CHICAGO (ABP) — An ad hoc panel for one of the nation’s largest Protestant bodies is recommending a four-part process to begin allowing members of its clergy to live openly in committed same-sex relationships.
But both supporters and opponents of gay rights in the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America expressed mixed reviews of the Feb. 19 proposal by the Task Force for ELCA Studies on Sexuality.
The denomination represents nearly 5 million Lutherans in centrist-to-liberal congregations nationwide.
The proposal is divided into two main parts: First, a proposed “social statement” that affirms the multiple “conscience-bound” views of ELCA members on the propriety of monogamous same-sex relationships, to be voted on by the denomination’s Churchwide Assembly, scheduled for Minneapolis in August.
The task force also recommended a separate four-step process for beginning to allow the “rostering,” or official denominational recognition, of clergy members in monogamous gay relationships. The recommendation also will be voted on during the Minneapolis assembly.
The first step would be an affirmation that the assembly “is committed to finding ways to allow congregations and synods that choose to do so to recognize, support, and hold publicly accountable lifelong, monogamous, same-gender relationships.”
If it failed, the rest of the proposals would die. But if it passed, the assembly would then be asked to affirm recommendations that the church allow rostering of partnered gay clergy, in good faith respect the consciences of those who disagree and finally create a process for allowing such rostering while allowing exceptions for congregations, synods and bishops who do not want to act in ways they view as affirming homosexual behavior.
It stopped short of recommending specific marriage rites or liturgies for same-sex unions in the church.
A group that supports full equality for gay Lutherans praised most of the recommendations, but expressed reservations about churches or clergy from areas with conservative bishops.
“Clearly, the Lutheran Church has ample room for conscience-bound opposition, but that ought to lie at the congregational level,” said Emily Eastwood, executive director of Lutherans Concerned North America, in a press release issued in reaction to the task force’s recommendations.
“[T]he recommendations provide for a framework in which congregations, synods, candidacy committees and bishops may discriminate at will against ministers and candidates in a same-gender relationship,” Eastwood said. “In the ELCA, congregations retain the right to call the minister of their choosing from approved rosters of the whole church. The recommendations could restrict a congregation's ability to call a well-suited minister in a same-gender relationship. Candidates in locations with unsupportive leadership could be denied candidacy.”
A conservative group of ELCA leaders, meanwhile, expressed strong opposition to the task force’s recommendations as well as the proposed social statement.
“When any church finds itself accommodating its teachings to the ways of the culture, that church is in trouble,” said Erma Wolf, a Lutheran minister from Brandon, S.D., in a statement released by Lutheran CORE. The group opposes gay equality in the ELCA.
“In these documents the ELCA would accommodate itself to the demands of our culture that the desires and needs of individuals trump everything else,” Wolf, vice chair of the Lutheran CORE steering committee, continued. “The exceptions become the rule, until finally there are no rules. That movement is happening in a number of areas, including human sexual relations. But no church has the authority to overturn the Word of God that protects sexual relations by placing them properly in the structure of marriage, and establishes marriage as being between male and female.”
The task force report builds on an earlier set of recommendations. In 2007, the church asked its bishops to refrain from enforcing the previous policy barring gay ministers in same-sex relationships pending the outcome of the task force’s study. Earlier that year, an Atlanta pastor was defrocked after announcing to Lutheran officials that he was living in a same-sex relationship.
The ELCA's approximately 4.8 million members are spread throughout the country but concentrated most heavily in the Midwest. Two much smaller Lutheran denominations — the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod and Wisconsin Evangelical Lutheran Synod — are far more conservative on issues such as homosexuality and women in leadership.
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Robert Marus is managing editor and Washington bureau chief for Associated Baptist Press.
Related ABP articles:
Lutherans ask bishops to refrain from disciplining gay pastors (8/13/2007)
Lutheran appeals panel strips gay minister of credentials (7/9/2007)
Lutheran court upholds, decries penalties against gay minister (2/13/2007)