ELCA released their long awaited social statement proposal and recommendation

[54anickel]

on ministry policies regarding the current ban on ordination of partnered gay clergy. Basically they've decided to continue to dance around the issue. Interestingly they point to Romans 14 but then don't elaborate on the applicable meanings of the scripture - could cherry pick and read it either way.

http://www.elca.org/What-We-Believe/Social-Issues/Social-Statements-in-Process/JTF-Human-Sexuality.aspx

In the end, they are leaving it up to individual congregations to discriminate decide?

This is a f'ing joke that's been nearly a decade in the making. Way to NOT take a stand for respecting another's humanity.




http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5jMEVyyQh_4sDAGGEDWTjtQQ4mEYQD96ER1T01

snip>
The nation's largest Lutheran denomination will consider allowing individual congregations to choose whether to allow gays and lesbians in committed relationships to serve as clergy, an attempt to avoid the sort of infighting that has threatened to tear other churches apart.

snip>
"At this point, there is no consensus in the church," said the Rev. Peter Strommen of Prior Lake, Minn., chairman of the 15-member task force on sexuality. "The question ends up being, 'How are we going to live together in that absence of consensus?'

"This ought not to be church-dividing, even if there are strong differences."

Church members on both sides of the issue, however, were dissatisfied with the proposal. Conservatives called it a rejection of Scripture and an advocate for gay clergy said some of the elements take "a step backward."

Gays and lesbians can now serve as clergy in the ELCA if they remain celibate, although some congregations have challenged the system and hired pastors in gay relationships. Heterosexual clergy and professional lay workers are to abstain from sex outside marriage.

snip>
The desire is to hold gay people accountable to their relationships much like heterosexual couples are bound by marriage, he said. The report doesn't propose ways to accomplish that. :eyes:

snip>
The proposal is an effort to avoid the sort of splintering that the 77 million-member Anglican Communion has suffered since 2003, when the Episcopal Church — the Anglican body in the U.S. — consecrated the first openly gay bishop, V. Gene Robinson of New Hampshire. His election intensified a long-running debate over what Anglicans should believe about salvation, sexuality and other issues.


I say hallelujah, let those debates begin across demoninations!!! These logs keep getting shoved in my eye, let's have that dialog about what one should believe. I'd be interested to find out not only in the answer, but who would even think they have it all figured out. Meanwhile, that Episcopal church across the street and the UCC across town are looking mighty inviting these days.

[JerseygirlCT]

1. I cannot understand the cowardice in this

Which is all that it is, both in the ECLA and in my Episcopal church - I do believe that the majority fully understands what it right, but just cannot bring themselves to deal with the unpleasantness associated with standing up for right.

In the long run, this stance only leads to more pain, rather like pulling a band-aid off very slowly.

And I found that bit about what Anglicans should believe a bit strange, too. We share worship, but there really aren't "rules" about what one is to think about theology. There are definitely some rules, IMO, about how we are to treat one another. And treating some people as less-than isn't part of following them...

[54anickel]

2. It's got to get tiring, all this "shoulding" upon people. I agree, it seems more of a cop out than

concern for another's faith.

[54anickel]

3. Did you happen to catch the piece on archbishop Rowan Williams in the

Atlantic Monthly? It is an interesting piece. I really like Rowan Williams, but I am having a hard time accepting this notion of unity above truth. The ELCA seems to be taking a similar, uncharacteristic, "unity first" stance. :shrug:

http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200903/archbishop-canterbury/4

The Velvet Reformation

The events of the next few weeks were God’s gift to the tabloids. Religion correspondent Chris Morgan of The Sunday Times of London committed suicide, by jumping in front of an oncoming train; he had been the best man at Williams’s wedding. Two male Anglican priests were in effect married by a third at Saint Bartholomew’s, the grand church in Clerkenwell, where Four Weddings and a Funeral was filmed. Gene Robinson and his partner of 20 years celebrated their civil partnership in New Hampshire: “I always wanted to be a June bride,” Robinson quipped. Robinson journeyed to England and preached at Saint Mary’s, Putney, where he was shouted down by a zealot: “Repent, repent! Go back to your own bloody church!” The breakaway bishops held their conference in Jerusalem and got good press. The bishops of England, meeting in a synod in York, approved the ordination of women bishops, allowing no provision for traditionalists to “opt out”; photographs taken during the all-night final session showed Williams, who had sought to accommodate the traditionalists, sitting alone with his head in his hands.

“He has traded truth for unity,” one confidant of Williams’s told me, “and you just can’t do that.” Giles Fraser had seen Williams a few days earlier: “You ask him, ‘How are you?’ and those eyebrows of his screw up in a half-grimace, half-smile.” But he predicted that things would change once the conference began: “You’ll see people rallying around Rowan despite their differences because he’s holding the line against ‘these nasties.’”

While Williams went on retreat to a Benedictine abbey, the press, in effect, wrote his obituary: the Anglican Communion is in organized confusion; the church has lost its head.

It was confusing. And yet, given the tortured history of sex and religion, it was something to see. Here were people openly staking out rival positions on questions of sexuality that whole churches still consider off-limits. Here was the archbishop of Canterbury getting outvoted, the maximum leader yielding to his subordinates. Here was a church grappling with its future in plain sight, and Williams was not shutting down the process but trying to keep it civil and open.

The 2008 Lambeth Conference was held in a big blue circus tent on the campus of the University of Kent at Canterbury, overlooking the cathedral, where the bishops met for worship, Bible study, and prayer. They took part in daily small-group meetings grounded in a form of conflict resolution called indaba. A note on the archbishop’s Web site explained that the Zulu word describes “a gathering for purposeful discussion … both a process and method of engagement.” Its use was an attempt both to acknowledge the importance of African Christians and to help resolve a crisis. It was ridiculed in the press (“indaba-daba-doo-doo,” some bishops were calling it), but it was an ingenious device, for it concealed the conference’s roots in the thought of Rowan Williams.

more...

[JerseygirlCT]

4. I've been very frustrated by that about Williams

And I know in part that's just because to me, this isn't an issue with a lot of grey area. It's blindingly obvious that we ought to treat all people equally. Period. And that who they love is far less important than how (committed, caring relationships, iow).

I've felt he was looking for some ephemeral "unity" at the cost of doing what's right. And that from someone in his position that was just about the worst choice to be made. A strong stand for what is right would undoubtedly be met with a great hubub and sulking from the bigots. And so? The Anglican communion would continue to exist, and there would likely be another calling itself the same.

Would that matter? Does the name, and the structure matter more than the people of the church?

[54anickel]

5. Exactly. It sometimes seems these "leaders" care more for maintaining the

institution rather than trusting in the "transforming power" they preach.
"Ye of little faith".

[shimmergal]

6. Thanks so much for the link/citation.

I plan to read the whole article tomorrow. And probably put the link in our parish newsletter.

I do believe Williams's actions--or inactions--will look better in the light of history, or even a few decades hence, when the breakaway bishops have succeeded in isolating themselves, and the Varitcan is still churning out messages on sex that have been garbled in their transmission from the Deity.

Of course it's hard to revamp one aspect of Christian "teaching" on sexuality without doing a thoroughgoing recalibration. Starting with the premise that an Old Testament code that aimed at maximizing childbearing, and regarded every woman's sexuality as the property of some man, is no longer a valid basis for our own time. Who has the courage to do this transformative work, I wonder?

[54anickel]

7. You are welcome. I truely believe Willams and Hanson are attempting to bring

the church into the present. There was also a great article in the Atlantic on Williams lately.

Both the Lutheran work and the Williams Atlantic articles are referenced in yet this other piece at the Marty Martin Center
http://divinity.uchicago.edu/martycenter/publications/sightings/archive_2009/0312.shtml

The Religious Violence of "Defending Marriage"
— Jon Pahl

A recent article in The Atlantic and recently released Lutheran documents give good reasons to revisit the status of gays and lesbians across American society. Unfortunately, few commentators to date have addressed the most troubling development of the past few years: the growth of DOMA Laws, or "Defense of Marriage Acts." These laws are forms of religious violence.

The Federal Defense of Marriage Act, passed in 1996, stipulates that for the purpose of federal laws and operations, "the word 'marriage' means only a legal union between one man and one woman as husband and wife." According to domawatch.org - a website sponsored by supporters of these laws - thirty-seven states now have some form of DOMA Laws on the books. The rationales for such defensive laws are often couched in neutral, "secular", or "naturalist" language. But the move to establish such laws came from religious groups, notably conservative Protestants, Catholics, and Mormons. And the logic and appeal of these laws also originates in religion, and functions as a form of violence. Six theses can clarify the contours of the religious violence embedded in these laws.

1) DOMA Laws violate sacred texts. Many of the arguments against gay and lesbian civil unions or marriage appeal to biblical texts from Genesis, Leviticus, Romans, or I Corinthians. But such arguments impose upon the texts a twentieth century understanding of sexual identity alien to the Jewish or Hellenistic cultures in which these texts arose.

2) DOMA Laws elevate heterosexual marriage to idolatrous status. In some communities of faith, defending "marriage" has become all but an item of confessional status (it is absent from any historic Christian Confessions). This arrogates to a majority - heterosexuals - special privileges (economic, social, and spiritual) not available to sexual minorities.

3) DOMA Laws scapegoat gays and lesbians. As Rene Girard argues, scapegoating is a chief manifestation of religious violence. It is difficult to see what real threat is posed to heterosexual intimacy, much less to civil society, by the desire of homosexuals for similar rights. It is easy to see how DOMA laws organize consent over and against a relatively voiceless and powerless group.

more....



I came across this in a R/T Forum thread:
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=214x200319