According to a list posted on the Lutheran CORE website, 117 ELCA congregations have joined Lutheran Core to date. That means over 10,000 ELCA congregations haven’t joined CORE.
Just a bit of perspective.
UPDATE:
Oops. Turns out I had the number wrong. Seems that Urland Lutheran Church, of Cannon Falls, which is pretty near my stomping grounds in Northfield, Mn, is one of the 117 congregations listed on the CORE website, but they want off and CORE won’t let them.
An article in The Minnesota Independent has the story:
A Minnesota pastor says his church is incorrectly listed on the website of a conservative splinter group that’s breaking away from the Evangelical Church in America (ELCA) over the church’s recent votes on homosexuality, but that group is refusing to rectify the error.
Pastor Arthur Sharot of Urland Lutheran Church in Cannon Falls has asked Lutheran CORE to remove his church’s name from the group’s CORE Congregations page — a list of churches that support its “Common Confession” — but Lutheran CORE says Sharot’s congregation must take a vote in order to get its name removed.
CORE’s position is that years ago Urland, before the arrival of pastor Sharot, joined a group called Lutheran Churches of the Common Confession, which later merged into Lutheran CORE, unbeknownst to Urland. Even a call from the Congregational Council chairman couldn’t convince CORE to remove Urland from its list. The news article contained the following:
Lutheran CORE’s own founding and connections show that it is more controversial than first appearances reveal. In 2008, Chavez became the director of Lutheran CORE and before that he was director of WordAlone, a group that spawned CORE. WordAlone believes the ELCA is losing its “Christ-centered focus,” in part because of “the push for approval of sexual relationships outside of marriage.” Chavez is currently the vice president of WordAlone, which shares an office with Lutheran CORE in New Brighton.
“WordAlone holds some controversial views about homosexuality,” says the news article, which then lists a number of the controversial views of WordAlone gleaned from the WordAlone website, including:
- Reparative therapy works
- Homosexuals are inherently promiscuous
- Homosexuals actively recruit
- Children of same-sex couples are more likely to be gay
- A personal relationship with Jesus will help break demonic strongholds
Flat earth society, where are you?
Hmmm. After reading about the difficulty of getting “unstuck” from the CORE bunch – the phrase “demonic tar-baby” came to mind. How can a splinter group dare demand that an ELCA congregation has to hold a congregational vote in order to be removed from their list of “members”? What’s to say that the CORE bunch won’t demand some sort of ransom, or blackmail, in order to go away? All of this makes their claim of being Christ centered look pretty weird. Ahhh. Another phrase just came to mind … “control freaks”! So … C.O.R.E. might stand for Control Our Reluctant Enemies! Might work. Though Enemies seems a tad too strong. Whatever. Individual mileage on this will vary.
My congregation was a part of the LCA and by no vote of their own were put in the ELCA. The ELCA requires a 2/3 majority to get out from under their control. I believe the Urland Lutheran Church would only need a simple majority vote to leave the Common Confession group (Now CORE by no vote of their own) they joined. Who would be more controlling in this analogy?
@Paul Buzzard
“By no vote of their own were put in the ELCA”
Presumbably, that congregation had delegates to the LCA assemblies that decided to merge… they were not helpless stooges without voice or vote. That congregation could have opted out of the LCA, or the merger, or the ELCA at any time by following the procedures within the CONGREGATION’S OWN CONSTITUTION, which undoubtedly would have required 2/3, but your implication that your congregation was totally void of any power over its own destiny is totally false. Similarly, your terminology “to get out from under their control” is a grotesque misunderstanding of the polity of your own congregation. To suggest that the ELCA “controls” local congregations is paranoid and conspiratorial.
You also attempt to create an analogy between apples and oranges. When Urland joined the loose affilation known as LC3, it was not a constitutional action of major importance, and may well have been simply the pastor’s decision. To equate the circumstances of joining LC3 with the ELCA merger is a gross overstatement. Even now, the process of joining Lutheran Core is informal: “Churches join Lutheran CORE by affirming the Common Confession and declaring in writing their intention to support Lutheran CORE’s ministry. Send a letter on your church letterhead signed by your pastor or president with the date of your church’s decision,” according to CORE’s own website.