CHICAGO (ABP) — In what pro-gay activists hailed as a historic opening, members of the nation's largest Lutheran denomination voted Aug. 11 to loosen a policy that bans gay ministers from having sexual relationships.
By a 538-431 margin, delegates to the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America's biennial meeting in Chicago asked that bishops not fully enforce a church policy barring pastors from sexual relationships outside of heterosexual marriage. However, delegates avoided the question of whether to do away with the rule altogether for gay ministers in committed relationships. They postponed that decision until after the 2009 presentation of a years-long denominational study on human sexuality.
“Full inclusion and acceptance is still down the road, but the dam of discrimination has been broken,” said Emily Eastwood, director of the pro-gay group Lutherans Concerned/North America, in a press statement following the vote. “The end of exclusion is in sight. With this decision the voting members signaled a desire for policy change but the need for two more years to bring more of the church along.”
The vote came nearly a year to the day after an Atlanta bishop filed charges in a church court against the pastor of that city's oldest Lutheran congregation after discovering the pastor was in a gay relationship.
An appeals panel eventually ordered that Bradley Schmeling of St. John's Lutheran Church be removed from the ELCA's list of approved ministers. However, his congregation voted to keep him as pastor, and the bishop — who will soon retire — has said he plans not to pursue further discipline against Schmeling.
Discipline of ministers in the ELCA is mostly left up to bishops who oversee regional synods. Many of the denomination's bishops already do not enforce the celibacy requirement on gay ministers in committed relationships. Conservatives in the denomination said the vote would simply increase confusion and create inconsistency between conservative bishops who continue to enforce the rules and those who do not.
“I don't know as a Christian, as a pastor and as a parent, what really would be worse — a church with no biblical standards to govern our ministry or standards we don't intend to enforce,” said Jaynan Clark Egland, president of the Word Alone Network, in a statement posted on the conservative ELCA group‘s website. “To refrain from discipline in the home is bad parenting, but we're about to do so in Christ's church.”
The ELCA's 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.
-30-
Read more:
Request to refrain from discipline as passed by ELCA
Lutheran appeals panel strips gay minister of credentials (07/09/2007)
Lutheran court upholds, decries penalties against gay minister (02/13/2007)