Category Archives: Religious News

More about St Paul Rite of Reception

A couple of days ago I blogged about the ELCA Rite of Reception (I erroneously referred to a Rite of Reconciliation) that will take place tomorrow in St Paul, Minnesota. Three pioneering activists in the ELCA gay clergy movement will be formally welcomed onto the roster of ordained clergy of the ELCA in a festive service in St Paul. St Paul Area ELCA Synod Bishop Peter Rogness will preside.

I have received word that both the press conference before the celebratory service as well as the service itself will be webcast. So, for all of you out there who can’t be present in St Paul, you can watch online. The webcast link is available through the website of St Paul Reformation Lutheran Church. The press conference webcast begins at 1:00 pm on Saturday, September 18th to be followed by the Rite of Reception at 2:00 pm.

Minnesota Public Radio recently interviewed ELCA pastors Ruth Frost and Phyllis Zillhart in a piece entitled, Lesbian clergy once expelled, now embraced. The full interview is available online in both voice and text format. Of course, the Saturday Rite of Reception will welcome this lesbian couple onto the roster of ELCA ordained clergy along with Pastor Anita Hill. The interview is excellent, and I commend you to clickthrough to read the full text or to listen to the imbedded audio. What follows are quoted highlights.

Ruth Frost and Phyllis Zillhart didn’t set out to be revolutionaries. But their determination to serve the church as openly gay pastors accomplished what only two decades ago many thought impossible.

Zillhart and Frost met at Luther Seminary in St. Paul in 1984. Zillhart was 27 and fulfilling her childhood dream of becoming a Lutheran minister. She said she hadn’t yet come to terms with her sexuality.

Due to the restrictive ELCA policies then in place, Zillhart was forced to choose between her call to the ministry and her love of another. She brought Frost, her partner, to a meeting with the bishop of the St Paul Area Synod, Lowell Erdahl (now well known as a strong advocate for LGBT clergy in the ELCA), and explained that she could not accept her call because of her relationship with Frost. In the interview with MPR, Zillhart poignantly spoke of that meeting:

“I said, I just can’t live this fractured life that’s cutting me off from the source of integrity, joy, and meaningfulness in this ministry, and it’s sabotaging this relationship”.

Five years later, St Francis Lutheran Church of San Francisco extended a joint call to the lesbian couple despite facing official ELCA censure and ultimately expulsion. See my earlier post for full details including an historic video of those heady days twenty years ago when Frost and Zillhart, along with gay man Jeff Johnson, received extraordinary calls to the ministry. It was the height of the AIDS crisis, and their ministry to the gay community in San Francisco …

was sacred ground, walking the valley of the shadow, and having come from a place of my own sense of feeling previously hidden, disempowered, caught in my own shame,” she said. “At that time there really still was a shame message being given, that you were sick, or evil, or wrong somehow in God’s eyes.”

Their message to AIDS victims was simple. “We’re not here to pity you. You are loved and cherished and respected.”

Since returning to Minnesota five years ago, Pastors Frost and Zillhart have continued to minister to the dying as hospice chaplains.

Again, it is a compelling article, and I encourage you to read or listen to it in its entirety.

St Paul Rite of Reconciliation

Ruth Frost, Anita Hill, and Phyllis Zillhart are three women well known in ELCA circles for their boundary breaking courage. All three are lesbian clergy who bucked the system despite the certainty of official ELCA sanctions and personal opprobriation. Here are snippets from a sermon delivered by Pastor Hill following one public act of civil disobedience against the former ELCA policies toward gay clergy:

There was disapproval raining down on our heads … I heard the tension in the murmurs and groans of many voting members. … We risked our reputations, risked losing the respect of the church we’ve been nurtured in along with our families for generations.

Ruth and Phyllis are a lesbian couple who made national news in 1990 by accepting a joint call to the ministry as co-pastors of St Francis Lutheran Church of San Francisco. In response, the ELCA kicked the congregation out of the denomination, and refused to recognize the ordinations of the two women. This was the beginning of Extraordinary Lutheran Ministries (ELM); by the time of the ELCA Church Wide Assembly of 2009 (CWA09) when the voting members reversed the restrictive LGBTQ ministry policies, ELM had ordained thirty or so extraordinary persons extraordinarily. Here is a video about the historic events of twenty years ago.

Similarly, Pastor Hill made national headlines when she accepted a call to St Paul Reformation Church in 2001. This time, the denomination placed sanctions on the congregation, but it was not expelled from the ELCA. Here is a link to the Minneapolis Star Tribune interview with Pastor Hill dated May 5, 2001. Pastor Hill’s story was the subject of a ninety minute award winning documentary in 2003 entitled “This Obedience.” I couldn’t find a good video about the documentary to post here, but I did find one in which Pastor Hill speaks as an advocate for marriage equality.

Past is prologue, as they say, and the ELCA ministry policies have changed–thanks in no small part to those who have risked “disapproval raining down on our heads”. On Saturday next, these three pioneering women will be formally received onto the roster of ELCA clergy in a public Rite of Reconciliation. Details about this celebratory event may be found on the website of Lutherans Concerned North America (LCNA), ELM’s blog, and the website of St Paul Reformation Lutheran Church where Pastor Hill continues to serve. Pastors Frost and Zillhart have returned to Minnesota (they had attended seminary at Luther in St Paul), and both serve as hospice/elder care chaplains.

The service promises to be festive with many clergy and bishops past and present. St Paul area Synod Bishop Peter Rogness will preside, and the sermon will be delivered by another well known Lutheran LGBTQ activist, Barbara Lundblad, professor of homiletics at Union Theological Seminary. This will be the second highly publicized Rite of Reconciliation in the ELCA. A few months ago, seven LGBTQ clergy were welcomed onto the ELCA roster of ordained clergy in California. Pastor Jeff Johnson, featured in the video along with Pastors Frost and Zillhart, was one of the seven.

Synod of the Baptized

On Saturday, September 18th, the Catholic Coalition for Church Reform (CCCR) will convene a Synod of the Baptized in Minneapolis with expectations for an overflow crowd of nearly 500 persons. The Synod byline is “Claiming our place at the Table.” More information is available on CCCR’s website. The website lists eight progressive Catholic coalition partners with ties to Minnesota, and here is a portion of their self-definition:

We are the Church. In our understanding of Church, all the baptized are one big community of smaller communities, we are all equal, we all participate in different ministries (lay, clergy, bishop), we communicate with one another, and we share a vision and a self-critique. The five words we have been using to summarize this model of Church are community, equality, participation, dialogue, and prophecy. It is a model arising out of Vatican II and seems to us most in line with the Gospel message. It has been promulgated by the Asian bishops and it also fits well with the positive values of our U.S. culture.

There are other models of Church that can be drawn from Vatican II documents, more top down models, and this is what is causing tension in the contemporary Church. We believe that the fate of grown-ups is to live with ambiguity and tension, so we are not daunted by differences in points of view. Our intent is to try to create community based on the model we think best, to remain open to dialogue with people who espouse other models, and to keep focused on the Church’s mission.

The Synod keynote address will be offered by Paul Lakeland:

Paul Lakeland is the Aloysius P. Kelley S.J. Professor of Catholic Studies, and Director of Fairfield University’s Center for Catholic Studies. He has been teaching at Fairfield University since 1981, where he has previously served as Director of the Honors Program and Chair of the Religious Studies Department.

Michael Bayly and Paula Ruddy are board members and key organizers of the Synod. They have been blogging at Progressive Catholic Voice in preparation for the Synod, discussing challenges for the contemporary church, following the list offered by Lakeland in his recent book entitled Church. Lakeland’s list of challenges includes ecumenism, the role of women, scandal of sexual abuse, etc.

Ruddy’s latest post about ecumenism notes the historical role played by Minnesota’s own St John’s Abbey and University:

Minnesotans are familiar with the liturgical movement that began in Europe in the middle of the 19th century from the involvement of St. John’s University and Abbey in Collegeville and the great teachers trained there. [Lakeland] says that in some ways the liturgical movement laid groundwork for the ecumenical movement in crossing denominational lines. It all led up to the great Ecumenical Second Vatican Council of 1962-65.

I was privileged to have studied under Father Godfrey Diekmann at St John’s School of Theology who was one of these important reform figures behind the scenes of Vatican II that Lakeland referred to.

Lutherans and Muslims: 9/11 musings

A week ago, amidst rising anti-Muslim anger,

The Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA) joined a coalition of Christian, Jewish and Muslim leaders to denounce rising anti-Muslim rhetoric and bigotry in the United States, as the country prepares to commemorate the ninth anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

Read the full article here.

Pastor Stephen Bouman once served as bishop of the Metropolitan New York synod of the ELCA. He currently serves in a leadership position of the ELCA Churchwide offices. I met Pastor Bouman earlier this summer when he attended the biennial convention of Lutherans Concerned North America. During that event, he delivered the sermon at the Goodsoil service at Central Lutheran Church in Minneapolis.

With a hat tip to Pastor Clint Schnekloth of Stoughton, Wisconsin, who blogs at Lutheran Confessions, I reprint the September 11th retrospective sermon of Pastor Bouman.

“You shall be called repairers of the breach, restorers of streets to live in.” Isaiah 58:14

This morning, nine years later, at 8:46 am., the time of the first attack, I do what I have done every year since that day. I listen to Brahms Requiem. I am quiet. I remember. Later tonight, I will listen to Bruce Springsteen’s album, The Rising, and toast the end of the day and the new day to come. I am still haunted, as if it were yesterday, by the images, the smoke rising downtown, visible from my office window. The second plane roaring down the Hudson right past our office. The stricken looks on hundreds of people’s faces as we gathered for prayer at noon at the Interchurch Center in Manhattan. I remember dialing the phone frantically, trying to find family, pastors, those we knew who worked in the towers. I remember the collision of feelings and images, the helplessness, the growing terrible panic, best described by this line from Leonard Bernstein’s Mass: “how easily things are broken.”

In the petty squabbles over who can pray at Ground Zero, in the self righteous cruelty of a so-called religious leader threatening to desecrate the resting place of thousands of our neighbors and particular people I have loved by burning a book holy to billions of our neighbors on this planet, I am overcome with anger and powerlessness. Even the good name of the faith I hold dear, is trashed and desecrated at Ground Zero.
I have different memories of this sacred space of obscene suffering, yet sacred struggle. And I have different memories of who should be able to pray where and why.

Two things come to mind and I offer them today. First, when the towers fell, we in New York did, by instinct, what people did all over the world. The spiritual dna hardwired into what it means to be human expressed itself naturally and deeply. We prayed. We prayed together. We prayed in as wide a way as possible. We wanted to talk to our Maker, and wanted the comfort of human solidarity. St. Augustine was right: the soul was made for God, and will not find its rest until it rests in God.

Peter DeVries put this prayerful solidarity beautifully in his book “the Blood of the Lamb”:

“the recognition of how long, how very long, is the mourner’s bench upon which we sit, arms linked in undeluded friendship-all of us, brief links ourselves, in the eternal pity.”

On Wednesday evening, September 13, there was an emotional reunion of religious leaders in New York City at Abyssinian Baptist in Harlem. Pastor Calvin Butts, chair of the Council of Churches of the City of New York had put the interfaith service together. Imams, rabbis, pastors hugged and shared news of loss and nascent efforts at response. As we walked together toward the sanctuary I saw the bright television lights and Robin Williams of Good Morning America interviewing Don Taylor, the Episcopal bishop who is vicar for New York City. We were funneled in that direction by the tv flacks. I just continued to walk toward the sanctuary, empty of any wisdom for the next day’s breakfast. The singing at the liturgy was powerful, the remarks by leaders moving. As I gave a brief homily it occurred to me that Dietrich Bonhoeffer had preached from this pulpit for his friend Adam Clayton Powell. Bonhoeffer himself was a victim of bogus Christianity, a twisted version of spiritual warfare. Later, on the street, I saw some members of our synod and we embraced. I cried for the first time. Prayer enabled that.

Second, Ground zero became a house of prayer for all people. I often saw the holy respect for life at that awful place. When word began to circulate that human remains were found, the word would spread quickly. People would stop what they were doing. The site would gentle down to silence. Hats were removed. People knew that this was holy ground. One of the fire fighters in whose memorial I had participated, was lifted from the ground by his father and brother, both firemen. How dare anyone politicize, pontificate, harass or demonize the prayers of anyone near this sacred site! “My house will be a house of prayer, but you have made it a den of robbers,” said Jesus at another sacred site.

I am remembering that Muslim and Arab neighbors in Brooklyn brought their children to Salaam Arabic Lutheran Church and our neighborhood Lutheran schools for safety. I am remembering that for every broken window or graffiti covered wall of an Arab establishment there were a hundred flowers.

As I watched this morning the names of our brothers and sisters being read at Ground Zero I am proud of my Lutheran family and how we served together with many interfaith and public and private efforts. Our collective work of disaster response started the association of victim’s families. As the last faith based group still attending to 9-11 for the past several years, LDRNY accompanied the families at this sacred space on every anniversary, a “house of prayer for all people.”

For me, this day will always be a day of Lamentations. Kathleen O’Conner put beautifully the deep meaning of lamenting our losses.

“Lamentations is an act of resistance. It teaches us to lament and to become agents in our relationship with God, even if our fidelity only takes the form of telling God and one another our truth….Lamentations crushes false images, smashes syrupy pictures, destroys narrow theologies. It pours cold water upon theologies of a God who prospers us in all things, on a God who cares only about us, on a God who blesses our nation and punishes our enemies, as if we were God’s only people.”

Our Lamentations are not the isolation and depression of wounded entitlement or private grief, but the community at the foot of the Cross moving outward in solidarity and love toward the sorrow of the world God loves.

September figures of ELCA departing congregations

Here is the latest tally according to an email received from the Office of the ELCA Secretary:

As of September 2, the Office of the Secretary has been advised that congregations have taken 529 first votes to terminate their relationship with the ELCA (some congregations have taken more than one first vote). Of these 529 first votes, 362 passed and 167 failed. Synods also have informed the Office of the Secretary that congregations have taken 236 second votes, 222 of which passed and 14 failed.

Is your congregation part of the problem or part of the solution?

Last week, former ELCA presiding bishop Herb Chilstrom asked questions of church leaders opposed to the gay friendly policies of the ELCA. Although the former bishop has taken much abuse for his comments, no critics have offered a response to the question that lingers.

What will you say to your sons and daughters, sisters and brothers and others in your churches when they tell you they are homosexual?

Let me expand the question to include the youth of your community. What influence and effect do your church’s policies have on the gay youth in your community? Do you add to their angst or is your church a sanctuary?

Here in Minnesota, the question has become critical with three gay teen suicides in the last year in a single school district. Today, I received an email about the crisis in gay teen suicides, which I reprint below in its entirety.

One suicide is one too many.

But three suicides in one year, within one school district, all by students who are gay or lesbian? That’s nothing short of an epidemic, and it’s the problem currently facing Minnesota’s Anoka-Hennepin school district.

The most recent incident occurred in July, when a 15-year-old student took his own life. A concert cello player in his school’s orchestra, the student was incessantly bullied because of his sexual orientation.

“I’m not asking you to accept this as a lifestyle for you,” his grieving mother recently said in testimony before the Anoka-Hennepin school board. “I’m only asking that you please make the school safe for gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender students still alive and in this district today.”

Statistics underscore the danger to LGBT students. Nationwide, gay youth are four times more likely to attempt suicide than their heterosexual classmates, in large part because of toxic environments where anti-gay bullying can thrive. Nearly 90% of gay students have experienced harassment in school, and almost two-thirds say they feel unsafe at school because of their sexual orientation or gender identity.

Yet in the Anoka-Hennepin school district, a “neutrality” policy has tied the hands of school administrators and teachers to combat homophobia. This policy was put in place due to the influence of anti-gay groups such as the Parents Action League, which believes homosexuality is a behavior that can be cured, and it requires teachers and school officials to remain silent about subjects pertaining to sexual orientation.
Because of this anti-gay influence, the school board turned down a request by Minnesota’s largest gay rights organization to conduct a district-wide anti-bullying program. And it prevented the district from taking action against two teachers who harassed a student believed to be gay until an investigation by the Minnesota Department of Human Rights intervened and punished the teachers.

Stopping the harassment of people based on their sexual orientation shouldn’t be a liberal or conservative issue. It’s a humanitarian issue, and can literally be a matter of life and death.

The only way to fight the suicide trend in the Anoka-Hennepin school district is by changing the climate in the district. Call on the Anoka-Hennepin school board to stop ignoring the problem and end the policy that prevents school officials from effectively dealing with anti-gay bullying.

Suicide doesn’t occur in a vacuum. As we commemorate National Suicide Prevention Week this week, let us remember that we all have influence over the environment in which harassment thrives. If we sit idly by and do nothing, we’re part of the problem.

Our churches are a significant component of that environment. What message does your church convey to the youth in your community? Amidst all the negative and esteem shattering messages emanating from too many churches, the ELCA should be a beacon of inclusivity and hope, bearers of good news and not of judgment. Our ELCA congregations should be in the forefront of creating a safe environment in our schools and communities, and our church leaders should be leading advocates for the bullied and bruised. If we fail in these responsibilities, we are, indeed, part of the problem.

The unfriendlies found me!

I’ve taken a little abuse from time to time in the conservative blogosphere over posts on this blog, but the volume got amped up this weekend over my Wisdom from Herb Chilstrom article.

The American Lutheran Publicity Bureau is a pan-Lutheran organization with members from both the ELCA and the Missouri Synod (LCMS). It sponsors the Lutheran Forum and the ALPB Forum online, which is not a blog but a bulletin board forum. Those who register can comment on posts or even initiate a thread, especially under the “Your Turn” category. I don’t spend a lot of time there, but I do occasionally catch a link into my own blog, and I follow it back only to learn how poorly regarded I am by the ALPB folks.

Here’s a clue as to the general attitude of ALPB contributors: An entry entitled “Liturgical boundaries, the role of women” posted yesterday has already received 544 replies and 6,323 views, but an entry entitled “Bragging about an ELCA Church” posted a few days ago has not received a single response, and only 216 folks bothered to read it.

In any case, seems I touched a nerve with my post about Herb Chilstrom’s three questions to those who have departed the ELCA, but certainly not as much as the vitriol directed against Herb himself. For instance, several (including one of three ALPB administrators, Richard Johnson) thought it great sport to joke about Herb’s present position as Director of the Linnaeus Arboretum at Gustavus Adolphus College coupled with Herb’s article comment about being relieved. Johnson’s snarky comment, befitting a Jr High School boy’s toilet humor, was:

Too bad. I’ve always enjoyed that arboretum. He’ll likely end up killing the trees. But he’ll be relieved; fewer to tend to.

Most commenters twisted Bishop Chilstrom’s closing statement. Herb said he was saddened by the departures but also relieved that those remaining could now get on with the mission of the church. Many commenters overlooked the first part of his statement while indicting the latter, including the use of potty humor masquerading as rational discourse. How clever!

Did any actually attempt to answer Bishop Chilstrom’s three questions? Not really.

First, what is it about sex that pushed you over the edge?

Second, why are you organizing new churches?

Third, what will you say to your sons and daughters, sisters and brothers and others in your churches when they tell you they are homosexual?

In particular, the silence in response to his third question spoke eloquent testimony. Ministering to the gays in our midst is not that important to them.

After a week’s worth of Chilstrom bashing, someone identified as “Bergs” brought up my blog yesterday. Bergs has a byline on the ALPB forum, battle for truth, justice & the American way, which is a direct quote from the 50’s Superman TV show. Hmmm. One wonders if Bergs can leap tall buildings in a single bound.

Thanks to Bergs’ link to my blog, my article and my psychological shortcomings and even my wretched novel became the grist for ALPB for the next few pages of comments.

the blogist is into power and control.

Said one, and another added,

by [his] own theory, [he is a member] of the “privileged class” … a convenient diversion. It helps the blogger to not deal with a stark reality: His views are not universally accepted and acclaimed as right.

It’s all true. I seek a power base as an alternate lay delegate to the next Church Wide Assembly, and my views are definitely not accepted by those who regularly follow the ALPB forum.

A Pastor Charlton reminded the others that I was the author of a novel, but I didn’t receive the recognition for the brilliance I thought I deserved. That’s true, too. Awhile ago, a friend joked that the best publicity the novel could receive would be criticism from an esteemed conservative such as Charles Dobson of Focus on the Family fame. Ah, pastor Charlton, if only you were someone of such import; nevertheless, I would be pleased to have you do a book review—please order your copy here and then you can make informed comments about the novel after you read it.

The same Pastor Charlton also suggested that Bishop Chilstrom and I each derived our foundational ideology from Karl Marx.

Another openly wondered whether my criticisms of CORE, LCMC, and WordAlone were really self-projections. Charlton again chimed in, suggesting that I have “died to my whiteness”, and I am therefore an honorary person of color. I guess he could say, I’ve “died to my straightness”, and I’m therefore an honorary gay.

The blog roll of Otagosh of New Zealand includes a special category, Blogs I love to hate, consisting of two bloggers, including the pompous Paul McCain of the LCMS who loves to trash the ELCA, as well as any vestiges of moderation in his own denomination. He is the Rush Limbaugh of Lutherandom. McCain wades into the Chilstrom thread with the following piece of brilliance, although he refers to current Bishop Hanson and not retired Bishop Chilstrom (blowhards never miss an opportunity to say their piece even if it is irrelevant to the discussion at hand):

the pious clap-trap he continues to mouth as front-man for the left-wing, liberal, homosexual and feminist agendas that have taken control of the ELCA and the other large state churches in Europe.

Lest I give the impression that everyone over at ALPB Forum is a boogeyman, Pastor Charles Austin had the last word (as I write this on Monday evening—I’m sure there will be plenty more venom to come). As the lone voice crying in the wilderness, Pastor Austin had earlier defended Bishop Chilstrom and me, and he wrapped up the thread with this response to McCain.

keep on predicting and praying for an apocalypse in international Lutheran relations, for doom and gloom is the coin of your realm and you obviously seek riches.
Some of us have greater hopes for partnership in the Gospel and greater trust in the fellowship of believers granted not by your permission or with your approval, but by the Holy Spirit.

Although McCain may be the most outspoken and outrageous of the naysayers, why is it that some persist in cheerleading the troubles of the ELCA? Pastor Austin’s initial response to the thread raises the best question:

So those who disagree with the ELCA can call our leaders liars and political operatives, accuse them of abandoning the Bible, and worse; but a relatively mild editorial such as the one in question gets people upset?

I don’t get it.

Marriage Equality quote of the day

Marriage is an institution that strengthens and stabilizes society. It is an institution that has the capacity to bring profound joy and happiness to people and it is a matter of equality and keeping faith of one of the charters of the nation, the right to live your life.

What left wing politician made this radical statement? Were the attendees at a high profile marriage equality fund raising party the usual suspects, the bleeding heart liberals?

Actually, no. Turns out some big shot Republicans are getting on board:

I think there is a growing mass of people in Republican politics who are fundamentally sick and tired about being lectured to about morality and how to live your life by a bunch of people who have been married three or four times and are more likely to be seen outside a brothel on a Thursday night than being at home with their kids… There is a fundamental indecency to the vitriol and the hatred directed against decent people because of their sexuality. People have reached a critical mass with this.

According to Sam Stein’s blog, the prominent Republicans who are publicly backing marriage equality include former McCain campaign manager Steve Schmidt, former Bush campaign manager and Republican National Committee chair Ken Mehlman (who recently came out of the closet), former New Jersey governor Christie Todd Whitman, Mary Cheney (the lesbian daughter of former VP Dick Cheney), and Indiana Governor Mitch Daniels. Of course, we previously blogged about the influential Republican lawyer (Ted Olson) behind the court case challenge to Prop 8 that is working its way through the court system.

But then there is the little matter of the Tea Party–the angry, gun-toting, populist, nativist, anti-Muslim, homophobic, racist, modern version of the “Know Nothings”* who are threatening to take over the Republican party, if they haven’t already done so. Time will tell if the Republican big tent can contain the bloody wrestling match between the establishment Republican elites and what is euphemistically referred to as “the base”.

*”The Know-Nothing movement was a nativist American political movement of the 1840s and 1850s. It was empowered by popular fears that the country was being overwhelmed by German and Irish Catholic immigrants, who were often regarded as hostile to Anglo-Saxon values and controlled by the Pope in Rome. Mainly active from 1854 to 1856, it strove to curb immigration and naturalization, though its efforts met with little success. Membership was limited to Protestant males of British lineage over the age of twenty-one.” Wikipedia

Wisdom from Herb Chilstrom

Since the formation of the ELCA in 1988, the denomination has been shepherded by three presiding Bishops: Herb Chilstrom, H George Anderson, and currently Mark Hanson. Herb and wife Corrine now reside in retirement in St. Peter, Minnesota. On August 26th, Herb penned an op-ed piece for the newspaper in nearby Mankato—his response to the formation of the North American Lutheran Church (NALC) as a splinter from the ELCA. Bishop Chilstrom asked three rhetorical questions of those who have departed the ELCA for NALC, Lutheran Congregations in Mission for Christ (LCMC), or another church body.

First, what is it about sex that pushed you over the edge?

The retired Bishop wonders why some elevate questions of sexual behavior over more momentous issues such as abortion, war and peace, and the death penalty. What is it about the sexual behavior of others that causes such a visceral outcry and schismatic response?

[Other issues seem] far more serious than getting upset about two adults of the same gender who, like most of us straight folks, chose to live peacefully in a life-long relationship — the only such pairing the ELCA has approved. Like their straight neighbors, they live peacefully, go to their jobs every morning, pay their taxes, volunteer for good causes and, in many cases, worship with us. What is it that upsets you about this?

Ah, the straw that broke the camel’s back comes the response. The various dissident groups go to great lengths to suggest that LGBT issues were merely the tipping point that reflects a lengthy ELCA drift away from tradition and traditional Biblical interpretations. To be sure, LCMC was formed nearly a decade ago, and many LCMC congregations departed the ELCA prior to CWA09 (but the LCMC has doubled in size since CWA09).

Here is my take. CWA09 resolutions were not the tipping point but the opportunity seized upon by long time ELCA detractors to scare the the folks in the pews into following their leadership. For much of the hierarchy of WordAlone, CORE, NALC, and even LCMC, their disaffection with the ELCA goes back to the very beginning, and it can all be summed up in one word—CONTROL. This blog has previously critiqued the comments of dissident theologians Nestingen, Braaten, and Benne who in similar ways lamented the egalitarian impulses of the newly formed ELCA thereby diminishing the power of the male elites. Over the years, this coterie repeatedly attempted, unsuccessfully, to achieve leadership status within the ELCA.

But then came CWA09. They saw their chance and they took it. CWA09 handed the dissidents a cultural wedge issue that they could use to drive ELCA congregants and congregations away from the ELCA and into their own organization, under their control. So, Herb, it is not about sex. Nor is it truly about Biblical interpretation. Here the Missouri Synod critique of the new Lutheran church bodies makes sense—if these new organizations truly want to be Biblical traditionalists, why do they allow female clergy? Or divorced clergy? The existence of female and divorced clergy within their ranks puts the lie to the claim that it is all about strict and traditional Biblical interpretation. No, Herb, it is something else. It is all about power and control.

Here is Bishop Chilstrom’s second question:

Second, why are you organizing new churches?

Surely there must be one among them [existing Lutheran bodies] that would welcome you. Why go to all the unnecessary expense of setting up an entirely new structure with officers, boards, committees and institutions?

This might be a good place to interject some basic data about the numerous small and uniformly conservative Lutheran Church bodies that exist in the US in open criticism of the more-progressive ELCA. For comparison, the ELCA has over 10,000 congregations and over 4 million members (statistics for each derived from Wikipedia or the organization’s website)

Missouri Synod (LCMS) 2.4 million members
Wisconsin Synod (WELS) 1,300 congregations
Lutheran Congregations in Mission for Christ (LCMC) 500 congregations
Free Lutheran Churches (AFLC) 270 congregations
Lutheran Brethren 123 Congregations
North American Lutheran Church (NALC) 18 congregations.

Bishop Chilstrom assumes the reason why LCMC and NALC don’t join one of the other bodies is because LCMC and NALC will continue to ordain women as their legacy from the ELCA. I know the LCMC is attempting to to position itself as the moderate middle of Lutherandom with the more progressive ELCA on the left and the more conservative others on the right. There would also appear to be an organizational difference between LCMC (congregational autonomy) and NALC (a denominational structure). I have previously characterized LCMC as a website and a mailing list. Their organizational paid staff is minimal. No seminaries, no colleges, no candidacy committees, no disaster relief, no missionary support, no … fill in the blank. It is merely an affiliation of like minded congregations that are free to do their own thing with minimal organizational support or control.

There’s that word again. CONTROL. See the answer to number 1, Herb.

Here is Bishop Chilstrom’s final question:

Third, what will you say to your sons and daughters, sisters and brothers and others in your churches when they tell you they are homosexual?

This is the nub of it. We can argue about “gay issues” till we’re blue in the face, but we miss the human element. This not some academic argument; this is about real lives, children of God, baptized brothers and sisters. I asked last week how many church bulletins proclaim “all are welcome”—and really mean it.

“What will you say to your sons and daughters?” Herb asks.

Will you offer empty platitudes (hate the sin but love the sinner)? Will you “pray the gay away?” Will you offer junk science such as reparative therapy that will only deepen their pain? Will you turn your back or offer an embrace?

Retired Pastor Duane from my congregation tells the story of the gay high school boy who came out to him and then asked Duane to accompany him when he came out to his parents.

Mom came out of the kitchen, wiping her hands on her apron, with a worried look on her face when the pair arrived in the driveway.

“Mom, I’m gay,” the boy said.

“Is that all?” and mom smiled with relief and gave her son a hug.

They were still in the driveway when dad arrived in the pickup with mud flaps and a rifle slung in the rear window. He exited the cab with a mixed expression of anger and concern.

“Dad, I’m gay”, the son said.

Dad’s face drained of all color, and his eyes turned black. He looked at his son, his wife, Pastor Duane, and back at his son. Then, his eyes moistened and his lips quivered.

“I don’t understand,” he said, his voice cracking, “and I probably never will. But, you’re my son, and I love you.” Father and son fell into each other’s arms, shaking and sobbing.

This isn’t about doctrine, or confessionalism, or Biblical interpretation, and it ought not be about control. This is about grace. This is about trust. Let go and let God. Listen to the wisdom of Herb Chilstrom:

I am both sad and relieved that you are leaving. Sad, because this was not what we hoped for when the ELCA was formed some 22 years ago. We believed we could be a church where we held to the essentials and allowed for differences on non-essentials.
But I am also relieved. Now those of us who remain in the ELCA can get on with our primary mission of telling everyone — everyone — “Jesus loves you. You are welcome in this church.”

North American Lutheran Church spawned by CORE

The long awaited and much ballyhooed Convocation of Lutheran CORE is underway in Grove City, Ohio. At the Convocation, eighteen former ELCA congregations have banded together as charter members of the CORE created Lutheran denomination auspiciously called The North American Lutheran Church (NALC).

Eighteen.

Newly elected NALC bishop Paull Spring predicts the new denomination will soon grow to as many as two hundred congregations. Even this optimistic view seems a far cry from “A Reconfiguration of North American Lutheranism”, yet the press release yesterday persisted in that hyperbole and added the prideful presumption that the actions of CORE were the Lord’s doing:

Our Lord’s reconfiguring of the Lutheran landscape not only in North America, but worldwide, is breathtaking and exciting.

Eighteen.

Spring suggested that the ELCA gay friendly resolutions of a year ago were merely the tipping point, and it was the ELCA’s long term drift away from Scripture that is really the issue. According to the Associated Press report on the Convocation and an interview with Bishop Spring,

He gave as an example the ELCA’s use of inclusive language that strips male references to God — such as “Father” and “Son” — replacing them with words like “Creator” and “Savior.”

Did he really say that? Did he really claim that “Creator” is non-scriptural? Did he really argue that “Savior” is non-scriptural? The verses that prove the contrary are too numerous to list, but here are a couple of obvious examples. Surely the recycled Bishop is familiar with Romans 1, perhaps the favorite “clobber passage” of those who would use Scripture to bash gays, where Paul nobly references “the Creator”. And what about those favorites of churchly misogynists, the Pastoral Epistles–surely the Bishop knows these well? How did he miss the numerous references there to the “Savior”? What kind of Biblical parsing is the Bishop up to?

In this case, at least, it would appear that the arrogance of Biblicism is matched by its incompetence.