On this question I suppose I should declare "I have an interest," because I am a member of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, and, to pile it on, an ordained minister in it. Further, I am a friend and fan--dare one call one's self that?--of the Presiding bishop, Mark Hanson, and the local bishop, Paul Landahl, was my pastor for twenty-two years and remains a cherished friend. With only one exception (heading the committee that drafted a "concordat" between ELCA and the Episcopal Church), I've not been directly involved in ELCA affairs, and feel free to pick and choose my issues.
The gay ordinations theme has not been central in my thinking and work, but circumstances push it ever closer to the center. I often observe in editorials and lectures that every Christian church body in the world is torn apart over issues that one can grasp in two terms, "sex" and "authority."
Sex means the whole biological range, with controversies over in vitro fertilization, contraception, abortion, stem cell research, sexual interactions. Authority means who decides issues in the modern world where we all have so much freedom. The ELCA is far along in what appears to me to be a comprehensive and searching study of "sex-and-your-faith," and is due to report in 2009.
Most leaders would like to see the gay issues folded into and then unfolded from the context of that larger study. So the fact that it came up in 2007 was a kind of accident, born of the fact that here and there and especially in an Atlanta instant, an "out" cleric was disciplined by a committee that felt it had to go with the old guidelines which would rule him out. I don't think the committee by and large was happy with those guidelines and many are trying to get them changed. They were tossed in "boiler-plate" style when the church body was formed a quarter century ago.
So, where were things now? On one side are conscientious members who are torn over the fact that several inches of print in the scriptures are given to criticism of homosexual relations. They don't want these lightly to be pushed aside. On the other side are perhaps an equal number who say that biblical interpretation has never been static. "We" used to support slavery because the Bible did. We (in ELCA etc.) accept pastors, bishops, and lay people who were divorced and are remarried in circumstances that both Jesus and the apostle Paul rule out. So why hold the line on this one point?
What is more, in the case of the Atlanta pastor and several dozen others who are "declared" and perhaps hundreds who are known about but not "out," the observation is out that many or most of these are among the most consecrated, dedicated, and effective pastors, beloved by their flocks and respected by their neighbors. Why throw out so many of the best, especially when we have not made up our minds about the theology and practice as it affects them? That question is what I think framed the indecisive vote: hold the line, but don't be hard-line. The local bishops are supposed to handle the issue very parotally and judiciously. So everything is unresolved.
Hold on to your hats and seats if you want to look in on 2009, when more decision will be called for.
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