"We are to fear and love God so that in matters of sex our words and conduct are pure and honorable, and husband and wife love and respect each other."
As a youth I learned this as the answer to the question, "What does this mean: 'You shall not commit adultery.'" Lutherans will recognize it a being from The Small Catechism by Dr. Martin Luther, which in my Sunday School text books was subtitled, "A Handbook of Basic Christian Instruction for the Family and the Congregation."
But there's hardly anything unique here to Luther, or even Christians for that matter. Alas, you'd not know that from catching the news media. Or, for that matter, the entertainment media. All of which have been busy, for a long time now, with another message.
Showing posts with label Sexuality. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Sexuality. Show all posts
Friday, November 17, 2017
Thursday, November 11, 2010
Stumme on the ELCA's "Bound Conscience"
The latest edition of the ELCA's on-line Journal of Lutheran Ethics begins a two month focus on the topic of "bound conscience," the expression of which emerged with the ELCA's Social Statement Human Sexuality: Gift and Trust. the first article is by the recently retired Director of the Department for Studies in the Church in Society unit of the ELCA, John R. Stumme. Here's how Pr. Stumme begins (complete with associated endnotes):
Sort of reminds me of something I wrote here in July 2009:
Ah, the hopes we had in the 1980s for the New Lutheran Church. Then there's the legacy our leaders have, uh -- "built" isn't quite the right word, is it?
Read it all here."Conscience-bound Beliefs" Rule and the "Conscience-bound-belief" Rule
John R. Stumme
[1] What is striking about the ELCA's August 2009 decisions about sexuality is that they changed policy without giving a scriptural account for the change. The policy change allows persons in publicly accountable, lifelong, monogamous, same-gender relationships to be ordained, yet the change is not supported in any official church document on the basis of what "this church" (as the ELCA likes to call itself) holds to be the authoritative source and norm for its life and teaching.1
[2] Instead, the ELCA appealed to its members to respect the "conscience-bound beliefs" of persons who have different understandings regarding same-gender sexual behavior and relationships. This appeal to respect beliefs bound by conscience, it was assumed, gave "this church" the authority to accommodate different practices on ordination and blessings. On this question, then, "conscience-bound beliefs" rule in the ELCA, replacing any claim that Scripture authorizes or does not authorize same-gender sexual behavior. If "this church" is going to be consistent with what it stated about "conscience-bound beliefs," it will also apply its new "conscience-bound-belief" rule to other issues. I hope to develop these themes in what follows.2
[3] Because the ELCA has elevated the concept of "conscience-bound beliefs" to such prominence for its life and teaching, the concept deserves careful scrutiny. The social statement Human Sexuality: Gift and Trust made it the "pivotal" concept in how the ELCA "resolved" the most controversial, exhausting and expensive issue in its history, and therefore I look carefully at what is said there.3
Without a Biblical Teaching
[4] The social statement describes four positions on same-gender behavior and relationships with the preface: "This church recognizes that, with conviction and integrity:" (each individual description beginning) "On the basis of conscience-bound belief, some are convinced that...."4 The four positions described may be simplified into two basic ones, each with two variations: one position does not approve same-gender sexual behavior and the other approves it within lifelong, loving, and monogamous commitments. The descriptions are brief, and no argument is presented for their biblical truth. References to, interpretation and discussion of biblical texts are absent from the descriptions.
[5] The social statement announces that "this church...will include these different understandings...." in its mission and ministry.5 Why are they included? The reason given is that they represent the "conscience-bound belief" of some.
[6] Does this mean that the ELCA affirms as its own biblical teaching four distinct teachings on same-gender sexual behavior and relationships? So I thought at one point, but I have changed my mind. If what is said here are descriptions — and nothing more — of what members are said to believe, as is claimed, then the ELCA is not saying that this is what "this church" teaches. None of the four positions is identified as the preferred or the true one. Nor does the social statement say that all four positions are equally valid or equally invalid for members to hold. No, the social statement is only descriptive; it does not make any judgment whatsoever about these positions it includes in its life. Most importantly, how could "this church" or any church body in its official teaching hold as true and faithful to Scripture contradictory positions on a matter of God's law? What this all means, I finally realized, is that the ELCA has no biblical teaching on same-gender sexual behavior.6
[7] Before August 2009 the ELCA did have a teaching on same-sex sexual behavior as expressed in social statements from the American Lutheran Church and the Lutheran Church in America.7 This teaching was in accord with the Christian church's universal tradition of biblical interpretation and with what most churches in the world teach today, as found, for example, in the statements from the Lutheran churches in Ethiopia and Tanzania: that same-sex sexual behavior is not in accord with the biblical witness.8 The ELCA declined to affirm this teaching as its own, and it did not give a scriptural argument on why it abandoned this teaching. It also declined to develop and affirm the teaching that same-gender sexual behavior in a committed relationship was, like marriage, pleasing to God. The ELCA abdicated in its authority to state its understanding of biblical truth on the issue.
[8] The absence of a teaching on same-gender sexual behavior seems to create major obstacles for anyone who in their teaching office represents the ELCA. When pastors, bishops or other teachers in the church are asked, "Does the ELCA believe and teach that same-sex sexual behavior is acceptable to God or not?," the honest answer has to be: "We don't know. We as a church don't have a teaching on the matter." It would be dishonest for a representative to claim one of the four positions as the ELCA's teaching. If the follow-up question is, "What then should I believe the Bible says?" the answer would seem to be something like: "Study the Bible, pray, understand the issue, decide what you think is the biblical witness, and respect the beliefs of others. It's an individual decision made, of course, in dialogue with others."
[9] Without a scripturally based teaching to guide members' beliefs that the ELCA claims as its own, the obligation to answer the question is foisted on each congregation, finally on each individual member. Any answer (one should probably add, within the parameters of the four positions described in the social statement, although, it seems, a "conscience-bound belief" could be outside them) is as good as any other in the ELCA since "this church" has no normative teaching by which to evaluate them. The decisive authority is the belief attested to by the individual's conscience. "Conscience-bound beliefs" are in the driver's seat. "All the people did what was right in their own eyes" (Judges 21:25). If every congregation and individual is left to decide for themselves what authoritative, biblical teaching is, it is plausible to expect further fragmentation in an already divided church body.
10] In ecumenical settings, ...
_ _ _ _ _ _
Endnotes
1. The ELCA in its constitution states that Scripture is "the authoritative source and norm of [this church's] proclamation, faith, and life" (ELCA 2.03). The 2009 ELCA Churchwide Assembly adopted the social statement "Human Sexuality: Gift and Trust" (ELCA: 2009) and four ministry policy resolutions. For more information on these documents and a link to ELCA Ministry Policies go to the Web site "Frequently Asked Questions about the 2009 Churchwide Assembly actions regarding sexuality" (http://www.elca.org/What-We-Believe/Social-Issues/Social-Statements/JTF-Human-Sexuality/cwafaqs.aspx#policy).
2. I thank Victor Thasiah for his invitation to write on "bound conscience" for JLE. My line of thought continues the argument I made in a JLE article in 2005 that the ELCA has an obligation to be clear on its biblical teaching on marriage and sexuality before it changes its policies. "Moral discourse structured by communally accepted 'objective convictions' is the controlling factor in moral deliberation, not personal experiences or individual consciences." Here I argue that because the social statement side-steps the question of biblical truth, the ELCA's policy changes lack a trustworthy basis in the church's authoritative teachings. Cf. "The Church as a Community of Moral Deliberation — a Time of Testing," Journal of Lutheran Ethics 5:8 (August 2005).
3. My intent is to give a close reading to the actual text of the social statement in the section "Lifelong, monogamous, same-gender relationships," 18–21, and its endnotes, # 24–26. The social statement calls the concept of conscience "pivotal," #26.
4. "Human Sexuality," 20.
5. "Human Sexuality," 19.
6. The social statement notes that "this church is united on many critical issues" regarding same-gender relations and "that it has a pastoral responsibility to all children of God." "Human Sexuality," 19. Rev. Dr. William O. Gafkjen, now Bishop of the Indiana-Kentucky Synod, in an online response (www.iksynod.org) to Dr. Robert Benne, wrote: "The clear teaching and proclamation emerge around assertions that public accountability and lifelong faithful monogamy are to be the norm for same-gender relations." "Response to 'Lutherans in Search of a New Church'." (July 2010). The bishop has stated the policy, but he has begged the question on how the ELCA arrived at a biblically-based teaching that approves same-gender sexual behavior. In fact, it has not.
7. "Sex, Marriage, and Family," Lutheran Church in America (1970), 4. "Human Sexuality and Sexual Behavior," American Lutheran Church (1980), 8–9. Where social statements from the predecessor church bodies were in agreement, they remained the teaching of the ELCA until it adopted its own teaching.
8. See "The Dodoma Statement" of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Tanzania (www.elct.org) and the Ethiopian Evangelical Church of Mekane Yesus (www.eecmy.org), including its April 2010 news release, "EECMY Reaffirms its Rejection of Same Sex Marriage."
Sort of reminds me of something I wrote here in July 2009:
Nevertheless, I had hopes that, since every possible theological resource would be available to the ELCA Task Force, if anyone could offer such a sustainable argument, they would. I participated in all the studies. I read through all the official materials. I participated in many discussions.One might understand why the complaints of a pastor of a tiny parish in Peoria would be ignored. But ignoring the concerns of one of the ELCA's own staff theologians?
And in the end, they offered no argument at all. They have given us assertions that cover the "sides" in the debate over the place of homosexuality in the Church, but there is no argument made for changing the Church's teaching on homosexuality anywhere to be found in the Report and Recommendations or the proposed Sexuality Statement.
In the end of nearly 8 years of work, given the chance to show that the Church's teaching has been wrong, having the best and brightest minds of the ELCA at their disposal, they did not even try.
Ah, the hopes we had in the 1980s for the New Lutheran Church. Then there's the legacy our leaders have, uh -- "built" isn't quite the right word, is it?
Thursday, March 11, 2010
Reflections on the Panel Discussion at LSTC
"This'll be interesting." That's how I concluded my post with the announcement of the panel discussion I was part of today at the Lutheran School of Theology at Chicago, "ELCA Congregations and the Sexuality Statement." The private discussion among many of my friends was considerably less irenic.
So I really need to begin this reflection by noting the gracious hospitality I received from those of the LSTC community -- students, faculty, and staff -- that I encountered today. And also the many expressions of thankfulness for my participation in the panel, both in taking the time to drive up to Chicago from Peoria (it was 175 miles each way from Zion to LSTC) and for presenting my perspective as I did.
The flier described the discussion, "Hear experienced Church Leaders give real-life examples of congregational responses to the ELCA Sexuality statement." I'd say that, at best, we barely scratched the surface of that description -- though my experience has been that is often the case of panel discussions. The format probably didn't help: the first half-hour was spent eating lunch, though it helped the panelists to get to know each other a bit and discover some other connections we had.
Then came the formal introductions of the topic and the panelists, followed by our "5 minute" responses to the question and Prof. Perry's response to our comments. I put "5 minutes" in quotes because, while one seminarian was the official timekeeper, each of us had really only gotten started at that point.
Bishop Freiheit started, and he was followed by the Pastor Miller. I was third and began my comments much as they did -- describing how the general topic of the ELCA's journeys on human sexuality had affected our own ministries. As I often do, I began with a little farewell dinner put on by a friend as I was leaving for PLTS in June of 1988. This is to elicit recollections of the "PLTS Three," who had been approved for ordination in the closing days of the LCA and ALC, then with the beginning of the ELCA in January 1988 announced that they were gay men who either were, or desired to be, in a same-sex relationship. The reaction in much of the "new church" was fierce.
And my dinner companions, one of whom had been confirmed with one of the Three, asked me how this controversy would affect me. "Not at all," I replied. Yet nearly 22 years later, it's been THE one constant topic either at the forefront, or just under the surface, in everything the ELCA has done.
Well, it wasn't a topic in my interviews before being called to Zion. That was something that would be very different for those about to be available for a first call: they would be asked what the thought, believed, and intended to teach about sexuality -- and other theological matters. And they may be asked in a context of suspicion. I didn't have to deal with that in 1992, as much I yearned that theology might be a part of the interview process. I didn't have to deal with human sexuality, until I was finally able to organize my first adult study class as their pastor -- on the controversial First Draft of a proposed sexuality statement (released in Fall 1993).
Now I'm not sure what the organizers, panelists, or audience was expecting from me, but the members of the LSTC Diversity Committee knew -- partly because one of its members had interned in Central/Southern Illinois, heard me speak at the Synod Assembly, and knew of my association with Lutheran CORE -- that I have a Traditionalist perspective, as did the panelists and a couple of seminarians who've seen some of my writing via ALPB's Forum Letter or its online forum.
Whatever the rest of community was expecting, they definitely noticed when I then stated not only my opposition to the CWA's actions, but that I was in "profound" disagreement with my own Bishop -- sitting maybe 4 feet to my right -- and that we had been living in that disagreement for several years.
At that point I tried to describe some of the conflicts and divisions that ELCA congregations and pastor were facing since last summer -- noting that those opposed to the CWA's actions often were responding having participated in the ELCA's sexuality studies, even to the point of being sick of the topic, and were responding not out of ignorance and fear, but theological conviction -- and pointing to the negative effects when a congregation and pastor were of different minds on either the new statement, or (even when in agreement there) on remaining associated with the ELCA.
You'd guess rightly that I'd used up my 5 minutes by then. By the time Pastor Christensen and Prof. Perry concluded, it was past 12:30. Time for audience questions.
Each person had been given a 3x5 card to submit (anonymously) a question, and the cards had been placed in a basket. Another student member of the Diversity Committee had then grouped the questions into similar subjects.
The first set of questions were along the lines of: Is sexuality really the big issue we should be talking about? Isn't this distracting us from real ministry? Or is the controversy over gays in the ministry only one source of tension in the church, with hemeneutical questions about the Bible actually being more important? And how can we deal with people who say "I have no real problem with gay people," but follow that with homophobic actions (or inactions).
My response was that today's controversy was a reflection of sexualization of so much of our culture, not just church discussion, and our unwillingness as the church to deal with issues of marriage and family theologically. And, perhaps more significant, we don't get to choose what the latest big question is going to be. Regardless of what we want to talk about, right now sexuality is a big issue for both church and culture.
It was about 10 'til 1 by the time the panel finished that set of questions, and time for students to get on to class. But while we didn't get to any of the other questions, the Diversity Committee asked for the panelists' e-mail addresses in the hope that perhaps we could continue the discussion in some sort of on-line forum. I hope they can do that.
And a few folks were able to stick around and engage in some one-on-one conversation with a panelist -- so it was getting close to 3 o'clock by the time I started walking to my car.
One final reflection. In her 5 minute opening, Michelle Miller was discussing the several different ministries she'd served since being ordained, raising up to the seminarians that some of them were to places that, had it been just up to her, she never would have selected -- but each of them had turned out to be a call or an interim that had been, for her, a place of important and good ministry. The "lesson" that she was illustrating is an important one to raise: God may call us to go where we least expect or desire to go. Be open to that.
But two of her examples saddened me -- though I hasten to add that my disappointment was not so much in her, as it was yet another confirmation of the state of too much of the ELCA's leadership over many years. The first was an interim pastorate that the then-Bishop of the Metro Chicago Synod wanted her to serve, a parish in a town well-known nationally for being a home to conservative evangelicalism -- where he specifically wanted her, a (then-closeted) lesbian in a committed relationship, to lead the congregation through its discernment in becoming a "Reconciling in Christ" congregation. The second was her current call, where the parish told the Bishop that they were interested only in calling a gay or lesbian pastor. A request he granted by offering them several choices to consider. Long before Vision and Expectations was to be amended.
And yet to listen to him in person or at the recent ELCA Town Hall forums, Presiding Bishop Hanson seems genuinely baffled that traditionalists don't seem to trust the word of our church's leaders.
So I really need to begin this reflection by noting the gracious hospitality I received from those of the LSTC community -- students, faculty, and staff -- that I encountered today. And also the many expressions of thankfulness for my participation in the panel, both in taking the time to drive up to Chicago from Peoria (it was 175 miles each way from Zion to LSTC) and for presenting my perspective as I did.
The flier described the discussion, "Hear experienced Church Leaders give real-life examples of congregational responses to the ELCA Sexuality statement." I'd say that, at best, we barely scratched the surface of that description -- though my experience has been that is often the case of panel discussions. The format probably didn't help: the first half-hour was spent eating lunch, though it helped the panelists to get to know each other a bit and discover some other connections we had.
Then came the formal introductions of the topic and the panelists, followed by our "5 minute" responses to the question and Prof. Perry's response to our comments. I put "5 minutes" in quotes because, while one seminarian was the official timekeeper, each of us had really only gotten started at that point.
Bishop Freiheit started, and he was followed by the Pastor Miller. I was third and began my comments much as they did -- describing how the general topic of the ELCA's journeys on human sexuality had affected our own ministries. As I often do, I began with a little farewell dinner put on by a friend as I was leaving for PLTS in June of 1988. This is to elicit recollections of the "PLTS Three," who had been approved for ordination in the closing days of the LCA and ALC, then with the beginning of the ELCA in January 1988 announced that they were gay men who either were, or desired to be, in a same-sex relationship. The reaction in much of the "new church" was fierce.
And my dinner companions, one of whom had been confirmed with one of the Three, asked me how this controversy would affect me. "Not at all," I replied. Yet nearly 22 years later, it's been THE one constant topic either at the forefront, or just under the surface, in everything the ELCA has done.
Well, it wasn't a topic in my interviews before being called to Zion. That was something that would be very different for those about to be available for a first call: they would be asked what the thought, believed, and intended to teach about sexuality -- and other theological matters. And they may be asked in a context of suspicion. I didn't have to deal with that in 1992, as much I yearned that theology might be a part of the interview process. I didn't have to deal with human sexuality, until I was finally able to organize my first adult study class as their pastor -- on the controversial First Draft of a proposed sexuality statement (released in Fall 1993).
Now I'm not sure what the organizers, panelists, or audience was expecting from me, but the members of the LSTC Diversity Committee knew -- partly because one of its members had interned in Central/Southern Illinois, heard me speak at the Synod Assembly, and knew of my association with Lutheran CORE -- that I have a Traditionalist perspective, as did the panelists and a couple of seminarians who've seen some of my writing via ALPB's Forum Letter or its online forum.
Whatever the rest of community was expecting, they definitely noticed when I then stated not only my opposition to the CWA's actions, but that I was in "profound" disagreement with my own Bishop -- sitting maybe 4 feet to my right -- and that we had been living in that disagreement for several years.
At that point I tried to describe some of the conflicts and divisions that ELCA congregations and pastor were facing since last summer -- noting that those opposed to the CWA's actions often were responding having participated in the ELCA's sexuality studies, even to the point of being sick of the topic, and were responding not out of ignorance and fear, but theological conviction -- and pointing to the negative effects when a congregation and pastor were of different minds on either the new statement, or (even when in agreement there) on remaining associated with the ELCA.
You'd guess rightly that I'd used up my 5 minutes by then. By the time Pastor Christensen and Prof. Perry concluded, it was past 12:30. Time for audience questions.
Each person had been given a 3x5 card to submit (anonymously) a question, and the cards had been placed in a basket. Another student member of the Diversity Committee had then grouped the questions into similar subjects.
The first set of questions were along the lines of: Is sexuality really the big issue we should be talking about? Isn't this distracting us from real ministry? Or is the controversy over gays in the ministry only one source of tension in the church, with hemeneutical questions about the Bible actually being more important? And how can we deal with people who say "I have no real problem with gay people," but follow that with homophobic actions (or inactions).
My response was that today's controversy was a reflection of sexualization of so much of our culture, not just church discussion, and our unwillingness as the church to deal with issues of marriage and family theologically. And, perhaps more significant, we don't get to choose what the latest big question is going to be. Regardless of what we want to talk about, right now sexuality is a big issue for both church and culture.
It was about 10 'til 1 by the time the panel finished that set of questions, and time for students to get on to class. But while we didn't get to any of the other questions, the Diversity Committee asked for the panelists' e-mail addresses in the hope that perhaps we could continue the discussion in some sort of on-line forum. I hope they can do that.
And a few folks were able to stick around and engage in some one-on-one conversation with a panelist -- so it was getting close to 3 o'clock by the time I started walking to my car.
One final reflection. In her 5 minute opening, Michelle Miller was discussing the several different ministries she'd served since being ordained, raising up to the seminarians that some of them were to places that, had it been just up to her, she never would have selected -- but each of them had turned out to be a call or an interim that had been, for her, a place of important and good ministry. The "lesson" that she was illustrating is an important one to raise: God may call us to go where we least expect or desire to go. Be open to that.
But two of her examples saddened me -- though I hasten to add that my disappointment was not so much in her, as it was yet another confirmation of the state of too much of the ELCA's leadership over many years. The first was an interim pastorate that the then-Bishop of the Metro Chicago Synod wanted her to serve, a parish in a town well-known nationally for being a home to conservative evangelicalism -- where he specifically wanted her, a (then-closeted) lesbian in a committed relationship, to lead the congregation through its discernment in becoming a "Reconciling in Christ" congregation. The second was her current call, where the parish told the Bishop that they were interested only in calling a gay or lesbian pastor. A request he granted by offering them several choices to consider. Long before Vision and Expectations was to be amended.
And yet to listen to him in person or at the recent ELCA Town Hall forums, Presiding Bishop Hanson seems genuinely baffled that traditionalists don't seem to trust the word of our church's leaders.
Wednesday, March 10, 2010
Well, I Opened My Big Mouth...
I'm told this has been posted at the Lutheran School of Theology at Chicago:
THE DIVERSITY COMMITTEE PRESENTS:
ELCA Congregations and the Sexuality Statement
Thursday, March 11, 2010
11:30AM – 12:50PM
Room 350 – LUNCH Provided!
HEAR experienced Church Leaders give real-life examples of congregational responses to the ELCA Sexuality statement
DISCOVER what first call students need to know about Congregations in the ELCA
* Panelists:
Sponsored by Thrivent Financial for Lutherans and the Multicultural center of LSTC
Each of the panelists has been given 5 minutes to respond to this focus question: In light of your experience, what do first call LSTC students need to know about congregations in the ELCA? Then comes questions to us all from the LSTC community. This'll be interesting.
ELCA Congregations and the Sexuality Statement
Thursday, March 11, 2010
11:30AM – 12:50PM
Room 350 – LUNCH Provided!
HEAR experienced Church Leaders give real-life examples of congregational responses to the ELCA Sexuality statement
DISCOVER what first call students need to know about Congregations in the ELCA
* Panelists:
- Rev. Warren Freiheit – Bishop, Central/Southern Illinois Synod
- Rev. Steven Tibbetts – Zion Evangelical Lutheran Church, Peoria, IL
- Rev. Michelle Miller - Pastor at Holy Trinity Lutheran Church, Chicago
- Rev. Erik Christensen co-chair of Extraordinary Lutheran Ministries (www.elm.org) and pastor at St. Luke's Lutheran Church, Chicago
- Dr. Richard Perry - LSTC – Ethicist
Each of the panelists has been given 5 minutes to respond to this focus question: In light of your experience, what do first call LSTC students need to know about congregations in the ELCA? Then comes questions to us all from the LSTC community. This'll be interesting.
Saturday, October 24, 2009
An ELCA Confessional Crisis?
The adoption of Human Sexuality: Gift and Trust (the link here is to a pdf file of the Statement as it was adopted by the ELCA Churchwide Assembly, and not the version linked at this moment on the ELCA web page entitled "Adopted Social Statement") has precipitated a confessional crisis in our church, if my brother in the Holy Ministry and friend, Pastor Marshall Hahn, STS, is correct. I first saw this on ALPB Forum Online, but he also presented it at the most recent gathering of Call to Faithfulness, the Northeast Iowa Synod reform movement.
I think he's correct. But I'm wondering if the ELCA is capable of recognizing the possibility of a confessional crisis. Read it and weep.
The decisions surrounding human sexuality made at the 2009 Churchwide Assembly have created a confessional crisis within the ELCA. The controversy over these decisions is not simply a disagreement over a social issue concerning how to treat homosexual relations in the church. These decisions touch upon the issues of the authority of Scripture and the role of the Lutheran Confessions in the life of the church.
The crisis these decisions have created can be shown by examining two crucial passages from the Social Statement, Human Sexuality: Gift and Trust. In Part IV (lines 620 - 628 in the Pre-Assembly Report) this statement reads:
These actions are contrary to and done in violation of the ELCA Confession of Faith, which reads, in part:
Given the confessional and constitutional commitment of the ELCA to the Holy Scriptures and the Lutheran Confessions noted above, once a position is identified as that of the Confessions and the Christian tradition based on Scripture, there should be only two options for a Social Statement of the ELCA:
Such actions are in violation of our Confession of Faith. The ELCA ought to repent of these actions, take steps to render them ineffectual, and overturn them at the first opportunity. The synods and congregations of the ELCA ought to reject these actions and refuse to abide by them on the basis of our own and identical Confession of Faith. Each pastor in the ELCA ought to oppose these actions and decisions on the basis of the vows taken at ordination to teach and preach in accordance with the Holy Scriptures and in light of the Lutheran Confessions.
If such actions are not taken, it leaves those who oppose the actions of the Churchwide Assembly in a state of confessional resistance to the ELCA, and possibly to the synods of which they are members. Appeals to unity and "churchmanship" are of secondary importance to the confessional commitment which undergirds this opposition. Even if one were to make a compelling argument from Scripture and the Confessions in support of the changes in ministry policies at this point, such an argument must also acknowledge and repent of the violation of our Confession of Faith which the actions of the 2009 Churchwide Assembly have committed. If these actions are allowed to stand, it will undermine the very Confession of Faith by which we are united.
Pastor Marshall Hahn
St. Olaf Lutheran Parish - Marion & Norway Lutheran Churches
St. Olaf, Iowa
NE Iowa Synod, ELCA
I think he's correct. But I'm wondering if the ELCA is capable of recognizing the possibility of a confessional crisis. Read it and weep.
The Confessional Crisis Created by the Decisions of the 2009 ELCA Churchwide Assembly
The decisions surrounding human sexuality made at the 2009 Churchwide Assembly have created a confessional crisis within the ELCA. The controversy over these decisions is not simply a disagreement over a social issue concerning how to treat homosexual relations in the church. These decisions touch upon the issues of the authority of Scripture and the role of the Lutheran Confessions in the life of the church.
The crisis these decisions have created can be shown by examining two crucial passages from the Social Statement, Human Sexuality: Gift and Trust. In Part IV (lines 620 - 628 in the Pre-Assembly Report) this statement reads:
The historic Christian tradition and the Lutheran Confessions have recognized marriage as a covenant between a man and a woman, reflecting Mark 10: 6-9: "But from the beginning of creation, God made them male and female. For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh. So they are no longer two, but one flesh. Therefore what God has joined together, let no one put asunder." (Jesus here recalls Genesis 1:27; 2:23-24.)On the next page of the statement, (lines 740 - 744, as amended) it reads:
Recognizing that this conclusion differs from the historic Christian tradition and the Lutheran Confessions, some people, though not all, in this church and within the larger Christian community, conclude that marriage is also the appropriate term to use in describing similar benefits, protection, and support for same-gender couples entering into lifelong monogamous relationships.The statement then goes on to treat these two positions and the variants within them as of equal validity, on the basis of the "conscience-bound beliefs" of those who hold them (lines 809 - 868). Moreover, it is on this same basis of the "conscience-bound lack of consensus in this church" (lines 452 - 453 of the Report and Recommendation on Ministry Policies) that the resolutions on ministry policies were recommended and adopted.
These actions are contrary to and done in violation of the ELCA Confession of Faith, which reads, in part:
Chapter 2The Social Statement and the Report and Recommendation on Ministry Policies present the two positions mentioned above as of equal validity in the church, even though it is admitted that the first position - namely, that marriage is a covenant between a man and a woman - is the position supported by Christian tradition, the Lutheran Confessions, and Scripture; and that the second position - namely, that marriage is also the appropriate term to use in describing similar benefits, protection, and support for same-gender couples entering into lifelong monogamous relationships - differs from the historic Christian tradition and the Lutheran Confessions.
CONFESSION OF FAITH
.
.
2.03 This church accepts the canonical Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments as the inspired Word of God and the authoritative source and norm or its proclamation, faith, and life.
2.04 This church accepts the Apostles', Nicene, and Athanasian Creeds as true declarations of the faith of this church.
2.05 This church accepts the Unaltered Augsburg Confession as a true witness to the Gospel, acknowledges as one with it in faith and doctrine all churches that likewise accept the teachings of the Unaltered Augsburg Confession.
2.06 This church accepts the other confessional writings in the Book of Concord, namely, the Apology of the Augsburg Confession, the Smalcald Articles and the Treatise, the Small Catechism, the Large Catechism, and the Formula of Concord, as further valid interpretations of the faith of the Church.
Given the confessional and constitutional commitment of the ELCA to the Holy Scriptures and the Lutheran Confessions noted above, once a position is identified as that of the Confessions and the Christian tradition based on Scripture, there should be only two options for a Social Statement of the ELCA:
- State that such is the position of the ELCA, based on our Confession of Faith, which commits us to the authority of the Holy Scriptures and the witness of the Lutheran Confessions; or,
- Demonstrate, by an appeal to Holy Scripture and the Lutheran Confessions and with the aid of sound reason, that such a position ought to be abandoned or, at the least, present evidence enough to raise serious questions about that position.
- Reject such a position on the basis of our Confession of Faith, which commits us to following the witness of the Lutheran Confessions; or,
- Demonstrate, by an appeal to Holy Scripture and the Lutheran Confessions and with the aid of sound reason, that such a position ought to be adopted or, at the least, present evidence enough to argue that it ought to be considered a valid position within the Lutheran Church.
Such actions are in violation of our Confession of Faith. The ELCA ought to repent of these actions, take steps to render them ineffectual, and overturn them at the first opportunity. The synods and congregations of the ELCA ought to reject these actions and refuse to abide by them on the basis of our own and identical Confession of Faith. Each pastor in the ELCA ought to oppose these actions and decisions on the basis of the vows taken at ordination to teach and preach in accordance with the Holy Scriptures and in light of the Lutheran Confessions.
If such actions are not taken, it leaves those who oppose the actions of the Churchwide Assembly in a state of confessional resistance to the ELCA, and possibly to the synods of which they are members. Appeals to unity and "churchmanship" are of secondary importance to the confessional commitment which undergirds this opposition. Even if one were to make a compelling argument from Scripture and the Confessions in support of the changes in ministry policies at this point, such an argument must also acknowledge and repent of the violation of our Confession of Faith which the actions of the 2009 Churchwide Assembly have committed. If these actions are allowed to stand, it will undermine the very Confession of Faith by which we are united.
Pastor Marshall Hahn
St. Olaf Lutheran Parish - Marion & Norway Lutheran Churches
St. Olaf, Iowa
NE Iowa Synod, ELCA
Friday, September 11, 2009
R. R. Reno: "Marriage, Morality, and Culture"
The always thoughtful lay theologian Rusty Reno posted the following on Wednesday over at First Things: On the Square.
The tide is going out. Words like fornication have a musty, antiquated ring. Unwed mothers no longer suffer social stigma. Divorce has become common. The large, complicated human reality of sexual desire, mating, romance, and childrearing no longer finds itself ruled by elaborate and widely accepted social norms. And now, of course, we are in the midst of a drive toward same-sex marriage.
I’m not surprised by the latest development. In my years as an Episcopalian, I came to see that homosexuality plays in important role in the much larger phenomenon of changed social mores in the area of sex, family, and marriage. The image of two men or two women kissing gives a dramatic immediacy to the many aspects of sexual revolution: real people, genuinely felt desires, new possibilities, the courage to transgress old norms, and the hope for the lasting happiness based on love’s unifying power.
In other words, homosexuality richly suggests freedom from an old, restrictive moral order, freedom from the inhibiting power of shame, freedom from the burdens of judgment, censure, and condemnation. And it evokes the promise of existential freedom, the inner release from inhibition and fear of social censure.
The allure of existential freedom is not new. In 1859, John Stuart Mill published On Liberty, an argument for expanding the scope of human freedom beyond the realm of the political narrowly understood. In order to undertake what Mill famously called “experiments in living,” we need to be able to escape from “the tyranny of the prevailing opinion and feeling.”
Mill was correct. We are social animals. Hardwired to want to fit in, all of us feel the soft coercion of cultural norms. As a result, a deep freedom to live as we please requires more than political rights. We need something like “social rights” that give us leverage over and against inherited culture.
To a very great extent, the cultural history of the twentieth century can be understood as the gradual acceptance of “social rights.” In America, a long dominant Protestant and bourgeois ethos eroded—and then in the 1960s collapsed. In a short decade, divorce went from something dangerously shameful to socially acceptable. Premarital sex and cohabitation followed the same trajectory. Acceptance of out-of-wedlock childbearing came more slowly, as did same-sex relationships. But the end result is now the same. Gay couples now have a social right to live their personal lives free from social censure.
Our courts tend to reflect social reality. In 1965, the Supreme Court was faced with a case (Griswold v. Connecticut) that challenged a law against contraceptives. In its majority decision, the Court identified a right to privacy. As a legal right narrowly understood, it means that the government has no business policing bedrooms. However, it has become more expansive, most notoriously to include right to abortion. Today, the right to privacy pretty much accords with Mill’s notion of freedom from “prevailing opinion and feeling.” It amounts to a right to conduct one’s personal life as one wishes, unhindered by other people’s ideas of right and wrong.
This expansive legal right has been reinforced by a new social consensus. Today, it is singularly gauche to announce that you regard someone’s marital, sexual, or parental choices to be “wrong” or “immoral.” Indeed, the very fact that I put scare quotes around “wrong” and “immoral” is telling. We are now heavily socialized to be tolerant and non-judgmental—with the exception, of course, of refusing to tolerate the intolerant and quick to judge the judgmental. But there is no contradiction. Both the tolerance and intolerance serve to provide and reinforce the now dominant culture, one that believes we should be able to live as we wish.
The controversial question of same-sex marriage is so interesting and important because it marks decisive new phase in our cultural drive toward an every deeper freedom to live as one pleases. Freedom from censure is no longer sufficient. Today, we see an emerging right to cultural approval and endorsement.
Some months ago, the Supreme Court of Connecticut handed down a decision that required the state legislature to make provisions for same sex marriage. The most interesting part of the opinion concerns the alternative of civil unions. As the Court recognizes, the artifice of “civil union” is a bloodless affair designed to remove the legal disadvantages that adhere to the private choices of same-sex lovers: matters of inheritance, health coverage, and so forth. The Connecticut judges deemed civil unions separate but unequal, and their reasoning is telling. Civil unions are unsatisfactory, because they lack the “transcendent historical, cultural, and social significance” of traditional marriage.
Gays and lesbians, by this way of thinking, have a right to a full range of cultural resources for defining their lives together, including the rich symbolic legacy of traditional norms for marriage. Privacy is not enough. It is unfair to deny public endorsement and quasi-sacred sanction to personal choices.
Therein lies the final act of the sexual revolution that has defined Western culture for the last fifty years. A traditional culture constrains and limits desire, especially the volatile complexities of sexual desire. The reasoning behind the drive toward same-sex marriage reverses the direction of authority. Our secular elite culture believes that desires—as long as they do not directly harm others—should command and shape culture. We should be able to make of marriage what we wish.
Result: the emerging postmodern Empire of Desire. In the past, the instruments of political power (e.g., the right to privacy) have been used to tear down official forms of limitation and censure so that desires can find their satisfactions. The soft power of culture has followed the same path. Our present and widespread social censure of moral censure inculcates and reinforces a non-judgmental ethos. Now we are embarking on a much more aggressive program. Everybody should have access to the cultural symbols of affirmation. Everybody has a right to feel normal.
This right to normalcy is very different from the right to privacy. Indeed, they can seem antithetical, since the former requires mobilizing the power of the state to redesign social institutions that we all must live with, while the later is focused on minimizing the role of government in people’s personal lives. Yet I think the right to normalcy follows from the logic of John Stuart Mill’s insights.
As social animals we don’t just want to be free from censure. We are not rugged individualists. We want to feel like we are part of the pack, and as everybody knows, feeling marginal can be very painful, even if everybody is smiling and nodding and uttering reassuring platitudes of acceptance. Therefore, if we really believe that human beings are most happy when they design their own lives, then eventually we will come around to the view that culture as a whole should be turned over to serve our desires. Moral traditions must be available for personal tailoring.
Thus, whatever one thinks of homosexuality, one can see that the judges in Connecticut framed the issue clearly. Same-sex marriage is about achieving a social or cultural equality for everyone, regardless of their experiments in living. It’s about our need to feel normal, and it’s about giving everybody access to institutions that confer feelings of normalcy and legitimacy. In the Empire of Desire, everybody gets ceremonies and ribbons and prizes and their fifteen minutes of fame.
But we cannot turn culture into the equivalent of a public access channel. As Aristotle explained in his account of moral formation and human flourishing, culture humanizes us by demanding our obedience. Happiness does not come from living according to your desires. It comes from desiring to live according to demanding and disciplining social norms that transcend individual desires.
The judges in Connecticut and elsewhere, as well as the larger same-sex marriage movement, are entertaining a fantasy. It is sociologically incoherent to imagine that we can both radically redefine marriage and transfer its “transcendent, cultural, and social significance” to same-sex couples, as if the former does not alter and undermine the later.
We cannot make culture serve our desires—or our ideals for that matter. We cannot turn traditional modes of moral discipline such as marriage into a ready resource for conferring feelings of normalcy or equality. To consciously modify the moral norms of moral institutions such as marriage turns them into something else: existential decoration, imaginary seriousness, or an engineered garment of meaning that cannot help but feel plastic and artificial. A bespoke “transcendent, cultural, and social significance” is ephemeral and short lived.
R.R. Reno is features editor of First Things and professor of theology at Creighton University.
Marriage, Morality, and Culture
R. R. RenoThe tide is going out. Words like fornication have a musty, antiquated ring. Unwed mothers no longer suffer social stigma. Divorce has become common. The large, complicated human reality of sexual desire, mating, romance, and childrearing no longer finds itself ruled by elaborate and widely accepted social norms. And now, of course, we are in the midst of a drive toward same-sex marriage.
I’m not surprised by the latest development. In my years as an Episcopalian, I came to see that homosexuality plays in important role in the much larger phenomenon of changed social mores in the area of sex, family, and marriage. The image of two men or two women kissing gives a dramatic immediacy to the many aspects of sexual revolution: real people, genuinely felt desires, new possibilities, the courage to transgress old norms, and the hope for the lasting happiness based on love’s unifying power.
In other words, homosexuality richly suggests freedom from an old, restrictive moral order, freedom from the inhibiting power of shame, freedom from the burdens of judgment, censure, and condemnation. And it evokes the promise of existential freedom, the inner release from inhibition and fear of social censure.
The allure of existential freedom is not new. In 1859, John Stuart Mill published On Liberty, an argument for expanding the scope of human freedom beyond the realm of the political narrowly understood. In order to undertake what Mill famously called “experiments in living,” we need to be able to escape from “the tyranny of the prevailing opinion and feeling.”
Mill was correct. We are social animals. Hardwired to want to fit in, all of us feel the soft coercion of cultural norms. As a result, a deep freedom to live as we please requires more than political rights. We need something like “social rights” that give us leverage over and against inherited culture.
To a very great extent, the cultural history of the twentieth century can be understood as the gradual acceptance of “social rights.” In America, a long dominant Protestant and bourgeois ethos eroded—and then in the 1960s collapsed. In a short decade, divorce went from something dangerously shameful to socially acceptable. Premarital sex and cohabitation followed the same trajectory. Acceptance of out-of-wedlock childbearing came more slowly, as did same-sex relationships. But the end result is now the same. Gay couples now have a social right to live their personal lives free from social censure.
Our courts tend to reflect social reality. In 1965, the Supreme Court was faced with a case (Griswold v. Connecticut) that challenged a law against contraceptives. In its majority decision, the Court identified a right to privacy. As a legal right narrowly understood, it means that the government has no business policing bedrooms. However, it has become more expansive, most notoriously to include right to abortion. Today, the right to privacy pretty much accords with Mill’s notion of freedom from “prevailing opinion and feeling.” It amounts to a right to conduct one’s personal life as one wishes, unhindered by other people’s ideas of right and wrong.
This expansive legal right has been reinforced by a new social consensus. Today, it is singularly gauche to announce that you regard someone’s marital, sexual, or parental choices to be “wrong” or “immoral.” Indeed, the very fact that I put scare quotes around “wrong” and “immoral” is telling. We are now heavily socialized to be tolerant and non-judgmental—with the exception, of course, of refusing to tolerate the intolerant and quick to judge the judgmental. But there is no contradiction. Both the tolerance and intolerance serve to provide and reinforce the now dominant culture, one that believes we should be able to live as we wish.
The controversial question of same-sex marriage is so interesting and important because it marks decisive new phase in our cultural drive toward an every deeper freedom to live as one pleases. Freedom from censure is no longer sufficient. Today, we see an emerging right to cultural approval and endorsement.
Some months ago, the Supreme Court of Connecticut handed down a decision that required the state legislature to make provisions for same sex marriage. The most interesting part of the opinion concerns the alternative of civil unions. As the Court recognizes, the artifice of “civil union” is a bloodless affair designed to remove the legal disadvantages that adhere to the private choices of same-sex lovers: matters of inheritance, health coverage, and so forth. The Connecticut judges deemed civil unions separate but unequal, and their reasoning is telling. Civil unions are unsatisfactory, because they lack the “transcendent historical, cultural, and social significance” of traditional marriage.
Gays and lesbians, by this way of thinking, have a right to a full range of cultural resources for defining their lives together, including the rich symbolic legacy of traditional norms for marriage. Privacy is not enough. It is unfair to deny public endorsement and quasi-sacred sanction to personal choices.
Therein lies the final act of the sexual revolution that has defined Western culture for the last fifty years. A traditional culture constrains and limits desire, especially the volatile complexities of sexual desire. The reasoning behind the drive toward same-sex marriage reverses the direction of authority. Our secular elite culture believes that desires—as long as they do not directly harm others—should command and shape culture. We should be able to make of marriage what we wish.
Result: the emerging postmodern Empire of Desire. In the past, the instruments of political power (e.g., the right to privacy) have been used to tear down official forms of limitation and censure so that desires can find their satisfactions. The soft power of culture has followed the same path. Our present and widespread social censure of moral censure inculcates and reinforces a non-judgmental ethos. Now we are embarking on a much more aggressive program. Everybody should have access to the cultural symbols of affirmation. Everybody has a right to feel normal.
This right to normalcy is very different from the right to privacy. Indeed, they can seem antithetical, since the former requires mobilizing the power of the state to redesign social institutions that we all must live with, while the later is focused on minimizing the role of government in people’s personal lives. Yet I think the right to normalcy follows from the logic of John Stuart Mill’s insights.
As social animals we don’t just want to be free from censure. We are not rugged individualists. We want to feel like we are part of the pack, and as everybody knows, feeling marginal can be very painful, even if everybody is smiling and nodding and uttering reassuring platitudes of acceptance. Therefore, if we really believe that human beings are most happy when they design their own lives, then eventually we will come around to the view that culture as a whole should be turned over to serve our desires. Moral traditions must be available for personal tailoring.
Thus, whatever one thinks of homosexuality, one can see that the judges in Connecticut framed the issue clearly. Same-sex marriage is about achieving a social or cultural equality for everyone, regardless of their experiments in living. It’s about our need to feel normal, and it’s about giving everybody access to institutions that confer feelings of normalcy and legitimacy. In the Empire of Desire, everybody gets ceremonies and ribbons and prizes and their fifteen minutes of fame.
But we cannot turn culture into the equivalent of a public access channel. As Aristotle explained in his account of moral formation and human flourishing, culture humanizes us by demanding our obedience. Happiness does not come from living according to your desires. It comes from desiring to live according to demanding and disciplining social norms that transcend individual desires.
The judges in Connecticut and elsewhere, as well as the larger same-sex marriage movement, are entertaining a fantasy. It is sociologically incoherent to imagine that we can both radically redefine marriage and transfer its “transcendent, cultural, and social significance” to same-sex couples, as if the former does not alter and undermine the later.
We cannot make culture serve our desires—or our ideals for that matter. We cannot turn traditional modes of moral discipline such as marriage into a ready resource for conferring feelings of normalcy or equality. To consciously modify the moral norms of moral institutions such as marriage turns them into something else: existential decoration, imaginary seriousness, or an engineered garment of meaning that cannot help but feel plastic and artificial. A bespoke “transcendent, cultural, and social significance” is ephemeral and short lived.
R.R. Reno is features editor of First Things and professor of theology at Creighton University.
Tuesday, August 25, 2009
A Message to My Flock
The following was read to the congregation assembled at Zion Evangelical Lutheran Church of Peoria near the end of the worship service there this last Sunday morning:
To the Church at Zion,
From Steven, your Pastor.
My dear brothers and sisters in Christ, peace and all good!
I have been told that, in reports on the ELCA Churchwide Assembly's actions this past Friday, Headline News included a clear shot focussed on me sitting in the Congregational Observer's section. What I do not know, apart from the local headlines and conversations in the streets, is the content of reports you may have seen or heard, especially in Peoria.
In normal circumstances I would have waited until I could speak with you in person about what happened at this Assembly. But I think it important that, since some of you have likely heard in one way or another of the most controversial votes in Minneapolis, you also hear something of my initial response to them.
There have been, of course, many important matters to deal with. And a Churchwide Assembly is always a joyous opportunity for the reunion of friends and colleagues from across the Church. In some respects I have enjoyed this week greatly.
However, on Wednesday the Assembly approved, by exactly the 2/3rds vote required, a seriously flawed Social Statement on Human Sexuality. And by Friday evening, the Assembly had by very strong majorities approved new policies to permit, as the teaching and practice of the ELCA and its congregations, the blessing of committed homosexual unions and removed the impediments to those in such unions from serving in the ELCA as Pastors and rostered lay ministers.
By these actions, the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America's teaching and practice on marriage, family, and sexuality has not only departed from the faith and teaching of the Holy Scriptures and nearly 2000 years of Christian teaching, it is proclaiming what the Apostle Paul calls "another gospel."
One of the things that I was taught from a young age and have grown to experience more and more over the years is that a Lutheran pastor relates to the denomination differently than the laity and congregations. When I was ordained, the ELCA became my church. On Friday afternoon, I lost my church.
I intend to remain your pastor. I intend to remain a pastor in the ELCA and in our Central/Southern Illinois Synod, to be a voice -- with other pastors and laity throughout the ELCA -- for the ELCA's repentance and restoration into the Faith. Many of you already know that I have been part of groups of pastors and others, in our Synod and across the ELCA, that have been working for this already. These efforts will continue, beginning with a national gathering near Indianapolis on September 25-26.
While some pastors and congregations have already left the ELCA and more will, including several in our own Synod, I do not believe it would be wise for Zion to start thinking about this. I have not given up completely on the ELCA or the faithfulness of its people.
Furthermore Zion's mission and ministry from the South Side, to the prisons, and beyond are closely linked with sister ELCA congregations. We do not need to immediately change those links. We have time to figure out how to best respond to the Churchwide Assembly's actions.
Please pray for me. Please pray for our Bishop Warren Freiheit and the Pastors and leaders of our Synod. Please pray for ELCA Presiding Bishop Mark Hanson and all in the ELCA in these dark days for our church.
And do not forget that even in this, our Lord is a gracious God. In today's Gospel St. Peter says what we sing every Sunday: "Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life." That proclamation will continue for Zion as long as we are here. For that, praise the Lord.
In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.
To the Church at Zion,
From Steven, your Pastor.
My dear brothers and sisters in Christ, peace and all good!
I have been told that, in reports on the ELCA Churchwide Assembly's actions this past Friday, Headline News included a clear shot focussed on me sitting in the Congregational Observer's section. What I do not know, apart from the local headlines and conversations in the streets, is the content of reports you may have seen or heard, especially in Peoria.
In normal circumstances I would have waited until I could speak with you in person about what happened at this Assembly. But I think it important that, since some of you have likely heard in one way or another of the most controversial votes in Minneapolis, you also hear something of my initial response to them.
There have been, of course, many important matters to deal with. And a Churchwide Assembly is always a joyous opportunity for the reunion of friends and colleagues from across the Church. In some respects I have enjoyed this week greatly.
However, on Wednesday the Assembly approved, by exactly the 2/3rds vote required, a seriously flawed Social Statement on Human Sexuality. And by Friday evening, the Assembly had by very strong majorities approved new policies to permit, as the teaching and practice of the ELCA and its congregations, the blessing of committed homosexual unions and removed the impediments to those in such unions from serving in the ELCA as Pastors and rostered lay ministers.
By these actions, the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America's teaching and practice on marriage, family, and sexuality has not only departed from the faith and teaching of the Holy Scriptures and nearly 2000 years of Christian teaching, it is proclaiming what the Apostle Paul calls "another gospel."
One of the things that I was taught from a young age and have grown to experience more and more over the years is that a Lutheran pastor relates to the denomination differently than the laity and congregations. When I was ordained, the ELCA became my church. On Friday afternoon, I lost my church.
I intend to remain your pastor. I intend to remain a pastor in the ELCA and in our Central/Southern Illinois Synod, to be a voice -- with other pastors and laity throughout the ELCA -- for the ELCA's repentance and restoration into the Faith. Many of you already know that I have been part of groups of pastors and others, in our Synod and across the ELCA, that have been working for this already. These efforts will continue, beginning with a national gathering near Indianapolis on September 25-26.
While some pastors and congregations have already left the ELCA and more will, including several in our own Synod, I do not believe it would be wise for Zion to start thinking about this. I have not given up completely on the ELCA or the faithfulness of its people.
Furthermore Zion's mission and ministry from the South Side, to the prisons, and beyond are closely linked with sister ELCA congregations. We do not need to immediately change those links. We have time to figure out how to best respond to the Churchwide Assembly's actions.
Please pray for me. Please pray for our Bishop Warren Freiheit and the Pastors and leaders of our Synod. Please pray for ELCA Presiding Bishop Mark Hanson and all in the ELCA in these dark days for our church.
And do not forget that even in this, our Lord is a gracious God. In today's Gospel St. Peter says what we sing every Sunday: "Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life." That proclamation will continue for Zion as long as we are here. For that, praise the Lord.
In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.
Wednesday, August 19, 2009
Please Pray for Us
Greetings from the ELCA Churchwide Assembly in Minneapolis. This afternoon the voting members will vote on the proposed Social Statement on Human Sexuality. It is not the most contentious vote -- that will be Friday morning when the Recommendations on Ministry are brought to the floor. But there has already been plenty of discussion -- on the floor, in hearings, and in more private conversations -- on the Statement and the Recommendations.
We are much as we were two years ago -- see the story behind this photo here and here -- except we are reaching "decision time." The stakes are high for people of conscience -- both traditionalists on matters of sexuality (such as myself, those associated with Lutheran CORE, many of those who participate or lurk on ALPB Forum Online, etc.) and those who would revise the church's teaching (such as Goodsoil and much of the ELCA's Churchwide leadership). The discussion has been respectful and thoughtful, but will be growing more tense. For instance, at this very moment, the new President of the Lutheran Youth Organization has used most of her greeting to the Assembly to put voice of the ELCA's youth fully behind the "full inclusion" of LGBT persons in the church.
You can follow what is happening on the here on the ELCA web site (both live, streaming video and news reports) and also on ALPB Forum Online. Please pray for the Assembly -- voting members, those of us observing, and all the volunteers and staff -- and for our church.
We are much as we were two years ago -- see the story behind this photo here and here -- except we are reaching "decision time." The stakes are high for people of conscience -- both traditionalists on matters of sexuality (such as myself, those associated with Lutheran CORE, many of those who participate or lurk on ALPB Forum Online, etc.) and those who would revise the church's teaching (such as Goodsoil and much of the ELCA's Churchwide leadership). The discussion has been respectful and thoughtful, but will be growing more tense. For instance, at this very moment, the new President of the Lutheran Youth Organization has used most of her greeting to the Assembly to put voice of the ELCA's youth fully behind the "full inclusion" of LGBT persons in the church.You can follow what is happening on the here on the ELCA web site (both live, streaming video and news reports) and also on ALPB Forum Online. Please pray for the Assembly -- voting members, those of us observing, and all the volunteers and staff -- and for our church.
Monday, June 08, 2009
Schifrin: Delight, Design, and Destiny
I don't recall what I was expecting from Amy Schfrin, then the campus pastor (or recently departed campus pastor) at Pacific Lutheran Theological Seminary in Berkeley, when she was announced as a speaker for ALPB's Conference on Sexuality in Kansas City in October 2002. I do know that her Ritualizing Life or Ritualizing Death blew me away -- and you can read it in Christian Sexuality: Normative & Pastoral Principles -- and my response to her opened up some interesting conversations between the two of us since then when we've met on occasion over the years.
The latest issue of Let's Talk, the independent theological journal of the ELCA's Metropolitan Chicago Synod, offers several responses to Human Sexuality: Gift and Trust and Report and Recommendation on Ministry Policies. And once again, Pastor Schifrin blows me away with Delight, Design and Destiny: Toward a Doxological Ethics of Sexuality. Here it is in its entirety.
(From Let's Talk : Pentecost 2009 : Volume 14, Issue 1)
By Amy C. Schifrin
The cosmetic separation of ethics from doxology is a frequent problem when Christians take human response and action as the starting point in determining how they are to live. The proposed ELCA Social Statement, "Human Sexuality: Gift and Trust" is not unusual in this approach, but such a move determines the misguided course of the nature of the "Report and Recommendations on Ministry Policies" that will follow.
The Social Statement asks what can be considered a sort of third-use-of-the-law type of question, "How do we understand human sexuality within the context of Jesus' invitation to love God and love our neighbor?" The 'how' of this question applies to what sort of actions we, as Christians, will take once we understand what Jesus "invites" us to do.
The framing of the question is a thin veneer for its theological underpinnings, for within its introductory statement command is turned to invitation, and obedience into pretense. In a few short moves love will become tolerance, sincerity will replace truth, and the bound conscience will no longer be bound to Holy Scripture but to its own Old Adamic interpretation of human experience apart from the One whose Word speaks us into life.
A prior question to the one proposed in the document might be, "How does God use His creation of sexually differentiated beings — male and female — in service of His own commandments to love Him and to love our neighbor?" If we do not trust that His creation of us as male and female — complementary; other; made for love — is good. . . if we do not trust His design, or that He delights in His design, or that His design is connected to the destiny He intends for His good creation, our questions are rooted in a suspicion that will only lead to our own death.
The social sciences have many things to tell us, but they seek meaning empirically, not doxologically. When it comes to understanding sacramentality, whether it be the sacramentality of the design of God's creation or the sacramentality of word and water, bread and wine, their suspicions leave them bereft. The gifts that come from God's steadfast love direct us to His heart — He who is the author and giver of all life (Gen. 2:7); He who draws all people to Himself (John 12:32); He who is preparing us to meet Him as one prepares a bride to meet her beloved husband (Rev. 19:7).
If the 'experts' in our secular society observe the wanton behavior of people and find it common, or even normative, they are not bound to speak both law and gospel for the sake of their neighbors.[1] The Church, however, the body shaped in the cruciform body of her Lord, is so bound. The Church born in the sacramental love of the Triune God, and which has no life apart from Him is His herald, one which calls all people to worship Him — in Spirit and Truth (John 4:23); with their own bodies as living sacrifices (Romans 12:1); with His law written on their hearts (Jeremiah 31:33); and with His praise on their lips (Psalm 100).
Our consciences are bound here and nowhere else, and as unpopular or counter-cultural as it might be, the triune God — Father, Son, and Holy Spirit — has promised to sustain us until Christ comes again in glory to judge the living and the dead. We are bound to care for our neighbors, and we are called to do so within the sacred frame of God's holy and never-ending love. People may claim in all sincerity to be acting in good conscience, but if their conscience is misinformed, can it be good in the sense that what is good is also what is true?
The elevated value of 'tolerance' that accompanies the ELCA documents with regard to the bound conscience is an attempt to silence what has been passed on as the deposit of faith. Rather, it is the apostolic witness that should be privileged. In saying that we must respect all the voices, the solas of the faith are reduced to one voice among many. The voices that are given equal weight come from those whose interpretation of raw experience apart from the apostolic witness, like all such interpretation, is inevitably self-serving — for the self is, indeed, turned in upon the self.[2]
The social statement and ensuing recommendations ask us to believe that these proposed changes are for the sake of the neighbor. In some way, we and all of our neighbors seek the companionship of human community. In some way, whether appropriately ordered or destructively disordered, all people desire love, touch, a place to rest and comfort. To hold out that they can receive God's intention for us to have such goodness in a same-sex union is the equivalent of false advertising.
We need to distinguish between the need and a distortion of the need. For no matter how much we might pretend that it were not so, the complementarity between the one who cries "this at last is bone of my bone and flesh of my flesh" and the one whose creation was designed for unity with him, can never come to fulfillment or fruition between two members of the same sex. The gift of the fullness of erotic love can be simulated, but like all disordered loving, at the same time that it offers momentary pleasure, it also diminishes who God has intended each one to be.
Neither document examines the multiplicity of reasons or experiences that could lead an individual to come to the self-identification of homosexual. Anything from familial abuse, or the bullying that exacerbates a young person's variations from the media's images of masculinity and femininity, or resentment, or the use of one's body to make a political statement may shape such self-identification. To regularize such an identity (which in its development may be quite fluid) and then bind one to that identity in a relationship blessed by the church is to lock someone into a state that God never intended.
Monogamy and longevity, public accountability and commitment will never turn a same-gendered partner into a sexual other, one whose complementarity allows for the fullness of love written into the creation. Since we are called to care for our neighbor, placing such a barrier to the neighbor's spiritual and relational growth is the opposite of the healing that comes when one is living in the freedom of God's goodness.
While the state may regulate, it is the Church, speaking and acting in trust of the promise of the Triune God that blesses such unions of man and woman. State laws can change with the vote of the people, a bill in a legislature, or a court decision, but the blessing of God comes through faithful apostolic witness, proclaimed in the assembly and enacted in ritual designed to mirror God's intentions.[3]
Marriage rites are not simply about our commitments to each other, but about God's commitment to us. And God in His wisdom uses this union of man and woman as an eschatological sign of how intimate his love is for us — a love stronger than death, for the Bridegroom will love his Bride, the church, eternally.
If same-sex unions are placed on a par with marriage — and they will have to be if the ELCA adopts the structurally flexible option (How can pastors who are homosexual in their self-understanding be in publicly accountable monogamous relationships without such rites?), the significance of a marriage and the marriage rite will be summarily reduced. If one commitment is just as good and right and valid as another, the eschatological sign written deeply into the creation is lost to the church . . . and if lost to the church, where will it be spoken?
This is the place where the egregious nature of the recommendations is exposed. A series of changes to the standards for the life of clergy ("rostered leaders") is proposed with an oft repeated refrain to "find a way" to accomplish the changes, while at the same time there is an explicit restriction against speaking of changes or additions to the rites of the church.
Did the majority of the task force think that there would be any other way for pastoral candidates who are homosexual in their self-understanding (i.e., whose homoerotic affections and inclinations speak more loudly to them than any other voices) to live a "life-long, committed, monogamous, same-gendered relationship" without a public ritual that celebrates, protects and blesses such a union? The reason given[4] that a Rite of Same-Sex blessing is to not be proposed does not ring true, because the changes in the standards would precipitate an official rite in order that there be public and ecclesial accountability.
New worlds are made in ritual enactment. We weren't there when the world was made, we weren't there when the world was made new in the bursting of the tomb, and we may not be there when life on this earth as we know it comes to an end. However, in our ritual life, these events are made ours as we are drawn into the resurrected life of our Lord, He who was there when the waters were formed and who will call our names when crystal fountain flows.
In our ritual, liturgical life we enter into the mystery of His passion. In our liturgical assembly, the life of faith is given us in word and sign, and our maturity in this same faith is also expressed and confirmed in the rites of transition that surround birth, death, and marriage. These rites are epiphanic, that is, through them we at last see what God intends for us to see in faith.
The rite of marriage is an event in which we act out what we believe about our creation, and we discover even more about the One in whom we believe — He who has created us for love. With the eyes of faith, we see why God gave us the sexual differentiation of male and female — we were made to love each other. And now this love will serve as yet another reminder of the all-consuming love that Christ, our Lord, has for His church.[5]
The rites of the church are God's way of giving us a means to live to the praise of His glory. The designing of a rite that binds two people of the same gender together for this life is without this epiphanic dimension, for the binding together of two people of the same gender will leave them with themselves, untransformed.
The Report and Recommendations sets before us two positions, one of continuity and one of change, and it seeks to set these positions before the assembly as equally valid. Here, as it consistently uses the term "same-gender" with regard to particular "orientations" and "relationships," it claims a distinctive identity for those who want the church to approve of their homoerotic desires and inclinations as being natural, right, and fitting.
The social statement has made a clear case for the superiority, appropriateness, and emotional and spiritual health of lifelong, monogamous, committed relationships (which hitherto have been reserved for a male-female relationship) as opposed to transient and/or cohabiting arrangements where the potential for pain is ever immanent. Now the recommendations will use that information as they present the "new" position of affirming life-long, committed, monogamous, same-gendered relationships, because if its good for male-female relationships, how can we deny that it would be good for male-male or female-female relationships, if indeed same-gendered "relationships" are just as pleasing to God?
Without the key piece — i.e., the doxological expression that shapes our faith — one can follow this line of logic all the way up to claiming the church's institution of a Same-Sex Blessing and the ordination of folks who seek life-long, monogamous, same-gendered relationships to be acts of justice, of civil rights; but the ground upon which this argument is built is where the fallacy lies. Males and females were not given the gifts of sexual expression for such homoerotic activity.
The Holy Scriptures have no word of blessing for acts of homoeroticism — regardless of relational contexts, and the church's attempt to sacralize such pairings would work against the health of the neighbor now and for generations to come.[6] Lex supplicandi legem stauat credendi![7] Such 'ecclesiastical' rites would work to change the beliefs all those who participate in them.
Because the proposed social statement starts in the wrong place, the recommendations end in the wrong place, modeling themselves on democratic rather than Biblical justice. True justice and righteousness are rooted in God's steadfast love, so that when our lives reflect His righteousness we are doing what He has made us to do.
So indeed, how does God use His creation of sexually differentiated beings — male and female — in service of His own commandments to love Him and to love our neighbor? Because He has made us in such a way, fitting, complementary, opposite, and paired, He gives us the holy estate of marriage in which lovemaking is an act of faith that He has provided a beloved spouse as a sign of His eternal goodness. For such goodness we give Him praise and from the strength of our homes we work together to care for all in need.
God has made us in such a way that sexual expression and spiritual identity are closely bound, for in His establishment of marriage the nakedness of heart and the nakedness of the body flourish in a covenant of trust and love — and the lovemaking of a husband and wife, with all its joy, delight, tenderness, and passion are among the dearest of His gifts.
For those who receive such a great gift, loving a spouse within God's covenant is both an expression of obedience and a sign to the world of how deeply He loves us all. Trusting that it is He who provided this earthly other for us, trusting that His establishment of marriage for men and women is good, our everyday actions of caring for a spouse become a living doxology, and incarnate ethics of praise.
The Rev. Dr. Amy C. Schifrin
Intentional Interim Pastor, Lower Susquehanna Synod, ELCA
Currently serving Holy Trinity, Hershey, Pennsylvania
- - - - - - - - -
Endnotes
[1] They may use common sense, but they're not even bound to do that.
[2] If this can happen with the sexuality issue, why not with any other issue? In this way the sexuality issue is a symptom that reveals a far greater problem in the ELCA, where popular culture's ways of reading scripture and designing rites become the great shapers of how the Church prays when we gather in Christ's name.
[3] Even in Luther's 1529 "Order of Marriage for Common Pastors" (LW 53:111), vows were exchanged at the church door, but the words and gesture of blessing occurred in front of the altar, where the pastor, with hands raised, spoke the words of Genesis 2:18, 21-24, which then served "as a kind of words of institution for marriage." Philip H. Pfatteicher, Commentary on the Lutheran Book of Worship: Lutheran Liturgy in Its Ecumenical Context (Minneapolis: Augsburg Fortress, 1990), 459.
[4] The Report and Recommendations acknowledges that "this church does not have biblical or theological consensus on the matter," so that at this time, ritual matters will be left to local congregations (lines 319-325). A chaotic proposal at best, idiosyncratic rather than ecclesial, it may mirror the worst of the wider culture's influence on the design of the church's rites for marriage, so that the emphasis of the rite is on the couple's "personality," not on the faithfulness of God.
[5] "Lord Jesus Christ, as you freely give yourself to your bride the Church, grant that the mystery of the union of man and woman in marriage may reveal to the world the self-giving love which you have for your church; and to you with the Father and the Holy Spirit be glory and honor, now and forever. Amen" Post-Communion Prayer for Marriage, LBW, Minister's Desk Edition, 192.
[6] It would also work against the life of the church because how one deals with the issue of blessing the unions of self-identified homosexuals will become the litmus test within the call process.
[7] "The law of prayer determines the law of belief." Prosper of Aquitaine.
- - - - - - - - -
Permission is granted for reprint and distribution of Let’s Talk in part or in its entirety, provided the journal title, issue date, and author(s) are cited on all copies.
The latest issue of Let's Talk, the independent theological journal of the ELCA's Metropolitan Chicago Synod, offers several responses to Human Sexuality: Gift and Trust and Report and Recommendation on Ministry Policies. And once again, Pastor Schifrin blows me away with Delight, Design and Destiny: Toward a Doxological Ethics of Sexuality. Here it is in its entirety.
Delight, Design and Destiny: Toward a Doxological Ethics of Sexuality
A Critique of the ELCA Human Sexuality Statement and the Report and Recommendation on Ministry Policies, 2009(From Let's Talk : Pentecost 2009 : Volume 14, Issue 1)
By Amy C. Schifrin
The cosmetic separation of ethics from doxology is a frequent problem when Christians take human response and action as the starting point in determining how they are to live. The proposed ELCA Social Statement, "Human Sexuality: Gift and Trust" is not unusual in this approach, but such a move determines the misguided course of the nature of the "Report and Recommendations on Ministry Policies" that will follow.
The Social Statement asks what can be considered a sort of third-use-of-the-law type of question, "How do we understand human sexuality within the context of Jesus' invitation to love God and love our neighbor?" The 'how' of this question applies to what sort of actions we, as Christians, will take once we understand what Jesus "invites" us to do.
The framing of the question is a thin veneer for its theological underpinnings, for within its introductory statement command is turned to invitation, and obedience into pretense. In a few short moves love will become tolerance, sincerity will replace truth, and the bound conscience will no longer be bound to Holy Scripture but to its own Old Adamic interpretation of human experience apart from the One whose Word speaks us into life.
A prior question to the one proposed in the document might be, "How does God use His creation of sexually differentiated beings — male and female — in service of His own commandments to love Him and to love our neighbor?" If we do not trust that His creation of us as male and female — complementary; other; made for love — is good. . . if we do not trust His design, or that He delights in His design, or that His design is connected to the destiny He intends for His good creation, our questions are rooted in a suspicion that will only lead to our own death.
The social sciences have many things to tell us, but they seek meaning empirically, not doxologically. When it comes to understanding sacramentality, whether it be the sacramentality of the design of God's creation or the sacramentality of word and water, bread and wine, their suspicions leave them bereft. The gifts that come from God's steadfast love direct us to His heart — He who is the author and giver of all life (Gen. 2:7); He who draws all people to Himself (John 12:32); He who is preparing us to meet Him as one prepares a bride to meet her beloved husband (Rev. 19:7).
If the 'experts' in our secular society observe the wanton behavior of people and find it common, or even normative, they are not bound to speak both law and gospel for the sake of their neighbors.[1] The Church, however, the body shaped in the cruciform body of her Lord, is so bound. The Church born in the sacramental love of the Triune God, and which has no life apart from Him is His herald, one which calls all people to worship Him — in Spirit and Truth (John 4:23); with their own bodies as living sacrifices (Romans 12:1); with His law written on their hearts (Jeremiah 31:33); and with His praise on their lips (Psalm 100).
Our consciences are bound here and nowhere else, and as unpopular or counter-cultural as it might be, the triune God — Father, Son, and Holy Spirit — has promised to sustain us until Christ comes again in glory to judge the living and the dead. We are bound to care for our neighbors, and we are called to do so within the sacred frame of God's holy and never-ending love. People may claim in all sincerity to be acting in good conscience, but if their conscience is misinformed, can it be good in the sense that what is good is also what is true?
The elevated value of 'tolerance' that accompanies the ELCA documents with regard to the bound conscience is an attempt to silence what has been passed on as the deposit of faith. Rather, it is the apostolic witness that should be privileged. In saying that we must respect all the voices, the solas of the faith are reduced to one voice among many. The voices that are given equal weight come from those whose interpretation of raw experience apart from the apostolic witness, like all such interpretation, is inevitably self-serving — for the self is, indeed, turned in upon the self.[2]
The social statement and ensuing recommendations ask us to believe that these proposed changes are for the sake of the neighbor. In some way, we and all of our neighbors seek the companionship of human community. In some way, whether appropriately ordered or destructively disordered, all people desire love, touch, a place to rest and comfort. To hold out that they can receive God's intention for us to have such goodness in a same-sex union is the equivalent of false advertising.
We need to distinguish between the need and a distortion of the need. For no matter how much we might pretend that it were not so, the complementarity between the one who cries "this at last is bone of my bone and flesh of my flesh" and the one whose creation was designed for unity with him, can never come to fulfillment or fruition between two members of the same sex. The gift of the fullness of erotic love can be simulated, but like all disordered loving, at the same time that it offers momentary pleasure, it also diminishes who God has intended each one to be.
Neither document examines the multiplicity of reasons or experiences that could lead an individual to come to the self-identification of homosexual. Anything from familial abuse, or the bullying that exacerbates a young person's variations from the media's images of masculinity and femininity, or resentment, or the use of one's body to make a political statement may shape such self-identification. To regularize such an identity (which in its development may be quite fluid) and then bind one to that identity in a relationship blessed by the church is to lock someone into a state that God never intended.
Monogamy and longevity, public accountability and commitment will never turn a same-gendered partner into a sexual other, one whose complementarity allows for the fullness of love written into the creation. Since we are called to care for our neighbor, placing such a barrier to the neighbor's spiritual and relational growth is the opposite of the healing that comes when one is living in the freedom of God's goodness.
While the state may regulate, it is the Church, speaking and acting in trust of the promise of the Triune God that blesses such unions of man and woman. State laws can change with the vote of the people, a bill in a legislature, or a court decision, but the blessing of God comes through faithful apostolic witness, proclaimed in the assembly and enacted in ritual designed to mirror God's intentions.[3]
Marriage rites are not simply about our commitments to each other, but about God's commitment to us. And God in His wisdom uses this union of man and woman as an eschatological sign of how intimate his love is for us — a love stronger than death, for the Bridegroom will love his Bride, the church, eternally.
If same-sex unions are placed on a par with marriage — and they will have to be if the ELCA adopts the structurally flexible option (How can pastors who are homosexual in their self-understanding be in publicly accountable monogamous relationships without such rites?), the significance of a marriage and the marriage rite will be summarily reduced. If one commitment is just as good and right and valid as another, the eschatological sign written deeply into the creation is lost to the church . . . and if lost to the church, where will it be spoken?
This is the place where the egregious nature of the recommendations is exposed. A series of changes to the standards for the life of clergy ("rostered leaders") is proposed with an oft repeated refrain to "find a way" to accomplish the changes, while at the same time there is an explicit restriction against speaking of changes or additions to the rites of the church.
Did the majority of the task force think that there would be any other way for pastoral candidates who are homosexual in their self-understanding (i.e., whose homoerotic affections and inclinations speak more loudly to them than any other voices) to live a "life-long, committed, monogamous, same-gendered relationship" without a public ritual that celebrates, protects and blesses such a union? The reason given[4] that a Rite of Same-Sex blessing is to not be proposed does not ring true, because the changes in the standards would precipitate an official rite in order that there be public and ecclesial accountability.
New worlds are made in ritual enactment. We weren't there when the world was made, we weren't there when the world was made new in the bursting of the tomb, and we may not be there when life on this earth as we know it comes to an end. However, in our ritual life, these events are made ours as we are drawn into the resurrected life of our Lord, He who was there when the waters were formed and who will call our names when crystal fountain flows.
In our ritual, liturgical life we enter into the mystery of His passion. In our liturgical assembly, the life of faith is given us in word and sign, and our maturity in this same faith is also expressed and confirmed in the rites of transition that surround birth, death, and marriage. These rites are epiphanic, that is, through them we at last see what God intends for us to see in faith.
The rite of marriage is an event in which we act out what we believe about our creation, and we discover even more about the One in whom we believe — He who has created us for love. With the eyes of faith, we see why God gave us the sexual differentiation of male and female — we were made to love each other. And now this love will serve as yet another reminder of the all-consuming love that Christ, our Lord, has for His church.[5]
The rites of the church are God's way of giving us a means to live to the praise of His glory. The designing of a rite that binds two people of the same gender together for this life is without this epiphanic dimension, for the binding together of two people of the same gender will leave them with themselves, untransformed.
The Report and Recommendations sets before us two positions, one of continuity and one of change, and it seeks to set these positions before the assembly as equally valid. Here, as it consistently uses the term "same-gender" with regard to particular "orientations" and "relationships," it claims a distinctive identity for those who want the church to approve of their homoerotic desires and inclinations as being natural, right, and fitting.
The social statement has made a clear case for the superiority, appropriateness, and emotional and spiritual health of lifelong, monogamous, committed relationships (which hitherto have been reserved for a male-female relationship) as opposed to transient and/or cohabiting arrangements where the potential for pain is ever immanent. Now the recommendations will use that information as they present the "new" position of affirming life-long, committed, monogamous, same-gendered relationships, because if its good for male-female relationships, how can we deny that it would be good for male-male or female-female relationships, if indeed same-gendered "relationships" are just as pleasing to God?
Without the key piece — i.e., the doxological expression that shapes our faith — one can follow this line of logic all the way up to claiming the church's institution of a Same-Sex Blessing and the ordination of folks who seek life-long, monogamous, same-gendered relationships to be acts of justice, of civil rights; but the ground upon which this argument is built is where the fallacy lies. Males and females were not given the gifts of sexual expression for such homoerotic activity.
The Holy Scriptures have no word of blessing for acts of homoeroticism — regardless of relational contexts, and the church's attempt to sacralize such pairings would work against the health of the neighbor now and for generations to come.[6] Lex supplicandi legem stauat credendi![7] Such 'ecclesiastical' rites would work to change the beliefs all those who participate in them.
Because the proposed social statement starts in the wrong place, the recommendations end in the wrong place, modeling themselves on democratic rather than Biblical justice. True justice and righteousness are rooted in God's steadfast love, so that when our lives reflect His righteousness we are doing what He has made us to do.
So indeed, how does God use His creation of sexually differentiated beings — male and female — in service of His own commandments to love Him and to love our neighbor? Because He has made us in such a way, fitting, complementary, opposite, and paired, He gives us the holy estate of marriage in which lovemaking is an act of faith that He has provided a beloved spouse as a sign of His eternal goodness. For such goodness we give Him praise and from the strength of our homes we work together to care for all in need.
God has made us in such a way that sexual expression and spiritual identity are closely bound, for in His establishment of marriage the nakedness of heart and the nakedness of the body flourish in a covenant of trust and love — and the lovemaking of a husband and wife, with all its joy, delight, tenderness, and passion are among the dearest of His gifts.
For those who receive such a great gift, loving a spouse within God's covenant is both an expression of obedience and a sign to the world of how deeply He loves us all. Trusting that it is He who provided this earthly other for us, trusting that His establishment of marriage for men and women is good, our everyday actions of caring for a spouse become a living doxology, and incarnate ethics of praise.
The Rev. Dr. Amy C. Schifrin
Intentional Interim Pastor, Lower Susquehanna Synod, ELCA
Currently serving Holy Trinity, Hershey, Pennsylvania
- - - - - - - - -
Endnotes
[1] They may use common sense, but they're not even bound to do that.
[2] If this can happen with the sexuality issue, why not with any other issue? In this way the sexuality issue is a symptom that reveals a far greater problem in the ELCA, where popular culture's ways of reading scripture and designing rites become the great shapers of how the Church prays when we gather in Christ's name.
[3] Even in Luther's 1529 "Order of Marriage for Common Pastors" (LW 53:111), vows were exchanged at the church door, but the words and gesture of blessing occurred in front of the altar, where the pastor, with hands raised, spoke the words of Genesis 2:18, 21-24, which then served "as a kind of words of institution for marriage." Philip H. Pfatteicher, Commentary on the Lutheran Book of Worship: Lutheran Liturgy in Its Ecumenical Context (Minneapolis: Augsburg Fortress, 1990), 459.
[4] The Report and Recommendations acknowledges that "this church does not have biblical or theological consensus on the matter," so that at this time, ritual matters will be left to local congregations (lines 319-325). A chaotic proposal at best, idiosyncratic rather than ecclesial, it may mirror the worst of the wider culture's influence on the design of the church's rites for marriage, so that the emphasis of the rite is on the couple's "personality," not on the faithfulness of God.
[5] "Lord Jesus Christ, as you freely give yourself to your bride the Church, grant that the mystery of the union of man and woman in marriage may reveal to the world the self-giving love which you have for your church; and to you with the Father and the Holy Spirit be glory and honor, now and forever. Amen" Post-Communion Prayer for Marriage, LBW, Minister's Desk Edition, 192.
[6] It would also work against the life of the church because how one deals with the issue of blessing the unions of self-identified homosexuals will become the litmus test within the call process.
[7] "The law of prayer determines the law of belief." Prosper of Aquitaine.
- - - - - - - - -
Permission is granted for reprint and distribution of Let’s Talk in part or in its entirety, provided the journal title, issue date, and author(s) are cited on all copies.
Friday, June 05, 2009
Shock Value
What is more shocking? The things that shock us or the things that don't?
The current issue of Touchstone arrived yesterday and, fortunately for you, the article Shock Value is available on this fine magazine's website. Subtitled Pro-Life Transgressions of the Avant-Garde, author Micah Mattix juxtaposes the responses on the campus of University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill to two events that happened one week last fall:
Better, run to your newsstand and get the whole issue. And if you don't already subscribe to Touchstone, why not?
Shared via AddThis
The current issue of Touchstone arrived yesterday and, fortunately for you, the article Shock Value is available on this fine magazine's website. Subtitled Pro-Life Transgressions of the Avant-Garde, author Micah Mattix juxtaposes the responses on the campus of University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill to two events that happened one week last fall:
a “gender-bending” play that would push the limits of experimental drama in its exploration of human sexualityand a display where:
Carolina Students for Life erected several large Justice for All placards on campus, which contained pictures of unborn children being aborted.Mattix concludes,
In theory, at least, one of the goals of the avant-garde has been to attack the tastes and moral sensibilities of the bourgeois. It has thus presented works containing subject matter that was indeed considered shocking at the time, works that were created out of relativistic theories of composition. Gone was the notion that art represented, in imaginative form, images of beauty and truth. These were replaced—once again, in theory—with works that presented beliefs and morals as constructed.Read it all here.
The avant-garde theater at Chapel Hill, however, no longer attacks the sensibilities of the students, but rather provides them with the sort of work they want to see in the first place—work that does not challenge their moral paradigm, but confirms it—because the moral paradigm implicit in the avant-garde has now become the moral paradigm of much of the middle class. This, of course, is done in the guise of carrying on the tradition of the avant-garde. What is really avant-garde today, in the original, combative sense of the term, is to stand for life, for beauty, and for truth. Nothing shocks us more.
Better, run to your newsstand and get the whole issue. And if you don't already subscribe to Touchstone, why not?
Shared via AddThis
Tuesday, May 19, 2009
Lutheran Theologians and Church Leaders Affirm Biblical Teaching on Sexuality
A press release from Lutheran CORE regarding today's open letter:
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Contact: Mark Chavez (717) 898-0801
info@lutherancore.org
Prominent Lutheran theologians and church leaders affirm biblical teaching on sexuality and call for defeat of ELCA sexuality proposals
May 19, 2009 — Prominent Lutheran theologians and church leaders have written an Open Letter to the Voting Members of the 2009 Churchwide Assembly of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA) asking them to affirm biblical teaching on sexuality and to reject proposals to change church teaching and policy regarding marriage and same-sex sexual behavior. The open letter was released Tuesday, May 19.
The 2009 ELCA Churchwide Assembly (Aug. 17-23 in Minneapolis) will consider a proposed social statement which would change ELCA teaching on human sexuality and a proposal which would change church standards to allow ELCA pastors to be in same-sex sexual relationships. The open letter will be mailed to the 1,045 voting members of the 4.7-million-member denomination’s Churchwide Assembly.
“The proposals are in fact no compromise. They clearly imply that same-sex blessings and the ordination and rostering of homosexual persons in committed relationships are acceptable within the ELCA. The teaching of the church will be changed. We should not make such an important decision without clear biblical and theological support. The Task Force did not provide such support, nor has it been provided in statements from some of our colleagues in ELCA institutions,” the open letter states.
The letter offers five reasons why the proposals must be rejected:
1. “If the assembly adopts the proposed rules of procedure, a simple majority of one Churchwide Assembly will alter the moral teaching on sexuality we have shared with the vast majority of the church past and present. We are concerned that such a procedure shows an indifference to the common mind of the one, holy, catholic and apostolic church throughout the ages and across cultures.”
2. “The church is founded on the whole Word of God, both law and gospel. The Task Force texts seem to permit variation on all ethical questions, no matter how fundamental. How Christians behave sexually is not a matter of indifference to our life in Christ.”
3. “If the ELCA were to approve the public recognition of same-sex unions or the rostering of persons in such relationships, it would damage our ecumenical relationships.”
4. “Our unity in the office of ministry will be fractured.”
5. “Conscience can err. The Word of God, not conscience, is the final court of appeal in the church.”
“We feel we are called to support and advocate the biblical teaching on human sexuality and urge you to defeat all the proposals from the Task Force for ELCA Studies on Sexuality that the Church Council has forwarded to you. We pledge to you our prayers and we invite you to work with us for the renewal of our church under the Word of God,” the open letter concludes.
Lutheran CORE brought together some prominent theologians and church leaders April 29 in Phoenix to draft the letter. Other scholars and church leaders were then asked to add their names to the open letter. Nearly 60 scholars and church leaders have signed the letter. Other ELCA pastors and lay members may add their names to a list of people endorsing the letter online at www.lutherancore.org.
“We wanted a clear statement from Lutheran theologians and church leaders who uphold biblical teaching on sexuality as it has been believed and taught by the Christian Church for nearly 2,000 years,” said the Rev. Paull Spring of State College, Pa., chair of the Lutheran CORE Steering Committee.
“We are grateful for the scholars and church leaders who have been willing to stand with us and with the vast majority of Christians worldwide and throughout time,” said Spring, the retired bishop of the Northwestern Pennsylvania Synod.
The open letter is available online at www.lutherancore.org.
* * * * *
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Contact: Mark Chavez (717) 898-0801
info@lutherancore.org
May 19, 2009 — Prominent Lutheran theologians and church leaders have written an Open Letter to the Voting Members of the 2009 Churchwide Assembly of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA) asking them to affirm biblical teaching on sexuality and to reject proposals to change church teaching and policy regarding marriage and same-sex sexual behavior. The open letter was released Tuesday, May 19.
The 2009 ELCA Churchwide Assembly (Aug. 17-23 in Minneapolis) will consider a proposed social statement which would change ELCA teaching on human sexuality and a proposal which would change church standards to allow ELCA pastors to be in same-sex sexual relationships. The open letter will be mailed to the 1,045 voting members of the 4.7-million-member denomination’s Churchwide Assembly.
“The proposals are in fact no compromise. They clearly imply that same-sex blessings and the ordination and rostering of homosexual persons in committed relationships are acceptable within the ELCA. The teaching of the church will be changed. We should not make such an important decision without clear biblical and theological support. The Task Force did not provide such support, nor has it been provided in statements from some of our colleagues in ELCA institutions,” the open letter states.
The letter offers five reasons why the proposals must be rejected:
1. “If the assembly adopts the proposed rules of procedure, a simple majority of one Churchwide Assembly will alter the moral teaching on sexuality we have shared with the vast majority of the church past and present. We are concerned that such a procedure shows an indifference to the common mind of the one, holy, catholic and apostolic church throughout the ages and across cultures.”
2. “The church is founded on the whole Word of God, both law and gospel. The Task Force texts seem to permit variation on all ethical questions, no matter how fundamental. How Christians behave sexually is not a matter of indifference to our life in Christ.”
3. “If the ELCA were to approve the public recognition of same-sex unions or the rostering of persons in such relationships, it would damage our ecumenical relationships.”
4. “Our unity in the office of ministry will be fractured.”
5. “Conscience can err. The Word of God, not conscience, is the final court of appeal in the church.”
“We feel we are called to support and advocate the biblical teaching on human sexuality and urge you to defeat all the proposals from the Task Force for ELCA Studies on Sexuality that the Church Council has forwarded to you. We pledge to you our prayers and we invite you to work with us for the renewal of our church under the Word of God,” the open letter concludes.
Lutheran CORE brought together some prominent theologians and church leaders April 29 in Phoenix to draft the letter. Other scholars and church leaders were then asked to add their names to the open letter. Nearly 60 scholars and church leaders have signed the letter. Other ELCA pastors and lay members may add their names to a list of people endorsing the letter online at www.lutherancore.org.
“We wanted a clear statement from Lutheran theologians and church leaders who uphold biblical teaching on sexuality as it has been believed and taught by the Christian Church for nearly 2,000 years,” said the Rev. Paull Spring of State College, Pa., chair of the Lutheran CORE Steering Committee.
“We are grateful for the scholars and church leaders who have been willing to stand with us and with the vast majority of Christians worldwide and throughout time,” said Spring, the retired bishop of the Northwestern Pennsylvania Synod.
The open letter is available online at www.lutherancore.org.
* * * * *
Open Letter to Churchwide Assembly Voters
The following Open Letter to the Voting Members of the ELCA Churchwide Assembly from a group of about 60 ELCA theologians and other leaders assembled by Lutheran CORE appeared briefly last week on ALPB Forum Online (and on this blog) but was then withheld in order to honor an official release today. I'm also appending below a cover letter from Prof. Bob Benne from last week which says a bit more about its background.
An Open Letter to the Voting Members of the 2009 ELCA Churchwide Assembly | |
| We are grateful that the church has called you to serve as a voting member for the 2009 Churchwide Assembly. Your role at the assembly will be a difficult one. We are writing this open letter as Lutheran theologians and church leaders concerned about the fidelity and future of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America. | |
| The proposals are in fact no compromise The teaching of the church will be changed | The proposals to be considered by the Churchwide Assembly this summer from the Task Force for ELCA Studies on Sexuality are perceived by some as compromises that will permit the ELCA to live faithfully with internal diversity on controversial ethical questions. The proposals are in fact no compromise. They clearly imply that same-sex blessings and the ordination and rostering of homosexual persons in committed relationships are acceptable within the ELCA. The teaching of the church will be changed. We should not make such an important decision without clear biblical and theological support. The Task Force did not provide such support, nor has it been provided in statements from some of our colleagues in ELCA institutions. |
| Indifference to the one, holy, catholic and apostolic church | 1. If the assembly adopts the proposed rules of procedure, a simple majority of one Churchwide Assembly will alter the moral teaching on sexuality we have shared with the vast majority of the church past and present. We are concerned that such a procedure shows an indifference to the common mind of the one, holy, catholic and apostolic church throughout the ages and across cultures. At the least, a two-thirds majority should be required, if indeed the assembly should be voting on these matters at all. |
| The church is founded on the whole Word of God, both law and gospel | 2. The proposals claim that the ELCA can live with profound differences on sexual questions because our unity is centered exclusively on the gospel and the sacraments. This claim separates law and gospel in a way contrary to both Scripture and the Confessions. The church is founded on the whole Word of God, both law and gospel. The Task Force texts seem to permit variation on all ethical questions, no matter how fundamental. How Christians behave sexually is not a matter of indifference to our life in Christ. |
| It would damage our ecumenical relationships | 3. If the ELCA were to approve the public recognition of same-sex unions or the rostering of persons in such relationships, it would damage our ecumenical relationships with the Roman Catholic Church, the Orthodox Church, and Evangelical churches, all of which affirm the clear teaching of Scripture that homosexual activity departs from God’s design for marriage and sexuality. Furthermore, it would put the ELCA at odds with many of our sister Lutheran churches, especially in Asia and Africa. The United Methodist Church and the Presbyterian Church (USA) have also recently upheld scriptural teaching on this matter. These bodies have officially recognized that the biblical prohibitions against homosexual activity remain applicable today to consensual sexual relationships between persons of the same sex. |
| Our unity will be fractured | 4. With regard to calling rostered leaders, the statement proposes “structured flexibility,” which we believe will lead inevitably to “local option.” If adopted, this proposal will mean that the relationship among bishops, candidacy committees, and congregations will become confused and conflicted. Practically speaking, there will be two lists of candidates for rostered leadership in the church. The result will be that not all pastors and congregations will be in full fellowship with each other, nor with many of the pastors and congregations of those denominations with whom we are in full communion. Further, laity seeking a congregation to join would need to ask about which option a congregation has chosen in calling its leaders. Our unity in the office of ministry will be fractured. |
| Conscience can err | 5. The social statement calls for opponents in the current controversy to respect each other’s “bound conscience,” referring to Martin Luther at the Diet of Worms. Luther, however, was not merely claiming that he was sincere about the convictions he held; he asserted rather that his conscience was bound to the Word of God. Conscience can err. The Word of God, not conscience, is the final court of appeal in the church. |
| We are deeply sensitive to the need of the church to provide pastoral care for all people. We are aware that there are some in the church who will disagree with this letter. Nevertheless, we feel we are called to support and advocate the biblical teaching on human sexuality. We pledge to you our prayers and we invite you to work with us for the renewal of our church under the Word of God. |
Rev. Richard Bansemer, Salem, VA, former Bishop, Virginia Synod
Dr. Robert D. Benne, Director of the Center for Religion and Society, Roanoke College, VA
Rev. John C. Beem, Miltona, MN, former Bishop, East-Central Synod of Wisconsin
Rev. Dr. Paul S. Berge, Professor Emeritus of New Testament, Luther Seminary, St. Paul, MN
Rev. Dr. Dennis D. Bielfeldt, Professor of Religion, South Dakota State University, Brookings, SD
Rev. Dr. Carl E. Braaten, Professor Emeritus, Systematic Theology, Lutheran School of Theology at Chicago
Rev. Mark C. Chavez, Landisville, PA, Director of Lutheran CORE
Rev. Dr. James R. Crumley, Jr, Chapin, SC, Former Bishop, Lutheran Church in America
Rev. Jaynan Clark Egland, Nine Mile Falls, WA, President, WordAlone Network
Rev. Dr. C. Jack Eichhorst, President emeritus, Trinity Lutheran College, WA
Dr. Rebecca Frey, New Haven, CT, Lutheran Forum Editorial Staff
Rev. Gregory P. Fryer, Immanuel Lutheran Church, New York, MY
Gracia M. Grindal, Professor of Rhetoric, Luther Seminary, St. Paul, MN
Mr. David J. Hardy, Esq., Chicago, IL, Former General Counsel of the ELCA
Rev. Dr. Roy A. Harrisville, Jr., Professor Emeritus, New Testament, Luther Seminary, St. Paul, MN
Rev. Dr. Roy A. Harrisville, III, Menomonie, WI
Rev. Dr. Mary Havens, Lutheran Theological Southern Seminary, Prof. of Church History, Columbia, SC
Rev. Carol S. Hendrix, former bishop, Lower Susquehanna Synod, PA
Dr. Hans J. Hillerbrand, Professor of Religion, Duke University, NC
Rev. Dr. Paul R. Hinlicky, Professor of Religion, Roanoke College, VA
Rev. Dr. Stephen J. Hultgren, Assistant Professor of Religion, Fordham University, Bronx, NY
Rev. Dr. Robert W. Jenson, Princeton, NJ
Ben Arlen Johnson, Th.D., Professor emeritus, Lutheran Bible Institute in California
Rev. Dr. Richard O. Johnson, Grass Valley, CA, Editor of Forum Letter
Rev. Corinne R. Johnson, Crystal Falls, MI
Rev. Ralph A. Kempski, Aiken, SC, Bishop Emeritus, Indiana-Kentucky Synod
Rev. Dr. Jack Dean Kingsbury, Professor Emeritus of Biblical Theology, Union Theological Seminary in Richmond, VA
Rev. Gerard H. Knoche, Bishop, Delaware-Maryland Synod
Rev. Dr. Marc Kolden, Professor Emeritus, Luther Seminary, St. Paul, MN
Rev. Dr. David W. Lotz, Washburn Professor Emeritus of Church History, Union Theological Seminary, New York, NY
Rev. Dr. Lamontte Luker, Professor of Hebrew Scriptures, Lutheran Theological Southern Seminary, Columbia, SC
Rev. Dr. Paul V. Martinson, Professor Emeritus of Missions, Luther Seminary, St. Paul, MN
Rev. Dr. Mark C. Mattes, Professor of Religion, Grand View College, Des Moines, IA
Rev. George P. Mocko, Bishop Emeritus, Delaware-Maryland Synod
Rev. Dr. James A. Nestingen, Professor Emeritus of Church History, Luther Seminary, St. Paul, MN
Rev. Richard J. Niebanck III, Delhi, NY
Rev. Dr. Oliver K. Olson, Minneapolis, MN
Rev. Dr. Steven D. Paulson, Professor of Systematic Theology, Luther Seminary, St. Paul, MN
Rev. Dr. David W. Preus, Minneapolis, MN, Former Bishop, American Lutheran Church
Dr. Michael Root, Dean, Lutheran Theological Southern Seminary, Columbia, SC
Rev. Dr. Paul E. Rorem, Professor of Church History, Princeton Theological Seminary, NJ
Rev. Russell E. Saltzman, Ruskin Heights Lutheran Church, Kansas City, MO
Rev. Kenneth H. Sauer, Columbus, OH, Former Chair of Conference of Bishops
Rev. Dr. James A. Scherer, Professor Emeritus, Missions and Church History, Lutheran School of Theology at Chicago
Rev. Dr. Amy Schifrin, Hershey, PA
Rev. Paul A. Schreck, Round Lake Beach, IL, former Executive Assistant to the Secretary, ELCA
Rev. Henry Schulte Jr, Boerne, TX, former Bishop, Southwestern Texas Synod
Rev. Frederick J. Schumacher, Manchester Township, NJ, Executive Director, American Lutheran Publicity Bureau
Rev. Dr. Hans Schwarz, Professor of Systematic Theology and Contemporary Theological Issues, University of Regensburg, Germany
Rev. Dr. Frank Senn, Immanuel Lutheran Church, Evanston, IL
Rev. Dr. Franklin Sherman, Schnecksville, PA
Rev. Dr. Trygve R. Skarsten, Pickerington, OH, President Emeritus of Trinity Lutheran College, Everett, WA
Rev. Paull E. Spring, State College, PA, Former Bishop, Northwestern Pennsylvania Synod
Rev. Dr. John R. Stumme, Chicago, IL, former Director of the Department for Studies in the Church in Society unit of the ELCA
Rev. Dr. Anders Tune, Campus Minister, Wittenberg University, Springfield, OH
Rev. Paul M. Werger, Iowa City, IA, Former Chair of Conference of Bishops
Rev. Sarah Hinlicky Wilson, Associate Research Professor, Institute for Ecumenical Research, Strasbourg, France
Dr. David S. Yeago, Professor of Systematic Theology, Lutheran Theological Southern Seminary, Columbia, SC
Rev. Dr. J. Larry Yoder, Professor and Director, Center for Theology, Lenoir-Rhyne University, Hickory, NC
Dear friends,
Two weeks ago a group of theologians and church leaders convened by the Lutheran Coalition for Reform (CORE) met in Arizona to develop a letter to voting members of the ELCA Churchwide Assembly of 2009. It is a letter appealing to the voting members to reject the Social Statement on Sexuality and the accompanying four recommendations. I have attached that letter. That letter is in the process of being sent out. At the same time it is being released to many persons and agencies within and outside the church. Soon it will be posted in a number of places for more people to sign on. (Check the CORE website or the WordAlone website if you wish to sign on.) Around 50 theologians and church leaders have already signed it and we expect many more supporters to sign on. We think the letter is persuasive and that the key theologians of the ELCA have affirmed it. We hope it is persuasive to you.
Sincerely,
Bob Benne
Thursday, April 02, 2009
...Gift and Trust
I've finally read through, pen in hand, Human Sexuality: Gift and Trust, the proposed ELCA Social Statement on Human Sexuality first released six weeks ago along with Report and Recommendation on Ministry Policies -- which I've commented on earlier. What do I think?
On the first page is footnote number 2, which I post in its entirety:
Going back, indeed, to the very first month of the ELCA's existence and the announcement that three gay seminarians who were unwilling to promise living chastely had been approved (either by the faculty of the very seminary I'd been accepted to [the ALC way] or the Professional Preparation Committee that had accepted me as a candidate for ordination [the LCA way]) for ordination in the last weeks of the old churches' existence.
Going through the first attempt at a Social Statement on Human Sexuality, the first draft of which nearly blew up the ELCA one year after my ordination, the second draft of which was so innocuous that the whole topic of human sexuality effectively disappeared from the ELCA's public spheres for a few years (as we in the ELCA argued over our ecumenical relationship with the Episcopal Church). Until the 2001 Churchwide Assembly drove us back into a second attempt at a social statement, bringing us to where we are right now in preparation for the 2009 Churchwide Assembly.
Yes, it has been "an attack on the foundation of our lives" as pastors of the ELCA seeking to be faithful to the teaching of the Lutheran churches. And as I read --
The footnote concludes,
In the conclusion of Human Sexuality: Gift and Trust, the Task Force (or a large majority of the Task Force; in addition to that linked statement two "dissenting positions" appear as appendices to the Report and Recommendation on Ministry Policies) writes,
When I finished reading the proposed social statement, I didn't know whether to cry or bathe. So I turned out the light and went to sleep instead. It wasn't a good sleep.
On the first page is footnote number 2, which I post in its entirety:
Trust, as used in this statement, is a fundamental characteristic of right relationship. God is unfailingly trustworthy to us and all of creation. Just as we learn by faith that a right relationship with God is a relationship of trust rather than rebellious self-assertion, a right relationship with the neighbor is one in which each seeks to be truly worthy of the other’s trust. The trustworthiness that both fosters and can bear the weight of the others' trust emerges as a central value to cherish and promote. Broken promises and betrayed trust through lies, exploitation, and manipulative behavior are exposed, not just as an individual failing, but as an attack on the foundations of our lives as social beings. Trust is misunderstood if reduced to an emotion, an abstract principle, or a virtue of one’s disposition, although these all suggest its multidimensional role as an axis in human life.When I read the sentence --
In The Responsible Self (1963), H. Richard Niebuhr set Christian ethical reflection on a new course by treating trust as the center of Christian thinking based on the question of trust or distrust of God as the fundamental option in human existence. In terms of human relationships, he wrote, “Faith as trust or distrust accompanies all our encounters with others and qualifies all our responses” (118). Philosophers and theorists such as Hannah Arendt (The Human Condition, 1958), and Michael Polanyi (Personal Knowledge, 1958) have advanced reflection on the centrality of promise and networks of trusting reliance in human affairs and knowledge. Some social scientists have begun to identify social trust as an indispensable feature of healthy organizations, institutions, and whole societies, and social distrust as one of the destructive forces at work in the breakdown and dissolution of organized social arrangements. Such reflections operate in the background of this statement.
Broken promises and betrayed trust through lies, exploitation, and manipulative behavior are exposed, not just as an individual failing, but as an attack on the foundations of our lives as social beings.-- I thought of the studies and discussions that I have been participating in since the 2001 ELCA Churchwide Assembly set in motion the process that is concluding with this proposed social statement. And the events (culminating in the "ordination" of Anita Hill in St. Paul, Minnesota, weeks before that Assembly) leading up to that Assembly's call for a social statement. Indeed, "broken promises and betrayed trust through lies, exploitation, and manipulative behavior" is precisely what came to my mind.
Going back, indeed, to the very first month of the ELCA's existence and the announcement that three gay seminarians who were unwilling to promise living chastely had been approved (either by the faculty of the very seminary I'd been accepted to [the ALC way] or the Professional Preparation Committee that had accepted me as a candidate for ordination [the LCA way]) for ordination in the last weeks of the old churches' existence.
Going through the first attempt at a Social Statement on Human Sexuality, the first draft of which nearly blew up the ELCA one year after my ordination, the second draft of which was so innocuous that the whole topic of human sexuality effectively disappeared from the ELCA's public spheres for a few years (as we in the ELCA argued over our ecumenical relationship with the Episcopal Church). Until the 2001 Churchwide Assembly drove us back into a second attempt at a social statement, bringing us to where we are right now in preparation for the 2009 Churchwide Assembly.
Yes, it has been "an attack on the foundation of our lives" as pastors of the ELCA seeking to be faithful to the teaching of the Lutheran churches. And as I read --
Some social scientists have begun to identify social trust as an indispensable feature of healthy organizations, institutions, and whole societies, and social distrust as one of the destructive forces at work in the breakdown and dissolution of organized social arrangements.-- I thought, "This describes what has happened in the ELCA," the destruction of what brought more than two-thirds of American Lutherans together in the mid-1980s in that giant step that brought us one big step closer to the old, old vision of one Lutheran church in America.
The footnote concludes,
Such reflections operate in the background of this statement.This may be the truest, most prophetic statement in the entire document. For how else could a Lutheran church, established to embody a Christian tradition of theological seriousness within the practice of the True Faith, have produced such a muddled asserting (for no defense is offered) of a brand new teaching, one that simply abandons over 1900 years of Christian teaching and reflection as just another possible way?
In the conclusion of Human Sexuality: Gift and Trust, the Task Force (or a large majority of the Task Force; in addition to that linked statement two "dissenting positions" appear as appendices to the Report and Recommendation on Ministry Policies) writes,
This statement . . . seeks to tap the deep roots of Scripture and the Lutheran theological tradition for specific Christian convictions, themes, and wisdom that will assist people of faith to discern what is responsible and faithful action in the midst of the complexity of daily life. (p. 31)My best construction (drawing on Luther's explanation of the 8th Commandment) is, it fails to do so. (Alas, given that I have grown to trust neither Human Sexuality: Gift and Trust nor the process that developed it, I have a worse construction. Perhaps you can figure it out.)
When I finished reading the proposed social statement, I didn't know whether to cry or bathe. So I turned out the light and went to sleep instead. It wasn't a good sleep.
Sunday, March 29, 2009
Task Force Dissenters Speak Out
Courtesy Lutheran Forum, the minority on the ELCA Task Force for Studies on Sexuality is identified and speaks further on their dissent from the Task Force's proposals.
However, by focusing on trust, freedom, and love of neighbor, the social statement, Human Sexuality: Gift and Trust, strains forward to see what God might be doing anew within the community of faith, particularly in regards to conduct of persons who are homosexual, rather than building on the foundation depicted in the creation accounts of Genesis. The concept of freedom of the Christian, while helpful in our understanding of salvation by faith alone, cannot be the justification for a lifestyle and behavior contrary to the biblical witness and the moral tradition. From Galatians (5:13) we heard often, “For you were called to freedom.” However, we did not hear often enough the next line, “Only do not use your freedom as an opportunity for the self-indulgence.” By centering on justification by faith, the social statement minimizes the role of the Law in Christian life, contrary to Luther’s exposition of the Christian life in the catechisms, and is at odds with the Lutheran Confessions—Article VI of the Formula of Concord. Justification by faith does not nullify the commands of God; to argue thus is to fall into “antinomianism.”
We contend that the recommendations proposed in Report and Recommendations, which advocate same-gender unions and the ordination of non-celibate homosexual persons, have little biblical, historical, or traditional support. The proposed recommendations advocate a radical departure from long-held moral tradition and biblical interpretation, thus distancing us further from the Roman Catholic Church, Orthodox Churches, evangelical churches and most of the churches in the Protestant mainstream. We believe this is a very serious step that should not be taken by a sharply divided church, particularly without passage by a 2/3rd vote at the 2009 Churchwide Assembly.
Because of these theological and pragmatic concerns and because the proposed recommendation threatens to fragment the ELCA as a church by allowing synods and individual congregations to determine their own practice, we felt compelled to draft Dissenting Position #1 (found in the Appendix). Recommending broad change in the present policies is extremely unwise and unfaithful. There may come a day in which a new consensus in the Church might mandate a change in teaching and practice, as was seen with slavery and Apartheid. Or, over time, this church might find that its resolve grows even stronger to maintain its foundational core beliefs, such as with the authority of scripture (II Timothy 3:16), justification by faith alone (Romans 3:28), and the primacy of Christ (Acts 4:12). Lack of consensus does not mandate change. In fact, it argues for the opposite: maintaining current policies.
Because longstanding biblical interpretation and teachings of the apostolic faith, all of which are shared with ecumenical church partners and partner churches of the Lutheran World Federation, argue against changing the current ELCA policies, we recommend the following to the 2009 Churchwide Assembly of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America:
Submitted in the name of God: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit
The Rev. Dr. Scott Suskovic; The Rev. Corinne Johnson; The Rev. Carol S. Hendrix
Pastor Zip would amend this (otherwise fine) statement in 2 ways.
First, replace the word "celibate" with "chaste." The heart of my argument in "The Big Lie: ELCA Celibacy Requirement," noting that Vision and Expectations never calls for celibacy, but rather says:
Also, I'm still waiting for the ELCA's sexuality discussions to grapple with Jonathan Mills' thesis in Love, Covenant & Meaning, "that the presence of 'homosexual' desires in a man does not make him incapable of marrying and raising a family." While I recommend the book itself, do take a look at Gilbert Meilaender's First Things review, "Gays Marrying," from May 1998 (!) and the Mills-Meilaender dialogue in October (1998) Letters of First Things (under the headline "Appetite and Eros") for a good description.
Second, I would want to clarify that to "provide pastoral care for all to whom they minister" does not, at least if pastoral care is to be faithfully Christian, permit a Pastor to publicly "bless" a homosexual union -- regardless of how many ELCA Bishops and Pastors have twisted the Conference of Bishop's 1993 Statement to insist that it means the opposite of what it meant in 1993.
Statement by Three Dissenting Members of the ELCA Task Force on Human Sexuality
We begin with a word of thanks and gratitude for the opportunity to serve on the ELCA Task Force for Human Sexuality. Even though the three of us often disagreed with the other 27 members and advisors of the task force on traditional biblical interpretation and theological principles, we were treated as the minority voice with great kindness, dignity and respect. Because we firmly believe the current polices of the ELCA, when enforced, are consistent with the biblical witness, Christian moral tradition, and the view of the vast majority of Christians in the world, we refused to sign off on both the social statement and the recommendations and are submitting our dissent. Changing current policies would sever the ELCA from the ecumenical church and the Christian consensus down through the ages. These policies include:- People who are homosexual in their orientation must live a celibate lifestyle in order to serve on the roster of the ELCA. (Visions and Expectations and Definitions and Guidelines for Discipline)
- The 1993 Statement of the ELCA Conference of Bishops states that “there is basis neither in Scripture nor tradition for the establishment of an official ceremony by this church for the blessing of a homosexual relationship.” However, this statement by ELCA bishops acknowledged that local pastors within their contexts are to “provide pastoral care for all to whom they minister.”
However, by focusing on trust, freedom, and love of neighbor, the social statement, Human Sexuality: Gift and Trust, strains forward to see what God might be doing anew within the community of faith, particularly in regards to conduct of persons who are homosexual, rather than building on the foundation depicted in the creation accounts of Genesis. The concept of freedom of the Christian, while helpful in our understanding of salvation by faith alone, cannot be the justification for a lifestyle and behavior contrary to the biblical witness and the moral tradition. From Galatians (5:13) we heard often, “For you were called to freedom.” However, we did not hear often enough the next line, “Only do not use your freedom as an opportunity for the self-indulgence.” By centering on justification by faith, the social statement minimizes the role of the Law in Christian life, contrary to Luther’s exposition of the Christian life in the catechisms, and is at odds with the Lutheran Confessions—Article VI of the Formula of Concord. Justification by faith does not nullify the commands of God; to argue thus is to fall into “antinomianism.”
We contend that the recommendations proposed in Report and Recommendations, which advocate same-gender unions and the ordination of non-celibate homosexual persons, have little biblical, historical, or traditional support. The proposed recommendations advocate a radical departure from long-held moral tradition and biblical interpretation, thus distancing us further from the Roman Catholic Church, Orthodox Churches, evangelical churches and most of the churches in the Protestant mainstream. We believe this is a very serious step that should not be taken by a sharply divided church, particularly without passage by a 2/3rd vote at the 2009 Churchwide Assembly.
Because of these theological and pragmatic concerns and because the proposed recommendation threatens to fragment the ELCA as a church by allowing synods and individual congregations to determine their own practice, we felt compelled to draft Dissenting Position #1 (found in the Appendix). Recommending broad change in the present policies is extremely unwise and unfaithful. There may come a day in which a new consensus in the Church might mandate a change in teaching and practice, as was seen with slavery and Apartheid. Or, over time, this church might find that its resolve grows even stronger to maintain its foundational core beliefs, such as with the authority of scripture (II Timothy 3:16), justification by faith alone (Romans 3:28), and the primacy of Christ (Acts 4:12). Lack of consensus does not mandate change. In fact, it argues for the opposite: maintaining current policies.
Because longstanding biblical interpretation and teachings of the apostolic faith, all of which are shared with ecumenical church partners and partner churches of the Lutheran World Federation, argue against changing the current ELCA policies, we recommend the following to the 2009 Churchwide Assembly of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America:
- Affirm and uphold the current policies of the ELCA, including both rostering and discipline, as stated in Vision and Expectations and Definitions and Guidelines for Discipline.
- Affirm the pastoral guidance of the 1993 Statement of the ELCA Conference of Bishops, that “there is basis neither in Scripture nor tradition for the establishment of an official ceremony by this church for the blessing of a homosexual relationship.” However, pastors within their local contexts are to “provide pastoral care for all to whom they minister.”
Submitted in the name of God: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit
The Rev. Dr. Scott Suskovic; The Rev. Corinne Johnson; The Rev. Carol S. Hendrix
Pastor Zip would amend this (otherwise fine) statement in 2 ways.
First, replace the word "celibate" with "chaste." The heart of my argument in "The Big Lie: ELCA Celibacy Requirement," noting that Vision and Expectations never calls for celibacy, but rather says:
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.That last sentence is about chastity, not celibacy. (See what I wrote here, too.) Likewise, the Definitions and Guidelines for Discipline speak of "chastity," not "celibacy." Again, see Pr. Richard Johnson's July 2004 Forum Letter article, "Controlling Chastity."
Also, I'm still waiting for the ELCA's sexuality discussions to grapple with Jonathan Mills' thesis in Love, Covenant & Meaning, "that the presence of 'homosexual' desires in a man does not make him incapable of marrying and raising a family." While I recommend the book itself, do take a look at Gilbert Meilaender's First Things review, "Gays Marrying," from May 1998 (!) and the Mills-Meilaender dialogue in October (1998) Letters of First Things (under the headline "Appetite and Eros") for a good description.
Second, I would want to clarify that to "provide pastoral care for all to whom they minister" does not, at least if pastoral care is to be faithfully Christian, permit a Pastor to publicly "bless" a homosexual union -- regardless of how many ELCA Bishops and Pastors have twisted the Conference of Bishop's 1993 Statement to insist that it means the opposite of what it meant in 1993.
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