sexuality. — Associated Press

I've already mentioned the unfortunate timing (more on that in a moment). And, as an aside, the title of the report given by the AP is that of the churchwide study completed last Fall -- the proposed statement will likely have a new title. Oh, and it's not supposed to have much to say about gay relationship either -- that's a separate issue.

Anyway, I was ready Sunday morning for someone to ask about it, but if any Zionites noticed they weren't saying anything to their Pastor. Last Wednesday, ELCA rostered leaders received this e-mail:

Dear rostered leader:

Greetings to you during this Lenten season.

The purpose of this communication is to inform all rostered leaders of the process for the upcoming March 13 release of the ELCA Draft Social Statement on Human Sexuality and your particular role in that process.

The draft will be made available to the ELCA on March 13 at 1:00 p.m. Eastern time at www.elca.org/faithfuljourney on the ELCA Web site. It will be mailed on March 13 to all rostered leaders and congregations.

On the morning of March 12 rostered leaders will receive an e-mail indicating the Web link for accessing an embargoed and strictly confidential preview of the document. The Web link will be accessible as of 1:00 p.m. Eastern Time on March 12.

You have an important leadership role to play in relation to this process. The hope is that being able to read a copy early will assist you in responding in an informed way at the time of the public release.

For your information, all press coverage will be subject to an embargo until 1:00 p.m. Eastern Time on March 13. Thank you in advance for your unqualified respect for the embargo and the strict confidentiality level of this early review.

The draft social statement on the Web site will be accompanied by several documents to assist you in your preparation. These include an executive summary of the draft for quick reference, a "Q&A" of common questions and answers, and a set of media talking points to assist you in responding to any media calls you may receive.

The task force thanks you for your accompaniment in this journey together and for your leadership role in encouraging deliberation of this draft social statement. Let us continue to hold one another and this church in prayer in the months to come.

Kind regards,

Rebecca S. Larson
Executive Director, Church in Society

P.S. For a detailed timeline on the social statement process, please go to www.elca.org/faithfuljourney/timeline on the Journey Together Faithfully Web site.

I'm still thinking over whether or not to download the proposal, much less read through it in time for the Journal Star's Religion Editor Mike Miller to maybe give me a call. If there were any chance that it would be more like the 1970 LCA Social Statement Sex, Marriage, and Family, which covered all that in 6 pages, I'd feel a little better about pausing Wednesday afternoon between Lenten services to read it. Part of me really wants to wait until after Easter Sunday. But what if it hits the news and folks respond to our ad in next Saturday's paper advertising our Holy Week services? What were they thinking?

In the meantime, it looks like the release of a first draft this week of 2008 will be a practice for next year in more ways than one. Take another look at this from the Studies on Sexuality Time Line for 2009:

February-April
Synod councils may bring resolutions to the ELCA Church Council related to the proposed social statement on human sexuality, implementing resolutions, and roster recommendations.

March 27 - 30
ELCA Church Council reviews text of proposed social statement and acts to recommend social statement on human sexuality, implementing resolutions, and roster recommendations, and directs that these be placed on the Churchwide Assembly agenda.

April
RECOMMENDED social statement on human sexuality, implementing resolutions, and roster recommendations are available to the church for discussion and response through synod assembly actions.

Note the lack of an exact date for when all that will actually be available. Here's a date we know: Easter Sunday 2009 is April 12, putting Passion/Palm Sunday April 5 to begin Holy Week.

Meanwhile, the earliest Synod Assemblies generally start meeting near the end of April. Since one reason we're getting the draft this week is to provide for enough time for April Synod Assemblies to study/comment upon the draft, certainly it'll be necessary to provide the same opportunity with the actual proposed statement, no? What else is there than the week before Holy Week 2009?

Do we laugh, or cry?

More on Benedict XVI and Martin Luther

Phil Lawler, the editor at Catholic World News writes here

The Forum: Rehabilitating Luther: a London Times theory

by Phil Lawler
special to CWNews.com

Mar. 6, 2008 (CWNews.com) - "Pope Benedict is to rehabilitate Martin Luther," announces reporter Richard Owen in the eye-catching opening phrase of his story in the London Times.

Reports that appear in the Times often find their way into other news stories. That is unfortunate, because the Times has a track record of sensational and misleading coverage of Vatican affairs. This story provides one more example.

Here are the facts that Owens supplies:

• In the Ratzinger Schülerkreis, the informal seminar that Pope Benedict holds each year with his former theology students, the topic for discussion at this year's August session will be Luther's teaching and influence.
• Cardinal Walter Kasper (bio - news) says: “We have much to learn from Luther, beginning with the importance he attached to the Word of God."

Can one logically conclude, from those two facts, that the Pope will "rehabilitate" Luther? No; not even close.

Cardinal Kasper certainly must be taken seriously. As president of the Pontifical Council for Christian Unity he plays a key role in ecumenical dialogue. But Richard Owen is not reporting on an initiative taken by Kasper's office; he says that the Pope will issue a statement at the conclusion of an informal seminar.

Ordinarily these summer seminars do not result in formal statements, much less papal policy statements. Yet the Times story leads readers to believe that this year's session will end with a very important declaration of Church teaching. Moreover, several months before the conversation between the Pope and his old students even begins, Owen tells us what conclusions that seminar will reach.

Read it all here.

Lutheran Lite vs. Luther

Light Side is the section of The Lutheran magazine where people send in "funny" anecdotes. The current issue's Light Side, headlined "At the communion rail," includes this:

A couple in our congregation had their visiting grandson, Henry, then 5, hold the bucket for empty plastic communion cups while they served communion. The next morning Henry said to his grandma: “Next time I’ll serve the drinks and you can do the trash.”

Cheryl Geller
Minot, N.D

Think on this for a moment.

Empty plastic communion cups tossed in bucket. Five-year-old sees trash. Grandma and friends think this is so cute.

Such is the state of Lutheranism in 2008.

Then there's Herman Sasse's reference to a description of Dr. Luther's personal conduct as celebrant:

In many churches in which he celebrated the Lord's Supper there remained for a long time memories of his conduct, e.g., in the Church of Our Lady in Halle during his last journey to Mansfeld. Long afterwards they were still telling of this celebration, one of the last, if not the last of his life.

The great number of communicants had wearied his aged arms; at one point his quivering hand caused him to spill a little of the consecrated wine on the floor. Luther put the chalice down on the altar, fell to his knees, and sucked up the wine with his mouth so that it should not be trodden under foot, whereupon the whole congregation broke out in sobbing and weeping.

(We Confess: The Sacraments, pp. 133-134, referencing K. Loewe, quoted by K. Anton, Luther und die Musik [1928], p. 59)

Such was the state of Lutheranism in the 1540s.

It is said that actions speak louder than words. What do Luther's actions say about the Sacrament? What has young Henry's congregation taught him about the Means of Grace? Which seems right and salutary to you?

(Hint: trash vs. reverence)

"...whereupon the whole congregation broke out in sobbing and weeping."

Moved by Statistics and Personal Accounts

Daniel J. Lehmann, editor of The Lutheran magazine, leads his editorial in the current (January 2008) issue:

Words pack a punch

Emotion, action just two responses

If you read no other line in this issue of The Lutheran, make it the following: Every day, almost 16,000 children die from hunger-related causes—one child every five seconds.

Reviewing the draft of this month's cover story ('There really is hope') in the dark, cold, early evening hours of December, my eyes watered. That staggering number stopped me. Because I had just completed the main piece a few minutes earlier, I knew that leaders in this field contend hunger can be eradicated. Yet it is not.

Hopefully others will be moved by the statistics and personal accounts in the package of articles on hunger. And act.

That's what a magazine such as The Lutheran is supposed to do: tell stories about our church that inform, challenge, lift up, edify and occasionally cause a stir.

I was first moved by such stories when I was 15 and a layman of our congregation gave a Temple Talk on the just established World Hunger Appeal of the Lutheran Church in America. Ever since the Hunger Appeal has been a regular part of my offering and, since 1974, Lutherans have been assisting the hungry abroad and at home with direct relief and teaching them to help themselves.

Yes, there are times when the stories speak too much of "advocacy" (or political lobbying, which has been part of the Appeal's efforts from the beginning), but there are few better ways to alleviate hunger, both immediate needs and over the long term. We have not eliminated hunger; that was a naïve hope 34 years ago that forgot the effects of human sinfulness. But Lutherans have made a difference, a big one.

But Mr. Lehmann's editorial arrived in my mailbox in a particular context -- conversations on ALPB Forum Online (here and here) and on the "Whither ELCA" group on LutherLink about the March for Life and the story of the ELCA Board of Pensions Medical plan's coverage of all abortions, no questions asked, for the first 20 weeks of pregnancy. The issue within the ELCA was turned into, "Should an ELCA Social Statement (namely, the one on Abortion) help determine church policy and practice. Alas, the answer to that has, thus far, been an emphatic no. At least when it comes to abortion and our medical plan.

Given that context, I did a little figuring. And in the United States of America (the land of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness), one child is aborted about every 25 seconds. Worldwide it is 126,000 every day, or about 87 every minute.

Every minute, 11 children die of hunger, and the ELCA (quite rightly) goes to considerable effort to prevent as many of those as we can. As for the 87 who, in that same minute, are prevented from being born, we are not only silent, we are complicit.

"Hopefully others will be move by the statistics and personal accounts... And act."

40 Days of Prayer for Peoria: Continued

The 40 Days of Prayer for Peoria (which I last wrote about here) seem to be going on just fine, the only hitch being that the location was moved to First United Methodist Church downtown. Apparently the leaders were unable to reserve the original planned location (which, in all-too-typical Peoria ecumenical fashion I found out by showing up at the Gateway Building on New Years' Eve at the appointed hour only to be directed to the new location). Readers of the Peoria Journal Star wouldn't have known the difference -- one found me the next morning in the photo attached to the PJS article on New Year's Day and another one on Mike Miller's Faithfully Yours blog. And, as it is, the church has been able to provide for a fine worship atmosphere.

The evenings' prayers have been led by a variety of Peoria pastors and other ministers. Each one I've attended has had anywhere between 125-200 (or more) people attending, and there has been a good mixture of black and white Peorians -- which in my experience has not been typical of Peoria church events, though not for the lack of trying. Perhaps the only negative is that, for all the churches participating, only 4-5 come from the old "Protestant mainline" or Catholic churches -- nearly all are from Evangelical and Pentecostal traditions. I find it curious that clergy from churches with long-standing commitments to ecumenism are, for the most part, not participating. Obviously there there are many reasons for that, but at first glance it doesn't reflect on us very well.

This Wednesday evening, however, Fr. Eric Craig of St. Andrew's Anglican Church and I will do our part in leading prayer for our city in fine Anglican/Lutheran style. If you're in the area, drop by the First United Methodist Church Annex on the corner of Main and Perry at 6 pm. You'll know you've prayed with the Church for our city.

Join the prayers for Peoria any evening at 6 pm: the 40 Days concludes February 8.

Bishop Hanson: "Testing Faith"

ELCA Presiding Bishop Mark Hanson was one of twelve world religious leaders featured on In God's Name, a rather interesting and well-done television special that aired on CBS television earlier tonight. Based on my personal experiences with Bishop Hanson, what I saw on this program, viewers saw sketchy, but accurate, portraits of these leaders -- their passions, their intelligence and theological acumen, a bit about their personal lives. And I was reminded that the Dalai Lama fled Chinese-occupied Tibet on the same day that I was born.

In a section entitled "Testing Faith," the program showed two extended episodes from the Jathedar of the Akal Takht, Joginder Singh Vedanti (the highest authority in the Sikh religion), and Ayatollah Muhammad Hussein Fadlallah, a prominent Shi'ite Muslim leader -- whose words throughout the program were quite chilling. Then came this moment from our Presiding Bishop:

Oh, many times my faith is tested.

One of my sons was in chemical dependency treatment twice before he was 13. I had to stand in front of a judge one day, with tears in my eyes and say, "Your honor, we cannot parent this child any longer. He is too broken. Will you please send him to some place where he can get the help that we can't give him?"

The judge sent my son for 19 months to a locked treatment center. The day that they led my son out of court, in handcuffs, I felt that I had been an absolute failure. The only thing I could hold onto in that moment of being tested was the fact that I believe God had bound Godself to my son and that God wouldn't forsake my son even when I had failed and my son had failed.

And in those moments of being tested my faith becomes stronger and my love deeper.

(Sigh!) In the midst of a poignant discourse, he just had to speak of God that using that maddeningly artificial "inclusive" language that ELCA linguists instruct us to use so that we may be relevant in a diverse world. (If you ever hear me say "Godself" in a way that suggests I believe it to be a word worthy of being used...)

Meanwhile, a few moments later near its conclusion, In God's Name entitled a section (led off, interestingly enough, by Bishop Hanson) "A Prayer for Mankind."

Do you think that CBS television may know something about communicating in our diverse world?

Gay Pastor in the Bronx Could Lose Her Collar

That's the headline of an article in Sunday's New York Times featuring Katrina Foster, pastor at Fordham Evangelical Lutheran Church in the Bronx. I got to know her a little bit this summer during the ELCA Churchwide Assembly, where she was a Voting Member (delegate) and I was a microphone page during the discussions and debates related to sexuality.

I did my best in a frequently chaotic situation to enable her to speak before the Assembly (that was my job and she was appreciative of that), which she did eloquently for her position. She appreciated my efforts. Nevertheless, it will be clear to you in a moment that I believe her position is very wrong.

The article begins:

In 1994, when the Rev. Katrina D. Foster became pastor of Fordham Evangelical Lutheran Church in the Bronx, she threw herself into ministering to her small, mostly Caribbean-born congregation. She not only preached to them on Sundays but lived in the neighborhood and showed up to support them in everything from surgeries to legal matters.

But Pastor Foster was keeping a secret from her congregation. She held onto it even after a woman came to live with her in the parsonage, then joined the church choir.

“Some people would say, ‘It’s so nice you have someone to live with you in that 11-room house,’ ” said Pastor Foster, 39.

But in 2002, when the woman, Pamela Kallimanis, became pregnant, they knew the time had come. So Pastor Foster sat her congregants down one by one and told them that she and Ms. Kallimanis were partners and were expecting a child.

Not one person openly criticized her, she said. Instead, “they threw us the most wonderfully outrageous baby shower in the side yard next to the church,” she said. “The woman I was most anxious about telling” — the church president — “I thought she was going to leap across the table and hug me.”

The response, however, was not all positive. A small number of families trickled away. Pastor Foster said only one member told her outright why she had stopped coming. “I got her on the phone one day and she said she couldn’t sit under a pastor who was a homosexual,” she said.

Now Pastor Foster and her roughly 100 congregants face a new challenge: the possibility that she, along with four other pastors in the New York area and 81 nationwide, could be defrocked in 2009 by the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America. The country’s largest Lutheran denomination, it allows openly gay pastors but forbids them from being in same-sex relationships, according to the Rev. Stephen P. Bouman, bishop of the denomination’s New York-area synod.

In August, Pastor Foster was among the clerics who disclosed that they were in such relationships at the church’s biennial national assembly in Chicago, where church policy was decided. The assembly voted to urge synod leaders not to discipline those pastors until the issue of pastors in same-sex relationships could be voted on at the next meeting, in 2009.

Bishop Bouman said he would not have disciplined Pastor Foster anyway. “She is someone whose faith is genuine and she lives it in a very bold and inclusive way,” he said. “She’s not afraid to tell people that she loves God and that God loves them.” When Bishop Bouman leaves to take a national church position in Chicago in March, however, whoever succeeds him in New York may aim to defrock Pastor Foster before the 2009 assembly.

Another pastor in the synod, the Rev. Paul Hagen, of St. Peter’s Lutheran Church in the Bronx, isn’t supportive. He said that the “the Bible clearly defines homosexuality as a sin.

Read it all here -- note, you may need to register on the Times' site to do so.

Bishop Bouman's new position is Executive Director of ELCA Evangelical Outreach and Congregational Mission. As for Katrina Foster, it will take a miracle for the Metropolitan New York Synod to elect as Bishop someone who would even consider disciplining her. Alas, she's in no danger of "losing her collar."

And I wonder, are we going to be seeing this sort of headline and story more and more over the next couple of years?

Schism and Heresy

Background: Last Tuesday, Zion's Parish Secretary brought me Page B3 of the Peoria Journal-Star page to show me the rather prominent placing of the AP's report of Jen Rude's ordination. And during our Romans Bible Sudy, a couple of people commented on the photo from that ordination (also from the AP) that was in this morning's PJS "Faith & Values" section.

Near the end of my Wednesday entry, I quoted an ELCA News Release on Presiding Bishop Mark Hanson report to the ELCA Church Council:

Hanson identified four challenges for the ELCA: building trust throughout the church, creating awareness by telling the ELCA's "story," raising expectations for what the Holy Spirit is doing, and lowering anxiety about sexuality as the church prepares a social statement on human sexuality for consideration at the 2009 ELCA assembly.

"We cannot let that social statement define solely the life and work of this church or our leadership," Hanson told the council. "That's going to take shared leadership. If we become so preoccupied with 2009, we are conveying a message that sexuality defines this church, and (because of) sexuality, this church could potentially be divided. Frankly, that's heresy. That's absolute heresy. The gospel of Jesus Christ defines this church."

It appears that the Presiding Bishop is accusing those who would "divide" the ELCA over matters of sexuality of heresy. Exactly who those potential heretics are is not clear, however. Is he speaking of those associated with, say, Extraordinary Lutheran Ministries, who are are arranging for ELCA congregations to call persons ineligible to serve under call in ELCA congregations? Is it those associated with, for instance, Lutheran CORE who object to the apparent non-enforcement of ELCA standards when it comes to homosexual relationships?

Bishop Hanson doesn't exactly say. He has said, however, that he favors the so-called "full inclusion" of gay and lesbian people in the ELCA, following a definition that "full inclusion" means no bar blessing homosexual relationship or ordaining those in them. And a look at those he has placed in positions of authority both in the Churchwide ELCA and (before that) in the Synod he was Bishop clearly showed that long before he finally said so in public during the 2006 Hein-Fry Lectures. Suggesting to me and others with whom I am associated that we who call the ELCA to faithfulness are the more likely target of his accusation.

This would parallel what has been happening in the Episcopal Church, whose leaders have committed the that church to "full inclusion" of gay and lesbians. More and more faithful members, priests, congregations, and now dioceses are preparing to depart, and they are regularly being accused of schism. And in this thread on Canon Kendall Harmon's TitusOneNine, a correspondent called "The Gordian" made this important observation:

Once again you confuse schism with heresy. Once again you tar the opponents of false teaching - even blasphemous and immoral teaching that endagers the souls of men and women - as ‘heretics’. And you don’t even recognize how much these Christians have suffered at the hands of putative bishops, in the loss of buildings, jobs and homes, in maintaining this faithful witness for the gospel. If that makes you feel superior and above the fray, well bully for you. But the rest of us are not really concerned with keeping a liturgical choral society going. There’s too much of real importance at stake.

A couple of years ago, I observed that in this debate the schismatics are not the people who will leave the ELCA should it vote to ordain practicing gays and approve blessing gay unions. Rather, those who would (like the Anglican Communion Network) leave would merely be recognizing what had been true for some time, that the church is already in schism. Those who depart the Church's teaching on marriage and sexuality and cause the ELCA to formally embrace false teaching will be the schismatics.

We continue to pray that it doesn't even go that far.

The Assault Continues

Yes, that's a provocative title. But it is also how I see what happened last Saturday when Jen Rude was ordained in a Chicago ELCA congregation.

Read the press release from Extraordinary Lutheran Ministries, an organization whose sole purpose is to provide "qualifications" for "sexual minorities" who want to be pastors in ELCA congregations while openly and enthusiastically endorsing and living lives contrary to the Christian Faith:

For the fourth time in 13 months a Lutheran congregation will directly challenge the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America’s (ELCA) policy requiring lifelong celibacy of gay and lesbian clergy. On October 28, Jen Rude was called to ministry by Resurrection Lutheran Church in Chicago. On November 17, Rude will become the first pastor to be ordained in the newly formed Extraordinary Lutheran Ministries (ELM) and the first official challenge to the new ELCA policy of “Refrain and Restraint” that was passed at its biennial assembly August 6-11 in Chicago.

Rude will be ordained in an “Extraordinary Ordination” service on November 17. The service is called such because it is performed outside the ordinary guidelines for Lutheran ordinations.

Facing increasing pressure to revisit its policy banning partnered gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender persons from serving as pastors, the five-million member Evangelical Lutheran Church in American (ELCA) took up the issue at their biennial assembly August 6-11 in Chicago. In January of this year, a popular openly gay Atlanta pastor, the Rev. Bradley Schmeling, was placed on church trial after telling his bishop that he was in a same-sex relationship. While the ELCA disciplinary committee recommended Schmeling’s removal, they expressed opposition to the policy and recommended it be overturned. Twenty-one synods passed recommendations that the policy be overturned by the national assembly. The biennial assembly fell short of overturning the policy, but instead passed a resolution recommending bishops “refrain from or show restraint” in discipline of gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender pastors and their congregations.

Read the whole release here, as well as the Chicago Sun-Times article based on it.

ELM trumpeted the actual ordination in this press release, which begins:

Jen Rude's Ordination Only the First Test of the ELCA's "Refrain or Restraint"

Extraordinary Ordination November 17, 2007

(Chicago) On November 17, 2007, The Rev. Jen Rude was set aside for Word and Sacrament ministry by laying on of hands. Pastor Rude’s ordination is the fourth time in 13 months that a Lutheran congregation has directly challenged the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America’s (ELCA) policy requiring lifelong celibacy of gay and lesbian clergy.

Pastor Rude was ordained in an “Extraordinary Ordination.” The service is called such because it is performed outside the ordinary guidelines for Lutheran ordinations. Pastor Rude is on the roster of Extraordinary Lutheran Ministries and was called by Resurrection Lutheran Church on Reformation Sunday (Oct. 28, 2007).

“Between 1990 and 2005 there have been eight extraordinary ordinations. Since 2006 there have already been four extraordinary ordinations and a fifth is scheduled for January 19th in Minneapolis. This trend signals that congregations are no longer willing to abide by the ELCA’s policy of discrimination as they join members of the Extraordinary Lutheran Ministries in principled non-compliance.” Rev. Erik Christensen, Co-Chair of Extraordinary Lutheran Ministries.

Note the lack of "restraint" in ELM's language, or in its actions as it promises more and more and more attacks on the fragile unity of the ELCA in one faith.

See also the Chicago Tribune article, which begins:

Sitting in sight of her father and grandfather, both Lutheran ministers, Jen Rude on Saturday became the first ordained lesbian pastor since the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America urged bishops to not penalize congregations who violate the celibacy requirement for gay clergy.

Several of the more than 100 congregants present wept as the 27-year-old stood before them, a beaming smile drawn across her face.

Actually, weeping seems like the best response. For new Metro-Chicago Synod Bishop Miller has declared that he will do nothing. And through this article we discover that Paul Landahl, the recently-retired Metro-Chicago Bishop who is one of the too many ELCA Bishops who have been rebuffing ELCA's standards for years, is the interim Director for Candidacy at the ELCA's Lutheran School of Theology at Chicago, where he will be able to help seminarians avoid the standards at a different level.

Remember this photo I took last August, when I wrote here and here of how deeply that moment touched me. That photo gave me hope for the ELCA.

But then I read the advocates of "full inclusion" (though there is nothing excluding gay and lesbian people from the ELCA) and their relentless demand that this church bow to their every demand, NOW!!

And I hear the silence of this church's leadership, except for the movement of people in and out of positions of authority, so that those who would teach in the ELCA what the Church has always taught about sexuality as a part of a doctrine of marriage and family are marginalized from having an effect on this church's public voice.

It may seem completely unrelated, but ELCA News reported this about Presiding Bishop Mark Hanson's report to the ELCA Church Council

+ Hanson identified four challenges for the ELCA: building trust throughout the church, creating awareness by telling the ELCA's "story," raising expectations for what the Holy Spirit is doing, and lowering anxiety about sexuality as the church prepares a social statement on human sexuality for consideration at the 2009 ELCA assembly.

"We cannot let that social statement define solely the life and work of this church or our leadership," Hanson told the council. "That's going to take shared leadership. If we become so preoccupied with 2009, we are conveying a message that sexuality defines this church, and (because of) sexuality, this church could potentially be divided. Frankly, that's heresy. That's absolute heresy. The gospel of Jesus Christ defines this church."

"I think this (the social statement) is hugely important work for us in these next two years. I'm committed to it, but I will not let it solely define my leadership of this church, because I think that's not responsible," he said.

Find it here. The problem, my good Bishop, is that you are one who is responsible for letting anxiety about sexuality preoccupy this church by mouthing the church's policies and winking when they are ignored. You could stop it. But you don't. As one more ELCA congregation decides to go its own way, at whom are you aiming your "heresy" accusation?

The Mayor Brought Us Together...

O Lord, our creator, by your holy prophet you taught your ancient people to seek the welfare of the cities in which they lived. We commend our neighborhood to your care, that it might be kept free from social strife and decay. Give us strength of purpose and concern for others, that we may create here a community of justice and peace where your will may be done; through your Son, Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

The above collect (found in the Lutheran Book of Worship) is one we've prayed many times over the years at Zion, beginning with a series of prayer vigils we held for the neighborhood during our centennial year. (You're looking at a flier we made for one of them.) It's one I've prayed during community prayer gatherings this last year in response to an epidemic of shootings here in Peoria.

Last week I received a letter from Peoria Mayor James Ardis inviting area pastors to engage in a concerted prayer venture on behalf of our community. Michael Miller of the Journal Star reported it like this in Thursday's paper:

Jim Ardis wants to drive the city to its knees.

The mayor of Peoria has invited religious leaders to meet with him at 2:30 p.m. Friday at Riverside Community Church, 207 NE Monroe St., to discuss a citywide prayer effort he's calling "Ready Set Pray" as part of the fight against crime.

"I think it's going to energize the faith-based community more," Ardis said Wednesday.

Prayer gatherings were the norm during a spate of slayings in Peoria earlier this year. Churches also have been involved in a recent gun buyback program.

Ardis said he was inspired by an effort started earlier this month in Orlando, Fla., called Operation Armor All. That 40-day program was initiated by police department chaplains in response to an increase in violent crime.

The Peoria mayor said he will ask the faith leaders to create a 40-day calendar and try to get different groups to commit to prayer on each of the 40 days.

Read it all here.

For some reason a clergy association for all Peoria clergy has never caught on. I'm not sure how conscious it is, but the associations that have existed in my 15 years here have not been able to attract across too broad a theological / political / racial spectrum -- even for the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity celebrations that happened for about a decade. Black-white; evangelical/pentecostal-mainline; inner city-suburban -- individuals cross those barriers for a while, then lose steam or other priorities take over. I'm one of those. I say this with some pride, for I have participated in and been among the leaders of some of these efforts. And I say this with some (okay, more) shame -- for I have not persevered.

But I've not given up. And earlier this afternoon the Mayor greeted some 60-70 clergy and other leaders of Christian groups -- perhaps the broadest spectrum of Christians I've seen at one time in my 15 years here -- told us what he hoped we could do, then got out of our way. Zion will take part in the effort, whatever comes out of the steering committee that organized.

Thanks, Mr. Mayor, for bringing us together.