I am not trying to stir the pot, here. I think it is a legitimate topic to discuss as long as people are civil. Recently, not far from where I live, a chapter of the Evangelical Lutheran Church of America (ELCA) held a vote to decide whether gays or lesbians could be ordained as ministers in their churches. The vote was very close -- 225 against and 223 for. I would like to begin serious discussion on the topic.Here is one of the articles from the paper:"Northwest Minnesota Synod votes down gay clergy proposalBy a margin of just two votes, the Northwest Minnesota Synod of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America gave a thumbs-down Sunday to recommendations that would open the door for non-celibate gays to serve in the clergy.“That’s about as razor’s edge as you can get,” synod Bishop Larry Wohlrabe said.Delegates to the synod assembly at Concordia College in Moorhead voted 225-223 to call on the ELCA to reject the proposals in an ELCA task force report on ministry policies. If passed by the Churchwide Assembly, the proposals would allow homosexuals in lifelong, monogamous relationships to be rostered as clergy. The Churchwide Assembly meets in August.“I’m not surprised that it was close,” Wohlrabe said. “I’m a little amazed that it was that close.”Delegate Mariah Ellefson was disappointed by the vote.“I personally believe that gays should have the right to do whatever they feel and that they should be part of the church,” Ellefson said.One delegate, who said several of his family members were gay, told the assembly that God’s challenge is to “love the sinner and hate the sin.”Delegates voted 256-202 against a resolution that would have urged the church to reject a proposed social statement on human sexuality. The report, “Human Sexuality: Gift and Trust,” addresses same-sex relationships, among other issues related to sexuality. The results are similar to those from the Eastern North Dakota Synod assembly earlier this month. That body voted 187-167 against a resolution asking the ELCA to approve the recommendations on rostering non-celibate gay clergy. The Eastern North Dakota Synod passed a resolution calling for the church to adopt the report on human sexuality."And another:"The church must welcome gays and lesbians without reservation and make every effort to do so without causing division among its members, say Herbert Chilstrom, former ELCA presiding bishop, and Lowell Erdahl, former St. Paul Area Synod bishop. Their comments echoed the conversations during an April 4-6 conference, "Sexuality, Spirituality, and the Church," at St. Olaf College, Northfield, Minn.The conference was funded with a grant from the Philip N. Knutson Endowment. Knutson, a gay man, St. Olaf graduate and pastor who served in the ELCA Division for Higher Education and Schools, established the fund before his death in 1994.Chilstrom told the 240 participants: "I don't want to do anything to destroy the unity of our ELCA. So that raises the question for some, 'Why would you spend time trying to open minds in an area where you know there is going to be division and disunity and even potential for schism?' The only answer I can give to that question is justice. Slowly but surely I came to the conclusion that there were significant numbers of people in the ELCA who were being pushed aside, ignored and in some cases deliberately discriminated against."Scripture and science must be handled carefully in church discussions of homosexuality, Erdahl cautioned. "I don't think [the Old and New Testament] texts say anything about homosexuality as we understand it today," he said, adding that the Bible doesn't seem to address the issue of gays and lesbians in committed relationships.David Fredrickson, a professor of New Testament at Luther Seminary, St. Paul, Minn., took issue with interpretations of Romans 1 that take Paul's mention of "natural" sexual relations as only including male-female pairings."Conservative interpreters see that word 'natural' and their minds are taken back to Genesis 1, where God made humans male and female," he said, "but the Greek word for natural that Paul is using doesn't actually occur in the Septuagint, which is what Paul would have been familiar with." (For a related article see Homosexuality, Science and the 'Plain Sense' of Scripture; Eerdmans, 2000).Hope and concernAmong the 240 clergy and lay conference-goers were students from ELCA colleges. Jonathan Welch, 20, a student at Concordia College, Moorhead, Minn., said the conference gave him hope.But Valerie Veo, a St. Olaf sophomore who wore a "Straight But Not Narrow" button, said she was concerned that the ELCA's approach to studying sexuality was clinical and abstract. "We lose sight of what it really means and that it has ramifications for real people and real lives," she said.The church has always had difficulty talking about sexuality, said speaker Barbara Lundblad, an ELCA pastor and associate professor at Union Seminary, New York City. "We've had to check our bodies at the door for centuries," she said, citing the influence of Gnostic dualism on early Christian teachings.Several speakers argued that the church should encourage and bless committed relationships among gays and lesbians. Lundblad took issue with the idea that recognizing such unions could lead to the degradation of marriage. "Alcohol, economics, abuse, family difficulties, religious quarrels-we could probably name 50 things that are really damaging to marriage," she said. "But homosexuality is rarely the problem."Ordination of gay and lesbian people in committed relationships was another theme that surfaced repeatedly during the event. ELCA policy forbids such ordinations. Chilstrom noted that the ELCA has no ban on homosexuals in committed relationships serving as organists, Sunday school teachers and lay ministers, yet it denies them pastoral appointments.Anita Hill, a lesbian in a committed relationship, spoke about her long, persistent effort to gain ELCA ordination. The ELCA doesn't recognize her irregular ordination in 2001 by St. Paul-Reformation Lutheran Church, St. Paul. Hill, whose story is the subject of the documentary THIS obedience that was screened at the conference, indicated she sometimes is skeptical about the ELCA's ability to reconcile matters of gay ordination and blessings. "But God's love is too powerful for doubts to win the day," she added.-- Some of the observations by the 'scholars and experts' in the second article are what I find troubling.
Evangelical Lutherans May Soon Ordain Gays And Lesbians
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So this means nothing to anyone?Either you support this or you don't. There really is no fence to sit on.Lev. 18:22, Lev. 20:13, Jude 1:7, 1 Cor. 6:9,
Well this is disappointing, I must say.No one cares about this enough to either defend or critique it.An issue that is only going to become larger and more prevalent in society and be used as a springboard for additional "new interpretations" about what God "really meant" in his Word and no one has anything to say.Sad, really.
Actually I do remember starting a thread about this a couple years ago on here. The reason you're not seeing the reaction is because the two camps are pretty much set in their ways. The camp here at CB is that the Bible is very concise on the subject, both Old and New Testament. And, for the most part, there is agreement about this.As far as what is always used as an argument against 1 Romans, I'll be happy for any truly learned scholar to take it back to the Greek. The word is physikos and I don't think it takes a scholar of Greek to guess at what word physikos is related to in our modern vocabulary. The root of the word is physis which is again related to the same obvious. Therefore, the word is correctly rendered natural, and could not mean anything but. Paul is indeed saying they took the natural way it was supposed to work and perverted it, period.
This is sad that it came to such a close vote in any church. It is an abomination. Maybe the definition of that word needs to be looked up by the ELCA. I didn't respond because I don't know too much about the ELCA and I figured most people here believe what the bible says about homosexuality and not popular opinion. On the one hand we have the people who are pro-gay that say 'love the sinner but hate the sin'. Then we have the other pro-gays that say they can't help it, they were born that way and cannot change. I don't believe people are born as an abomination in the sight of the Lord. I think they choose abomination. Someone that is choosing abomination should not lead the church, IMO.
What concerns me the most is that if a Gay person, loved by God, is put in charge of teaching the young and the new to Christ about the scriptures, do they just gloss over the scriptures condemning this lifestyle, say the Bible translation is wrong, or that God likely no longer means what he said?In any case, it makes brittle the foundation for all future scripture teaching.
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