Has this (the un-sinning the sin) not already happened within the ELCA on the issue of divorce?? Rarely is there ever talk of divorce as a sin anymore, however it is quite noticible in scripture. There may be no "social statement" (could someone truly tell me what the heck a 'social statement' is??) overturning scripture like the revisionists would want but practically speaking isn't it happening?? And before anyone starts I am not comparing divorce to homosexuality!! Just curious as to Pr. Saltzman's definition of "un-sinning sin" and whether or not the ELCA is already there b/c I have heard approved for first call senior seminarians refer to divorce as no longer being a sin.
Just a side question to Pr. Saltzman...
You are right to raise the question. I certainly have tried to raise it (see my chapter "Clergy and Divorce" in
Christian Sexuality: Normative and Pastoral Principles). And, remember here, I speak as a pastor who has been through a divorce. 8th Commandment issues probably apply here, so I will say only that it was not by my choice. That is not to indicate "innocence," only reality. (I am keenly aware of my own failures as a first husband. Thanks to my Old Adam, though, usually I am more aware of hers as a first wife . . . but my Old Adam, as you might guess, is another issue.)
What we Lutherans and other Protestants have slipped into is a generous tolerance of divorce among our clergy, and we have done it most informally. Problematically, Protestants have left it to the secular world. We no longer regard marriage as a public "order" of church life. We have come to regard it as a matter of private choice, and, like the culture around us, divorce as "nobody's business but my own."
But this is not the same as as declaring divorce no longer sin. It is to merely note that what has happened among our parishioners is happening now among our clergy. (Interestingly, tuck this away in your statistical tidbits file, a pastor going through divorce while serving a parish typically will have left that parish within the next 24 months.)
Yet there are several distinctions to be made here:
1) Anyone divorced, in my experience, regards it as the single most defining failure of their life - even among those who divorce for the "best" of reasons, and even among those who have entered into happy, successful second marriages. The residual regret - if not shame - lingers always in the background.
2) No one chatters away about divorce in terms of what a wonderful experience it was, up-lifting and life-enhancing.
3) Most tellingly, few of us are going to "celebrate" the many "gifts" the divorced bring to the faith. Even less will we see synodical resolutions to that effect.
Eveyone recognizes the debilitating effects of divorce (even should they be unable to speak about the "sin of divorce").
So: If there are folks who no longer regard divorce as sin, they are seriously - willfully? - misreading the scriptures.
The question isn't whether divorce is sin. Rather, the real question is always, what do Christians do with sin?
Confession and repentance - those funny old church words - would seem to have some application.
As I indicate in "Clergy and Divorce," were I a bishop (and there are many people in this synod who thank God daily I was only third runner-up) I would be asking an entire array of privacy-invading questions of any pastor contemplating divorce. And I would do this, frankly, with a view toward assessing continued fitness for public ministry, seeking to hear in context those old church words.
That is not likely to happen - me a bishop, or any bishop asking those sorts of questions. Not for want of concern, but because of concern - concern for the clergy family's income, concern for the spouse and children (who not only lose a parent, but typically their congregational connections, too), and concern for the parish in the aftermath of the pastor's divorce. But I think those sorts of questions do need to be asked. And answered.
I hope this clarifies some of my thought.
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