Have the LGBT inclusive actions of the ELCA affected you?  Someone close to you?

Project Light 2010 is a new blog that has been created for sharing personal stories.  Check out the experiences of “healing, hope, and transformation” and add your own.

There has been a lot of publicity and conversation around the August 2009 ELCA Churchwide Assembly vote on human sexuality, and most of it has been negative. I however, am someone who has been deeply affected in a positive way by the August 2009 ELCA Churchwide Assembly vote.

And I KNOW there are thousand of you, who like me, have been affected in a positive way because of our church’s decision. You have compelling, Spirit-filled stories of hope, healing and transformation in your life and congregations because of our recent ELCA decision to open our minds, hearts and doors to all people. So, LET’S START TALKING ABOUT IT!

This is the intention of PROJECT LIGHT 2010.

PROJECT LIGHT 2010 is a collection of stories of healing, hope and transformation in the lives of individuals and ELCA congregations because of the August 2009 ELCA Churchwide Assembly vote on human sexuality to include gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender people as full partners and participants in ministry.

PROJECT LIGHT 2010 is a movement to shed light on the many ways God is at work for justice and equality in our world.

PROJECT LIGHT 2010 is a response of God’s hope to the ever-present, sometimes dominant human undercurrent of fear and depression in our country and our church.

PROJECT LIGHT 2010 is you and me sharing our story, raising up, shouting to the hills, celebrating, bringing to light God’s promise of love for all people.

PROJECT LIGHT 2010 is positive perspectives. It is not a forum for debate. Please do respect the intention of this project. Thanks!

So…..What is your Light Story? Short and sweet, what is your vignette? Together let’s see how many positive stories we can circulate throughout Epiphany (season of LIGHT) and beyond! Thanks for sharing your COMMENTS!!!

Yesterday, I happened upon the blog of an ELCA pastor who blogs at My Lutheran Roots.  His post indicated that he was disappointed by and disagreed with the ELCA church wide assembly LGBT decisions, but leaving the ELCA is not an option for him, even though he attended the Lutheran Core Convocation in September. 

The subject of his post was a chance meeting with a lesbian couple in a social context.

Imagine my surprise when I realized they were looking for a congregation that would accept them as they are, two attractive young ladies in a loving relationship with one another.  They were not shy about telling me about this as well.

I cannot deny that their feelings for one another at this time are real.  Herein lies the rub.

Although the pastor assumed this relationship was sinful because that was how he interpreted the Bible, something clearly gnawed at him.  He was wrestling.  He concluded, “This, my friends, is a work in progress.”

Coincidentally, Pastor Erma Wolf, one of the activists behind Lutheran CORE, who is part of the team of CORE bloggers, offered a similar blog post that indicated that she was also wrestling with the evidence of committed relationships in conflict with the assumptions of her “confessional” Lutheranism.

I’m not sure that either pastor is nearing a conversion regarding their LGBT attitudes, yet I find their acknowledged wrestling to be interesting, if not healthy.  In any case, I left a lengthy comment on each blog post.  My comment was published on My Lutheran Roots, but Pastor Wolf chose not to publish the comment on her blog, Satis Est.

I reprint my comment below in slightly modified form.

What is at issue is a paradigm and what is required is a paradigm shift in thinking. When one starts with an assumption and that assumption is an unquestioned baseline, even in the face of facts to the contrary, then cognitive dissonance results.

Homosexual behavior is wrong. That is the unquestioned assumption. After all, that’s what Paul said, didn’t he? So, despite the mutually supportive, loving relationship between two women that [the pastor behind My Lutheran Roots] encountered, the assumption prevails in spite of the facts. The lives of these two women, and millions of other gay men and women, are fuller, richer, and more meaningful because they have found someone to share  their life and love with. Should that not be a Christian ideal despite Paul’s culturally conditioned words? Do not Pauline epistles also support slavery? Submissive women?  If we can accept a paradigm shift in thinking about slavery and sexism despite 1st century Pauline writings, why not same-gender relationships?

The issue is deeper than simply suggesting we all sin, which is true, of course, but which sours the discussion because it again postulates the assumption that this loving relationship is sinful. Why should that be so when all the evidence suggests that, on balance, this relationship produces more good than bad?

No, the issue is much deeper. Christian ethics are much deeper–and harder than many would acknowledge. The question is, what is sin in the first place? How do we probe such questions? Agreed, we start with the Bible, but are Paul’s words the end of the discussion? Are there not deeper streams to Holy Scripture found in a gospel message of inclusion? Do not the words of Christ and the two commands offer a balancing test for determining Christian ethics, rather than understanding the Bible to be a mere cookbook of moral recipes? Don’t think, don’t ponder, don’t wonder, don’t wrestle–just look it up.  We do the Bible a disservice by making it less than it is, and then we compound the error by accusing others who dare to probe deeper of being unbiblical.   More nuanced, yes.  Willing to wrestle with the text, yes. Willing to question and apply God’s gift of reason, yes. Unbiblical-–thank you, no.

It’s hard mental gymnastics, but try putting the assumption aside for the moment. Consider the issue of the sinfulness, or lack therof, of the relationship of these two women without allowing a preconceived assumption to control. Don’t use the assumption to prove the assumption.

There is a paradigm shift underway in the ELCA and much of Christendom. Instead of dismissing this seismic sea-change as unthinking, uncritical, unbiblical, and unchristian, consider the possibility that this is a situation analogous to the Copernician revolution, which the church long resisted. Based on the unquestioned assumption that God’s earth must be the center of the universe, despite evidence to the contrary, the church of their day ostracized Copernicus and Galileo. Hopefully, it will not take the church of our day as long to come to the realization that the human condition that is capable of loving another deeply and intimately–mutual support, mutual encouragement, mutual uplifting–is as much a gift from God to our gay and lesbian brothers and sisters as it is to me and my wife of nearly 40 years.

Are we not being selfish by claiming such a heavenly gift to be for straight folks alone? 

Thanks for listening, and I encourage all to listen to the voice of change. Perhaps it is not merely the clamor of popular culture, as some would claim, but the restless and roiling ruah, pneuma, and Espiritu Sanctu of Pentecost.

Let all who have ears to hear, hear.

Last summer I had email correspondence with Pastor Susan Strouse of First United Lutheran Church of San Francisco.  This was one of the congregations expelled from the ELCA in the 90’s for calling a  pastor in defiance of the ELCA policies of the day regarding gay clergy.  My email correspondence with Pastor Susan was for the purpose of obtaining background info on First United and Pastor Jeff Johnson, the gay pastor at the center of the 90’s controversy, which I used for a blog post on August 14th.

Here is a lengthy quote from my earlier blog post:

In 1988, Jeff Johnson received his Master of Divinity degree from Pacific Lutheran Theological Seminary.  Following graduation, he worked for Lutheran Social Services of Northern California, dealing with the exploding HIV/AIDS epidemic.  Then, he received a call to the ordained ministry from First United Lutheran Church of San Francisco, but he was ineligible according to the ELCA policy that required a pledge of life-long celibacy from gay and lesbian pastors.

Nevertheless and despite dour warnings from the synod bishop, “Pastor Johnson [along with a lesbian couple, Ruth Frost and Phyllis Zillhart, who were called to St Francis Lutheran of San Francisco] was ordained extra ordinem on January 20, 1990 at a service at historic St. Paulus Lutheran Church in San Francisco that was attended by over 1000 persons, with participation by over 70 clergy members.”  First United Lutheran and St Francis Lutheran were placed on trial and expelled from the ELCA in 1995. 

In 1999, Pastor Johnson accepted a new call as Pastor of University Lutheran Chapel and as Lutheran Campus Pastor of the University of California, Berkeley.  University Lutheran Chapel received a “letter of censure” from the synod bishop at that time, but no further action has been taken by the ELCA or the regional synod.  Pastor Johnson continues to serve in that call.

First United Lutheran Church of San Francisco has thrived in its ministry to the LGBT population in its community, and continues to maintain informal ties with the ELCA.  Pastor Susan Strouse, the present pastor of First United Lutheran, has advised me in private correspondence that the congregation continued to be part of their ELCA conference and Pastor Jeff Johnson actually served as conference Dean for a period!  Pastor Strouse continues to be ELCA rostered clergy although she is technically “on leave from call” (and not accruing pension benefits?).  She is also rostered with Extraordinary Lutheran Ministries (ELM).  The current bishop has expressed interest in resolving this festering issue, but “much bridge building and healing would have to take place,” Pastor Strouse says.

I bring this up at this time because of news that Pastor Susan’s status as “on leave from call” with the ELCA has been changed.  The Sierra-Pacific synod now recognizes her call from First United, and she is back on the ELCA roster as “on call”.  We offer our congratulations to Pastor Susan, and our thanks to Bishop Mark Holmerud and Associate Bishop Nancy Feniuk Nelson for righting an earlier wrong.  During the church wide assembly, I had the pleasure of several delightful conversations with Associate Bishop Nancy.

Of course, this resolution follows from the ELCA church wide assembly decisions last summer.

This information comes via a blog post from Extraordinary Lutheran Ministries (ELM), which is the organization that stepped in and offered rostering and other support to Pastor Susan and a couple dozen others who were previously non-rostered by the ELCA.

According to the mission statement of ELM posted on their blog:

Our vision is to create, empower, and sustain a growing number of faith communities that are committed to the full participation of people of all sexual orientations and gender identities in the life and ministry of the Lutheran church.

American Lutheranism was imported by northern European immigrants, and the ELCA has long been dominated by blonde, blue-eyed folks whose favorite cuss word was “uff da”.  The ELCA has been intentional about expanding that base with inner city and minority outreach programs, but the effort suffered a setback with the departure of the Oromo group of churches, consisting of immigrant and first generation Africans, who share the strong homophobia of that continent (see the Ugandan legislative effort to execute gays).

Yet, there are evidences of the ELCA becoming more diverse. 

The ELCA departures consist primarily of those of northern European stock with a longing for an earlier day (not all—most of us of northern European ancestry don’t pine for the past).  A person commented on an earlier post here that she asked a question at a congregational gathering featuring a dissident speaker (LCMC representative) that received a telling answer. 

“What is an orthodox Lutheran?” she asked. 

The speaker responded, “your grandmother’s church”.

The lady who posed the question is 72 with one grandmother born in Norway in 1864 and the other born in Germany in 1882.   My point is merely that since the departures tend to represent a singular ethnic/cultural background, those who remain will naturally tend to be more diverse.

There is news out of the twin cities of Hmong ELCA ordinations.  A Star Tribune news article reported on the ordination of Minneapolis’ first Hmong pastor (St Paul already had a Lutheran Hmong pastor):

A Lutheran congregation in Minneapolis is celebrating Christmas with its new minister, the city’s first Hmong Lutheran pastor.

Nengyia Her was ordained Sunday as a minister in the Minneapolis Synod of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America. He was also installed as pastor of Luther Memorial Lutheran Church in north Minneapolis.

The ELCA will certainly become more gay and less straight.  That may be what has the Lutheran CORE types squirming. 

I was a Goodsoil volunteer at the ELCA church wide assembly last summer promoting marriage equality and gay clergy, and I wore a distinctive prayer shawl.  During lunch one day, a pastor from a rural Pennsylvania congregation sat next to me, and his body language betrayed his unease at sitting next to a person he assumed was gay (I’m not; I happen to be a gay ally, but he didn’t know that).  He was polite but clearly uncomfortable. 

I have a counter story also.  At one of the daily assembly worship services, we blessed each other with the sign of the cross on one another’s forehead.  I happened to be sitting alone, and I shared the blessing with a lady behind me.  Another lady, sitting in my row several empty chairs away, feared that I had not been blessed and also assumed I was gay based on my prayer shawl.  After the service, she pointedly came up to me and offered another blessing even though I assured her I had already been blessed.

This brings up another irony in the whole Lutheran Core, ELCA schism issue.  On the one hand, CORE leaning congregations express frustration at their perception of the heavy- handed control by the ELCA; the reality is that local congregations are entirely free to consider gay ministry candidates–or not–at their congregational discretion.  The ironic falsity is that such local congregations are not really whining about the ELCA controlling them, but that they are upset that they can’t control what other congregations may do with their ministries.  Local control is not the solution; for the CORE congregations it is the problem.  In a metaphorical way, they are uncomfortable with sitting next to certain someones at the lunch table—or the communion rail.

There is anecdotal evidence of families returning to the ELCA who had left because of the treatment of a gay family member.  There is concrete evidence that the ELCA will become more gay in news from St. Francis Lutheran Church of San Francisco.

When St. Francis Lutheran Church called a lesbian couple in 1990 to minister to its members and the Castro community the congregation was put on trial and thrown out of the national body the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA) in 1995. The congregation, in a combination of prophetic protest and tongue in cheek, has thereafter celebrated the Feast of the Expulsion on the last Sunday of the year.

But now, the congregation’s leaders have changed the name of the Feast of the Expulsion to the Feast of Hope, reflecting momentous changes in the ELCA this last summer when it finally caught up to the San Francisco congregation. Looking for eventual reconciliation, the congregation is hopeful that the finalized details of that change will not be a hindrance in any way to sexual minority rights -hence the renaming of the feast day.

This is news that will make some folks squirm a bit, I’m sure.  The speaker at the feast, held this past Sunday the 27th, was Pastor Anita Hill of St Paul Reformation church in Minnesota.