Lutherans call for more dialogue and local option on gay ministers
By John H. Adams, The Layman Online, January 13, 2005
A task force of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America has issued a report with no sweeping recommendations for or against ordaining practicing homosexuals or allowing its pastors to conduct union services for same-gender couples.
The report, noting intense disagreement within the 5-million-member denomination, essentially called for local option to allow congregations and synods to make the decisions.
The report was released through the denomination’s Web site Thursday. It apparently generated a high volume of traffic and long delays to access the report as Lutherans sought to see what the task force would say after a two-year study of issues relating to homosexuals. For the convenience of its readers, The Layman Online downloaded the report and posted it on the Web site of the Presbyterian Lay Committee.
The Lutheran report stopped short of declaring homosexual practice a sin. “At stake here is the deeply serious question of whether or not all homosexual sexual conduct is inherently sinful. Some read the Bible as saying it is. Others read the Bible as saying that sinfulness in sexual relations is a matter of the quality of that relationship: Is it committed, loving, and just, or not?”
“Today,” the report added, “we recognize that human experience and knowledge can change, as it seems to have, in some ways, with respect to our understanding of sexual orientation. Furthermore, the responses the task force received and our own study of scientific research into sexuality convinced us that there is still much that we do not know or completely understand about sexual orientation.”
The sexuality study in the ELCA has been blamed in part for record membership losses totaling 115,000 in 2002 and 2003.
The task force offered no proposals for changing the church’s law. Instead, it urged the denomination to “concentrate on finding ways to live together faithfully in the midst of our disagreements.”
The report added, “It is not helpful to engage in a vote that will produce ‘winners’ and ‘losers’ among faithful Christians.”
The report will be presented to Lutheran delegates at the General Conference this summer. “The members of the task force recognize that, at this time, there is no consensus on these matters within the ELCA and that our differences express deeply held and conscience-bound positions. Approval of this recommendation will be an indication that this church is willing to embrace the commitment to continue mutually respectful dialogue on the issues of human sexuality while seeking to remain engaged in mission together as the ELCA.”
The report noted that the ELCA currently has no legislated policy about blessing same-gender couples. “In this time of conflict and uncertainty, the Conference of Bishops pointed the way by treating such decisions as matters of pastoral care and the task force believes that pastors and congregations can and should be trusted by this church to exercise the wisdom of discretion in their ministry to same-sex couples and their natural and congregational families.”
While Lutheran policy does prohibit the ordination of practicing homosexuals, the task force said that, as “a pastoral response to the deep divisions among us, this church may choose to refrain from disciplining those who in good conscience, and for the sake of outreach, ministry, and the commitment to continuing dialogue, call or approve partnered gay or lesbian candidates whom they believe to be otherwise in compliance with Vision and Expectations and to refrain from disciplining those rostered people so approved and called.”
The report does issue some advice to congregations “who feel conscience bound to call people in committed same-sex unions.” They “should refrain from making the call a media event either as an act of defiance or with the presumption of being prophetic.”