Ripple effect: gay issues surround Lutheran assembly

Christian Century, Sept 6, 2003 by Jean Caffey Lyles

THE EVANGELICAL Lutheran Church in America's top legislative body had a full plate as it convened in Milwaukee in mid-August--major statements or initiatives on evangelism, mission, worship, health care and the Middle East, as well as an invitation to join a new ecumenical group. Though the docket included an interim report by a task force studying sexuality, homosexuality was not expected to be the hot topic at this year's Churchwide Assembly.

But the possibility of an assembly not preoccupied with gay and lesbian issues dissolved as awareness grew of the implications of an action taken a week earlier by the Episcopal Church, one of the ELCA's partners in full communion. The Episcopal General Convention confirmed the election of an openly gay cleric, V. Gene Robinson, as bishop of the New Hampshire diocese.

The ELCA's presiding bishop, Mark Hanson, was peppered with questions at a pre-assembly press conference: How would the Episcopal action influence Lutheran decision-making? How might it alter ecumenical ties? What were Hanson's own views?

The bishop wisely refused to air his own opinions. Until the church changes its standards, the top leader's role is to "uphold present church law" and "to facilitate conversation," he said. He pointed out that the ELCA has five full-communion partners, "our deepest, fullest expression of unity--short of merger."

ELCA leaders keep an eye on other churches' deliberations, Hanson noted, but each church "has autonomy ... in its standards for ordination. We're all at different places." Lutherans will make their own decisions in light of Lutheran understandings, he said.

In 2005, the ELCA will decide whether to change its standard that now allows only avowedly celibate gays and lesbians to be ordained. Also in 2005 the assembly will vote on a proposal to recognize a rite for same-sex blessings--a step that ELCA bishops are on record as opposing (though it is widely assumed that many ELCA pastors quietly perform such blessings with unofficial, improvised liturgies). In 2007, the church will consider a social statement on sexuality.

Some delegates thought the ELCA was putting the cart before the horse, and proposed delaying the consideration of ordaining practicing homosexuals or sanctioning same-sex rites from 2005 until 2007. They argued that such proposals cannot responsibly be acted upon until the ELCA has adopted the social statement on human sexuality as a basis for action. Opponents of delay argued that "we wouldn't refuse to feed the hungry until we had a social statement on hunger in place." The proposal for a delay was rejected.

Several ecumenical guests who brought greetings to the assembly referred either directly or indirectly to the Episcopal action and the ongoing debate within the ELCA. Gerald B. Kieschnick, president of the conservative Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod, spoke about "doctrinal purity," but more genially than his combative predecessors ever did. The Episcopal Church's decision to approve a gay bishop's election, Kieschnick said, "constitutes a momentous break from the Christian church's 2,000-year-long understanding of what the Holy Scriptures teach about homosexual behavior as contrary to God's will" and the qualifications of the pastoral office

Kieschnick cautioned that the ELCA's deliberation on the topic should be "made in the light of the biblical understanding of human sexuality [and ministry]." Any other approach isn't likely to improve the fragile relations between the LCMS and the ELCA, he suggested.

The leaders of the two major U.S. Lutheran bodies want the dialogue beginning in November on "issues that divide us"--the first such effort in several years--to serve to heal wounds and strengthen ties. Hanson, responding to Kieschnick, alluded cryptically to Missouri's own interred debates: "I will pray for you as you deal with issues on which you are not all of one mind." The Missouri Synod, which suffered a breakaway by moderates aim liberals in the 1960s, now finds its extreme right flank getting antsy. Some ultraconservatives are still smarting that the LCMS did not toss a district president out on his ear--though he was disciplined--for consorting with doctrinally impure Christians, as well as with Oprah, Mayor Giuliani, Buddhists, Muslims, Jews, Sikhs and Jains, at a packed Yankee Stadium gathering after 9/11.

Former presiding bishop Herbert Chilstrom, who since retirement has felt free to say exactly what he thinks, accepted an invitation to preach at an unofficial festival service, held at an Episcopal church down the street, which was sponsored by a coalition of groups supporting gays and lesbians in the church. Chilstrom called on the church to allow homosexuals in committed relationships to serve as ELCA pastors. The issue, said Chilstrom, is one on which he had changed his mind over the years. "It's long overdue," he declared.

A thoroughly civil demonstration by advocates for gays took place just outside the fenced-off area reserved for voting members. Men and women stood silently for hours wearing long rainbow-colored scarves around their necks. A call to the police by an unidentified person, wanting that some demonstrators planned to breach the members-only boundaries and get themselves arrested, was judged by some gay advocates as bogus.