Commending The Task Force Ebenezer Lutheran Church (at Foster and Paulina in Chicago) has been a Reconciling in Christ (RIC) congregation since 1993. This was a congregational decision to welcome gay and lesbian persons into the full life of the church. By 1997 the congregation felt a need to explore the blessing of same-gender relationships. […]
The Proposed Social Statement on Human Sexuality Needs a Worldview
I fear that joining together the Policy Recommendations regarding the ordination of persons living in same-sex relationships with the proposed social statement, “Human Sexuality: Gift and Trust” is eclipsing detailed discussion of the proposed social statement. Homosexuality has become the tail that wags the sexual dog. Yet the number of social issues related to human […]
A Response to “Human Sexuality: Gift and Trust” (HSGT) and “Report and Recommendation on Ministry Policies” (RRMP)
I am simply a parish pastor. I do not claim to be an expert in the history of the Reformation. I have not specialized in Ethics and Social Development. I am a survivor of the free-love ’60s and the repressed ’80s. I bear within my own being a conflict concerning the primary emphases of both […]
Questions for Critics of the Statement and Recommendations
No one should envy the task of producing official prose for the ELCA. As the holy fathers of Nicaea would no doubt testify, the drive to create or preserve consensus is no friend to language or theology. The proposed social statement on sexuality and the policy recommendations are the object of legitimate criticism and discontent, […]
Delight, Design and Destiny: Toward a Doxological Ethics of Sexuality
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 […]
The Bible and Our Ethics
What role should/does the Bible play when Christians make ethical decisions? Christians look to the Bible to see how our forebears in the faith made decisions, under God’s guidance, in ethical matters. They realize at the same time that those decisions have often been revised or expanded as the centuries have rolled past. Also, our […]
An Appeal to the ELCA in 2009
I have been asked as a member and pastor of the Lutheran Church – Missouri Synod (LCMS) to address the sexuality proposals that will come before the ELCA Churchwide Assembly (CWA) this summer. I make no claim to speak officially for the LCMS, although I am certain that I speak for many other LCMS pastors […]