An Exception to the Rule

[Steven Tibbetts]

Wasn't that Eucharist at an ELCA congregation?

It was in a ballroom at the Hyatt Regency.  As some of us noted at the time, similar eucharists sponsored by Lutherans Concerned during previous CWA's had been held at local ELCA congregations.  This one was not, which in itself was a serious problem under ELCA ecclesiology.

http://www.reconcilingworks.org/wp-content/uploads/2009/05/downloads_concords_Concord_28_3_Fall_2007.pdf

"Goodsoil" was a coalition of Lutheran (and, at least for a while, one interfaith) pro-gay groups that organized to, uh, convince the 2005 ELCA Churchwide Assembly to permit those in homosexual relationships to be rostered on the ELCA's ministry rolls, and the coalition continued for the 2007 and 2009 Assemblies.

kyrie eleison, spt+

[Diego]

Lovely... *SARCASM INTENDED*

[Charles Austin]

And at those same assemblies, the groups opposing same sex unions had gatherings, distributed materials, hosted events and tried to convince the voting members of the assemblies to vote a certain way.

[Diego]

Which they should not have had to do. 2,000 years of Church history should not have to convince anybody.

[Charles Austin]

I thought you were a student of history, Diego. If so, you would know that virtually nothing in the church has "lasted" or stayed the same for 2,000 years. Those 2,000 years of church history have included endorsements of morganatic marriage, arranged marriages for minor children, political marriages, and other things which we would not endorse. Those 2,000 years of church history have seen changes in the practice of ordination, church structure, lines of accountability and authority, relationships to civil entities, liturgies, church architecture, approved or disapproved aids to piety (remember the iconoclastic controversy?), and oh, maybe five or six other things that people like to say were set by "2,000 years of church history."
Whatever case you want to make for something, except perhaps for the simple confession of faith, "Jesus is Lord" (and it took us a couple of hundred years to sort that out), you can't make it based on "2,000 years of church history."

[Diego]

But 2,000 years of Church history, and 25,000 years of HUMAN history, HAVE taught us that in the VAST majority of human societies, Christian and non-, homosexual behaviour by either gender has been considered an extreme offence against said society, generally punished by death or other extreme penalty.

So don't try and go there with me. AT ALL. In fact, as I do recall, that is precisely WHY God created the Hebrew Holiness Code. To separate his Holy People from the people that lived around them. And they were invited to invade Canaan and put it basically to the sword largely due to the horrific religious practices, many of which revolved around sex magick, both hetero- and homo-, but ESPECIALLY the latter.

Charles, don't open your mouth with me on history again. its a bad idea that will only get you looking foolish. And before you get going on the Hebrew Holiness Code (why don't we all wear beards, et al.) the Orthodox Christians (at least the clergy) believe we should. And even in the West, there are is argumentation that the Moral Commandments stand, even  if the Ceremonial ones do not. We've been down that road before.

Charles, for future reference, I am going to take Boris's advice. You are a device that serves no purpose. If you address me again, I shall so remind you, and proceed about my business. Thank you please!

[Richard Johnson]

Mr. Spatz writes:
(2)  Any Reconciled in Christ ELCA congregations possibly celebrating joint communion services with congregations and clergy expelled from the ELCA would certainly have been Okey Dokey, because inclusiveness!  (Unfortunately I cannot find documentation for this at the moment, but I have no doubt these did occur.  They had to have, given the players involved.)
I comment:
No, they were in violation of our policies. The churches San Francisco churches expelled from fellowship lost their right to officially participate in synodical activities. But the synod voted to give them the privilege of participating in some things, although they could not vote at assemblies.

Richard may correct me about this, but as I remember it, each synod assembly near the beginning passed a resolution giving voice and vote to the voting members from those two congregations.

Voice only, not vote.

[Rev Mathew Andersen]

I thought you were a student of history, Diego. If so, you would know that virtually nothing in the church has "lasted" or stayed the same for 2,000 years. Those 2,000 years of church history have included endorsements of morganatic marriage, arranged marriages for minor children, political marriages, and other things which we would not endorse. Those 2,000 years of church history have seen changes in the practice of ordination, church structure, lines of accountability and authority, relationships to civil entities, liturgies, church architecture, approved or disapproved aids to piety (remember the iconoclastic controversy?), and oh, maybe five or six other things that people like to say were set by "2,000 years of church history."
Whatever case you want to make for something, except perhaps for the simple confession of faith, "Jesus is Lord" (and it took us a couple of hundred years to sort that out), you can't make it based on "2,000 years of church history."

Charles, sounds like you need to go back and study history a bit better, especially on the Jesus is Lord thing. 

Church history, however is not the basis for opposing homosexual unions.  Not only is homosexual sex condemned in the Bible when it is mentioned, there is absolutely no endorsement of it anywhere in Scripture.  This, above all, convinces me that gay unions simply are outside of God's design.

As an earlier question whether the LCMS will eventually ordaining women and those in committed gay partnerships - no, I don't think that will happen because that is not the direction we are heading.  I think it much more likely the LCMS will simply fall silent on the issue of gay partnerships by lay people while still maintaining gay marriage as something that would keep a person off the roster of ministers - much as we treat divorce for non-biblical reasons today.

If we do not begin to apply Gospel, we will have no choice but to shut up.

I hate having to introduce myself as a CELIBATE gay man.  The blood of Christ, repentance and faith should be the entrance into the Body of Christ.  As it is now, however, with the lack of Gospel on this issue, celibacy seems to be the requirement for forgiveness for gay people in many pastors' minds.  This is not right and the utter impotence of our current approach to lgbt issues will certainly result in eventual silence if the Gospel is not more effectively and generally applied on this issue.

Right now the LCMS concept of Gospel, at least on lgbt issues, is restricted to forensic justification.  There is little or no discussion on the practical result of that justification - ie, that God now loves us and that the Church ought to do what it can to support us in our Christian walk.  None of that appeared in the documents from the sexuality task force - I think "God's love" was mentioned once.  For the most part, "love" primarily appeared in the phrase "tell the truth in love," which, in the context, tended to mean "keep bashing with the Law until they change."  As long as the is the case, the LCMS will continue to fail in ministry to LGBT people and, eventually, will have no choice but to just shut up.

[DCharlton]

Until someone closer to the situation answers, as I recall, during or just before the 2009 Church Wide Assembly one of the para-denominational organizations, Good Soil, who was advocating in favor of the proposals to authorize the ordination of persons in PALMSGR sponsored a Eucharist (Communion Service) for the delegates to the assembly in which a couple of pastors who had been expelled from the ELCA roster because they were in committed same-sex relationships against the then current rules of the ELCA.  This became somewhat of a cause célèbre because of the involvement on the two pastors who had been removed from the roster.  It was somewhat of a protest against the current rules against pastors being in a same-sex relationship and support for changing the rules which subsequently was done at the assembly.

I think what is particularly relevant to our current discussion is the fact that on at least one of those occasions, an ELCA bishop associated in public worship with a person who was removed from the ELCA roster for disciplinary reasons, even choosing to preside on that occasion.  No disciplinary action followed. 

I leads many to wonder why associating with fellow Lutherans who left the ELCA in a manner consistent with ELCA policies is worse than associating with persons and groups who openly and intentionally violated ELCA policies.

It's the apparent double standard that is the problem.

[SomeoneWrites]

But 2,000 years of Church history, and 25,000 years of HUMAN history, HAVE taught us that in the VAST majority of human societies, Christian and non-, homosexual behaviour by either gender has been considered an extreme offence against said society, generally punished by death or other extreme penalty.

So don't try and go there with me. AT ALL. In fact, as I do recall, that is precisely WHY God created the Hebrew Holiness Code. To separate his Holy People from the people that lived around them. And they were invited to invade Canaan and put it basically to the sword largely due to the horrific religious practices, many of which revolved around sex magick, both hetero- and homo-, but ESPECIALLY the latter.

Charles, don't open your mouth with me on history again. its a bad idea that will only get you looking foolish. And before you get going on the Hebrew Holiness Code (why don't we all wear beards, et al.) the Orthodox believe we should. And even in the West, there are is argumentation that the Moral Commandments stand, even  if the Ceremonial ones do not. We've been down that road before.

Charles, for future reference, I am going to take Boris's advice. You are a device that serves no purpose. If you address me again, I shall so remind you, and proceed about my business. Thank you please!

I can say I'm grateful that you recognize 25,000 years of human history.  It's about 15,000 more than the majority of the LCMS recognizes, but I do commend you for that. 

[Chuck]

I think what is particularly relevant to our current discussion is the fact that on at least one of those occasions, an ELCA bishop associated in public worship with a person who was removed from the ELCA roster for disciplinary reasons, even choosing to preside on that occasion.  No disciplinary action followed.

The year was 2007 (BEFORE the 2009 Assembly), the preacher was Brad Schmeling who, you are correct, had been removed from the roster about 2 month earlier, and the presider was Bishop Margaret Payne, bishop of the New England Synod and chair of the Sexuality Task Force that produced the statement passed in 2009.

The fix was in...

[Diego]

I can say I'm grateful that you recognize 25,000 years of human history.  It's about 15,000 more than the majority of the LCMS recognizes, but I do commend you for that.

Last time I checked, LCMS was not Young Earth Creationist. Literalist, yes. But not Young Earth Creationist. Even I am literalist. But one thing I learned from the Rabbis was the following. The Earth was made BEFORE the Sun and the Moon and the Stars also. YOU CAN'T HAVE 24 HOUR DAYS WITHOUT THE SUN!

I accept that the Fourth, Fifth, Sixth, and Seventh Days were 24 hours in length. But the First, Second, and Third could have been of any length. I am not sure where ELS is on that. Their Statement of Belief is the one I more or less accept, but I reserve for myself the right to differ from it if I so need to in certain aspects.

As far as the Light that shined on the Earth before the Sun was made, the Rabbis teach that it was shining forth from the Glory of the Throne of God. Obviously they weren't referring to a literal chair, but rather, simply the Glory of God. This is not in Scripture, but it makes as much sense as any other explanation.

[Steven Tibbetts]

And at those same assemblies, the groups opposing same sex unions had gatherings, distributed materials, hosted events and tried to convince the voting members of the assemblies to vote a certain way.

Indeed, Charles.  A coalition of ELCA Lutherans who had opposed each other with regard to the Corcordat with the Episcopal Church, Solid Rock Lutherans, organized for the 2005 CWA to oppose goodsoil.org and allow the ELCA's Human Sexuality Task Force to complete its work before a CWA acted. 

Our success there demonstrated that radical Lutherans and Evangelical Catholics (and others) could indeed work together and, at a post-CWA gathering where some of us learned (for the first time) that Solid Rock was finished, the WordAlone Network (which had originally emerged to oppose the Concordat) presented plans for a new Confessing Association within the ELCA.  I raised the first objection to the presented terms, but out of that discussion came a resolve to try to organize what would indeed become the Lutheran Coalition for Reform (Lutheran CORE), which worked as a reasserter voice within the ELCA with special attention to the 2007 and 2009 CWAs.

Unlike goodsoil, neither Solid Rock nor CORE offered their own special eucharist during any of those Churchwide Assemblies, but members at those CWAs attended the Assemblies' daily eucharists.

[Diego]

Father Steven, it sounds, as it often does in my experience in ECUSA, that the more conservative voices played by the rules, and the Canons, and in other words, did things all according to law. Meanwhile, liberals, or shall we say, "Progressives", did what they normally do. If they don't like something, they happily trample it underfoot in the name of their agenda, and then call it "God's good work." Much like how women were ordained against the canons in 1974, and then when the canons were finally changed in 1976, it had to be retroactively justified. The same of course was true with partnered gay clergy in the 1990's. The Episcopal Church just got there a few decades before ELCA, but the same path was followed.

[Diego]

I might as well add that even in the celebrated GREEK society that supposedly honoured male homosexuality so much, there is increasing evidence that is beginning to indicate that, to the contrary, its practice was actually rather limited. Most men were married and had children like in every other society under the sun. More and more are Plato's writings being reinterpreted to exclude the idea of his having been intimate with his teacher Socrates, or his student Aristotle or any others, for example.

And even if we take the traditional view on the subject with the Greeks, one will note that when they were Christianised, that sort of thing ended forthwith, and today, is highly regarded in Greek Orthodox society as extremely distasteful. So there you are. I figured that subject had to be broached, because it WOULD be brought up otherwise.

And although the upper echelons of Roman society did sometimes suffer from this vice, most Romans did regard the practice as quite abhorrent, and let no one think otherwise. They certainly did NOT need the Church to tell them that, although Christianisation by all means helped.