Pretty Good Lutherans blog offers several links to blog posts or articles critical of Lutheran Core (one of these was to my own post yesterday). With a hat tip to blogger Susan Hogan for her list, this post will dig into each link a bit.
In a letter to the editor of the Minneapolis Star Tribune entitled “A continuing reformation”, David Weiss suggests the ELCA’s new policy on gays is “a huge change for the better.” Without naming Lutheran Core, Weiss concludes his op-ed piece with these words:
So, to those who say that the ELCA betrayed its own Lutheran heritage last August, I beg to differ. The heart of the Reformation is about grace and welcome offered as a free gift to people otherwise made anxious by social and religious forces. And this year, at long last, from the heart of the Reformation I’m saying to my gay and lesbian brothers and sisters, “Welcome home.”
A second op-ed piece is offered by former bishop of the St Paul area synod, Rev. Lowell Erdahl. Writing on MPR news, Erdahl suggests “Unlearning the things that used to be obvious”. He uses the analogy of the rejection of Copernicus five centuries ago:
Convinced by what was obvious in nature and clearly proclaimed in the Bible, Luther called Copernicus a fool. Calvin asked, “Who will venture to place the authority of Copernicus above that of the Holy Spirit?”
Erdahl then suggests that he “was wrong in my understanding of both homosexual humanity and the Bible.” Erdahl argues that the Biblical texts cited by the opposition “relate to lustful, exploitive same-sex activity, such as temple prostitution, abuse of prisoners and pederasty, but say nothing about homosexuality as we understand it today,” and such texts should not dictate the church’s policy toward the “significant segment of humanity who, through no choice of their own, are attracted to, fall in love with and desire to live in lifelong partnership with persons of the same sex.”
Erdahl concludes: “It will be a great day when homosexual humanity is as clearly understood and as fully affirmed as Copernican astronomy is today.”
The third link is to blogger Joelle Colville-Hanson, an ELCA pastor in Iowa, who confronts Lutheran Core directly, based on comments on Core’s website.
CORE Encouraging Congregations to Oust Pastors who Don’t Agree with them
Lutheran CORE is playing dirty. Got a pastor who agrees with the churchwide assembly decision or simply refuses to make a big old issue out of it? Get rid of them. Yup that’s their suggestion…
This was originally on their resources of “What to do now” You won’t find it on their webpage anymore because they have altered it –but for now it is still here: CORE Suggestions -don’t be surprised if they cover their ass and change that.
In an earlier post on her blog, Pastor Joelle took Core to task for their call for a funding boycott of the ELCA, mocking their stance as “”Well we will stay, call ourselves members of the ELCA, keep our jobs as pastors and other positions in the ELCA, vote in conference and synod assemblies, insist bishops and other leaders in the ELCA listen to us, scold and lecture the ELCA but will not sully our pure wallets by supporting the ELCA with our gold and silver.”
In the next link on Pretty Good Lutherans, Pastor S. Blake Duncan of Illinois also criticizes Core for withholding funds.
When we give as Christians, we are giving of ourselves – our time and our financial resources – out of a sense that everything we have and everything we are is given to us from God. So we give back to God what is already God’s so that the love of Christ can be proclaimed through the ministry of the church. The money I give to my congregation pays for the ministry of the whole church: for the hospital visits, the food pantry, the worship services, the bread and wine of communion, the Sunday school, confirmation. Besides funding our local ministry, a portion is sent to the synod as benevolence. This benevolence pays for Lutheran Social Services’ work of feeding and helping those in need; it pays for synod staff such as the new outreach coordinator who is now working directly with the Wartburg Parish; it provides resources to keep struggling congregations open and serving their communities in places where the need is great but resources are few – such as Trinity Lutheran Church in Kankakee; it pays for the First Call continuing education program for new pastors. A portion is also sent on to the ELCA, where it pays for churchwide youth events, disaster response, new congregational start-ups, campus ministry, Lutheran World Relief, and on and on. The money I give to my congregation each week does all of this! And this is possible only because my congregation is a partner with both the Central/Southern Illinois Synod and the ELCA. To stop giving is to imperil these ministries and risk hurting the most vulnerable programs and people. (Emphasis added)
The final link is to a brief letter to the editor of Star News in Elk River, Minnesota in which an ELCA parishioner notes, “when I heard an emotional plea from the pulpit last Sunday to urge the congregation to vote to leave the ELCA,” that parishioner and others began to work to ensure all views are heard in their congregation.
Thank you for posting this. I’ve seen more negative than positive comments about the ELCA decision, so I’m happy to read the other viewpoint and know it’s being spoken as well.
In our own synod (Upper Susquehanna), the Synod Council will be talking about how to meet the desire of some congregations to have benevolence to the synod separated from that going to the ELCA. In my letter to them, I point out that the decision was not made by some entity in Chicago, but by us. WE elected OUR representatives to the Church-wide Assembly. OUR representatives voted on the matter, and decided that this was the best way to go. If I had to do some guessing, my guess is that our bishops, including Mark Hanson, would have preferred root canal to any decision, either way – as a pastor, I cannot imagine wanting to address an issue that would haunt the rest of my ministry, cause discord in the congregation, and have members leave. It’s so easy to pin an unpopular decision on nameless others – but in the words of Pogo, “we have met the enemy, and he is us!” Those who do not like the outcome of the vote have noone to blame but themselves. Maybe they should penalize themselves, and give their “mad money” to the ELCA for the trouble they cause!
I think that everyone is getting tied up in what homo-sexuality meant in the bible and what it means today – I understand that things cannot be looked at in the same light after 2000 years; however, one thing that I feel remains the same is when the Bible tells me, and I am to teach my children the Bible, that marriage is between woman and man – not man and man no matter how deep feelings may be. Our church has suspended benevolence to the ELCA and will be directing the monies straight to the causes that were supported in the past. Furthermore, we will be able to support more missions and areas of need because +/- 40% of the money will not be going to “administration”. We are also considering pulling out of the ELCA.
Decisions shouldn’t be made by a handful of people, society, or special interest groups – the Bible should still be worth something. We need to stop conforming to this society, I mean just look at it, and start living how He wants us to live.
The ELCA has abandoned Lutheranism by abandoning Sola Scriptura. Why continue to pretend to be a “Lutheran” organization? Those in CORE have spoken of giving to respectful, useful ministries, but have wisely chosen to not give directly to the fallen ELCA, a church-body which has embraced another gospel
The ELCA has given in to the worldly political correctness. It is a dead church.
It is now become a cult.
I say leave the ELCA in their own pig pen. A good tree cannot bear bad fruit and a bad tree cannot bear good fruit. Every tree that does bear good fruit is cut down and thrown in the fire.
@Stanley Roethemeyer
Or, maybe not. You could come to my congregation one Sunday to experience a multi-generational, rapidly growing, inclusive family where the sacraments are rightly administered and the gospel is proclaimed loud and clear.