Hi Sarah,
I've appreciated yours and others critiques of this plan. I will state upfront that I am in favor of the proposal from the task force and believe that it is worth a try. Congregations in the ELCA are asking for this as are candidates for ministry and I'm curious to see if this might not be the way forward. I don't think it will damage our ecclesiology because we, in the ELCA, truly don't really have one... or the one we have is an untested and weird mix of low and high church polity where bishops only have authority over congregations too small to go forward without help and large ones do their own thing politically, theologically, and ecclesially.

That being said, what I would like to see is a broader discussion of the entire document. Just as those on the task force feared, everyone jumps to the issue of homosexuality without spending any amount of time in debate over how that decision was couched in terms of our being created for loving God and each other. Are we truly bound one to another in our baptisms despite our disagreements? Can we find a way to give status in this church to those who have none and are demanding it? If not, by what grounds? If we can deny this to one group, why not anyone else who comes under the broad brushstrokes of our sinful nature? And before one jumps to the "slippery slope" argument I would counter by saying this is anything but a slope... folks have been at this issue for (too) long at the expense of a plethora of issues that beckon our attention including issues of poverty, race, and our own broken relationships... all things that are probably more uncomfortable to face when we can throw knives at other peoples' sexuality.

Finally, what is the church? That is the base question from your post. Can it not be where two or three (hundred) are gathered on any given Sunday and who wish to call a pastor who happens to be in a committed same-sex relationship? When was their authority abrogated... I missed that vote!

Well, my friend, I know I am on the wrong blog to be posting a comment like this but since we stand together on so many other things I figured why not?

Chris Enstad

Hi Chris!

I’m glad you posted this, and I’m glad to continue this conversation. I’ll respond to your comments here, but I should also say that this post was conceived as first of a series, so there will be more from me on this.

You say we don’t have an ecclesiology in the ELCA, and point out some flaws in what we functionally do have. I agree. But I don’t see that making an even more incoherent ecclesiological decision is any way to deal with that problem! Perhaps it would be more clear to say that the task force recommendations are tragically in keeping with, and a further devolution of, the flawed ecclesiology that has dogged the ELCA from its inception.

In fact, I think that this whole discussion is only secondarily about homosexuality. I think it really is about the church. Is the church a federation of congregations? Do bishops have true authority in the church? Are you teaching documents authoritative or binding? Must pastors be universally recognized? Does the fact of our common baptism trump all other considerations? Are we truly constituted by the Scriptures and Lutheran confessions?

What I hear as the concern of the “traditionalists” on this issue is that what we are calling our church is not making its decisions about ministry (along with a host of other things) based on the Scriptures and confessions, which calls into question our status as a church altogether. Presumably it is possible that a social organization can have all the trappings of the church and yet not actually be a church in the true sense.

Now to some of your questions about the issue of homosexuality itself. You asked, “Are we truly bound one to another in our baptisms despite our disagreements?” I would answer, yes, and in future posts I will argue passionately against the outcome of this vote, whatever it is, being an occasion for schism. But let us use a good old Lutheran polemic here and point out that baptism does not work ex opere operato! It is possible to live in utter violation of our baptisms. It is possible to give a lie to baptism by claiming God’s grace and yet deliberately refusing to teach and believe the content of his gracious self-revelation in Jesus Christ and the witness to Christ in Scripture. I am very uncomfortable with baptism as the ultimate trump card of safety that excuses experiments in false teaching.

Then you ask, “Can we find a way to give status in this church to those who have none and are demanding it?” Here I must disagree with the way you ask this question. It is not true that active homosexuals have “no status” in the church. They are baptized. They are confirmed. They are communed. They serve on church councils and teach Sunday school. It is a kind of dangerous clericalism to suggest that the only “status” that really counts in the church is ordained status. But more to the point, the issue is not whether homosexuals can be ordained at all. The issue is whether their sexual behavior meets the standard of holy living or not. If the answer is no, it does not, then they are “denied status” of ordained persons, the same way people who embezzle from their congregations are “denied status” or people who leave their spouses and marry the organist are “denied status.” The church acknowledges that all clergy are sinners, but there are some sins that are barriers to service in the church. You know this—everyone knows this—as we all rose up in moral outrage at the sex abuse scandals in the Catholic church. Lots of other people are “denied status” on grounds that aren’t moral at all. Ordination has never been a universal guarantee.

But of course this provokes the deeper issue, which is the suspicion that homosexual activity within a monogamous marriage does not count as unholy living. That’s why these discussions inevitably have to go here, because this is the lynchpin of all the other discussions.

I agree with you wholeheartedly that we’ve spent too much time at this, that it’s shamefully convenient for heterosexuals to criticize homosexuals when they haven’t been forced to confront their own bad behavior. But I ask again, in analogy to what I said above about not wanting our incoherent ecclesiology to be the occasion for more incoherent ecclesiology, I don’t want our bad moral teaching to be the occasion for more bad moral teaching.

My counter-proposal—which no one will like and no one will accept—it is to turn quite in the opposite direction and expose all of our clergy to closer moral scrutiny. The Scriptures are unambiguous about divorce, and especially that the leaders of churches (bishops is the word, though in the context it means head pastors) must not be divorced. Yet how many divorced clergy have been lightly forgiven and allowed to continue despite their living in express contradiction to Scripture? We say that unmarried clergy must be celibate, and yet who has bothered to find out whether our heterosexual unmarried clergy are living celibately? These two cases, in my mind, give some ground to the charge of homophobia against “traditionalists,” as they seem to have zeroed in on the sexual topic that makes them uncomfortable, while looking past their own sins. But again, is this occasion to keep up the bad work, or conduct a real reform—in keeping with our own Lutheran commitment to reform?

Further, as to the standard of love. No one denies that homosexual couples are capable of real love for each other. (I personally would suggest that committed homosexuals couples choose each other over ordained ministry, if a choice is forced upon them.) But this seems to me to ask us to make a choice between our perceptions of love and the Scripture’s descriptions of its standards for love. Despite all the controverted exegesis, I think it is inescapable that Genesis’s story of sexuality in the creation of the first man and woman, which Jesus subsequently endorses, is the standard for the church; and the assorted passages universally opposed to homosexual activity in various kinds (and a number of other sexual options) are the corroborating evidence.

Divine love is patient and kind, but the world is full of loves that are not divine. The basic insight of the Platonic tradition, inherited and promoted in Christian form by Augustine, is that everyone is motivated by love. But not all loves are equal or equally good. (In fact, Plato seemed to favor pederasty as the ideal form of love; something Augustine declined to inherit from his philosophical ancestor!) People can love their nation, or the Party, or their sports team with a dangerous love. The mystery writer P.D. James has devoted her career to stories of love that destroys. I am not in any way trying to suggest that homosexuals necessarily love in these dangerous, destructive ways (though they are certainly capable of it, as heterosexuals are). What I am trying to say is that “love” unqualified doesn’t tell us much of anything. The reason we turn to Scripture is to find out what kind and what form of love God wants us to practice. When we read there that “love is the fulfillment of the law,” it does not mean that as long as there is love, the law is fulfilled (otherwise all the aforementioned destructive forms of love would qualify). It means that the purpose of the law is to direct and enable us to love the way God wants us to love, with holy divine love. And an intrinsic part of the love God desires from us is monogamous, lifelong, heterosexual marriage. I am not in a position to tell God that He must reconsider this because I detect love in other relationships. I feel that is exactly what the ELCA is proposing to do.

Your final questions for me are: “What is the church? …Can it not be where two or three (hundred) are gathered on any given Sunday and who wish to call a pastor who happens to be in a committed same-sex relationship?” It seems to me here that you are tacitly voting for 1) a congregationalist polity, which though de facto the case in the ELCA is still at odds with the Lutheran tradition of polity, and 2) dispensing with a certain requirement for holy living. To which I have to respond to you: are you sure that a congregation that does both things is really the (Lutheran) church anymore?

I follow you're reasoning, and it leads you to take a position similar to Dissenting Position 1 in the draft.

But I end up placing my vote with Dissenting Position 2.

Dear Clint, as I indicated, although I disagree with Dissenting Position 2, I can respect it as ecclesiologically coherent. I cannot even respect the majority suggestion put forward.

I was struck this comment: "If one’s conscience opposes such a person’s ministry, one can simply refuse to have anything to do with it. Congregations can deliberately shun such pastors." It has happened to me and I've heard about it from other clergy (both liberals and conservatives) that there are congregational members who shun us. I think that the attempt is always made to match up clergy and congregations where they can best benefit each other for the good of God's kingdom -- and there always are members who don't like the "new" pastor.

Dear Brian, the issue is not at all whether a congregation "likes" the new pastor, but whether the pastor is acknowledged as validly ordained and properly exercising his/her ministry. There will always be pastors each of us individually dislikes, but that in itself is not reason to call into question their ministry per se. What is so disturbing about this recommendation is that it's either 1) pretending to respect dissenting opinions on the righteousness of homosexual activity, while in fact blessing it and thereby enforcing it on dissenters, or 2) strategically doing whatever is possible to allow homosexuals to be ordained, even at risk of leaving serious question as to the status of their ordination.

To your point number 2... so what? Can't we go back and look at the issues around status later? Why should we care what we think the status is if the local congregants have the pastor they prayerfully called and are receiving ministry from?

I can't see how this is anything but a vote for the most extreme kind of congregationalism. Presumably, if a congregation prayerfully called and received a pastor who taught justification by works and reinstated the sale of indulgences, you as a fellow Lutheran pastor would be seriously troubled by this. Or if a congregation got a pastor who advertised medical supplements in the church bulletin as part of a pyramid scheme in which he was involved. This is not to illustrate the issue specifically with gay pastors, but the issue with congregationalism. You cannot simply say that a church should get whatever pastor it wants without abandoning at the same time all the ties that make us more than isolated and free-floating units. And at any rate, is simply not true: pastors come to churches from other congregations. They go through candidacy programs that connect them to still other churches. They go to seminaries. Working pastors are regularly involved with other pastors and churches. Each church receives and uses the Scriptures and creeds and confessions from churches long past and used by millions of churches through history. The point is: defending this on the grounds that churches should get the pastor they want is expressly contradictory to everything that makes a church part of the Church.

You write: There will always be pastors each of us individually dislikes, but that in itself is not reason to call into question their ministry per se.

The reality of the situation that Brian describes is exactly as he describes. The shunning does call into question the ministry as well as the validity of the pastor's orders.

The difference is that this document would give institutional validity to the shunning!

Hello all,

First, a note that Kristin and I have moved from Badger, MN to Webster, SD. We filled out our mobility papers and sent them from the NW MN synod to the SD synod. The synodical staff forwarded our papers to the call committee in Webster, where lo and behold, our gifts and talents matched what they were looking for in a clergy couple. We are now awaiting the day of Palm Sunday when we can be installed as the donkeys who will bring Christ to the people (as Word and Spirit allow).

I share this note because it does illustrate the barebones of the call process and the thing we call "the clergy roster". Most of the holy smoke and mirrors seems to be taken away from the procedure. In many ways, the interview and negotiation process does seem to be much like a secular job. One puts forth their best foot possible and sees what will happen. One waits patiently for responses and eventually lands a new position. The law of averages has to kick in somewhere.

And yet, we do talk about a "call". We do lift up prayers to Father, Son and Holy Spirit, asking that the new assignment is not just a "good match", but something that is within the will of God for the sake of his kingdom. Much of this seems to fall away into subjectivity -- the wondering, the worries, the late nights of the self reflecting upon the self. Yet then again, there are some objective parts of any call that a person is driven back to -- the seminary degree, the candidacy committee, the professors, the home congregation, yes, even the bishop's office. All of these lend themselves to an objective sense that "I am called to this ministry of Word and Sacrament".

It seems to me that the recommendations of the Sexuality Task Force do indeed take away much of the objective basis of a call. If this process is put into place, then a gay or lesbian pastor is not afforded the comfort of real, true items that will be there through thick and thin. Sure, a seminary degree can still be upon the wall.. sure, a call committee, a bishop, a synod candidacy committee can be found that have a conscience aligned with gay and lesbian "rights", but it becomes a matter of wondering "am I really called to this office?" "have I really been called by the will of God to this work ... or have I just managed to manipulate a situation where I am able to do this?" "am I truly preaching the Gospel of Jesus Christ ... or am I just following along on a this-worldly path of liberation and inclusion?"

Maybe it is not fair for me to propose all of these questions. Maybe the conscience of those who might be called to serve Jesus is a matter between them and their Lord. Yet maybe to leave it open like that is to leave it open to "feathers and all" -- that propensity of the old self to swallow whatever it believes the Holy Spirit has revealed to it.

Respect one another's conscience? Hmmm... how about create situations where consciences become even more burdened than they already are.

Daniel Ostercamp
Donkey in waiting
Webster, SD

Sarah,

Your astute understanding of the ELCA's predicament is appreciated. You rightly identify the lynchpin in the discussion: Do monogomous homosexual relationships constitute holy living? Are homosexual relationships "God approved" and not to be regarded as sin, as long as they are monogomous?

You also correctly understand that an out of hand "Yes" to the above question may actually be a misguided attempt to project our own desires upon God. Fashioning a God according to one's own understand of "love" would not only put Him to a foolish test, through the abuse of His Grace, but it would make us idolators, pure and simple. Such an answer by the ELCA seriously risks placing it into antinomian heterodoxy.

I am not in a position to judge the heart of a "Christian" homosexual. But, lest we be naive, the belief systems of homosexual Christians are not homogeneous. There are two kinds of Christian homosexuals, just as there are two kinds of Christians. There are those homosexual Christians who are repentant of the their homosexual thoughts and desires and strive to lead a closeted, obedient and celibate life in this world, trusting in Christ's forgiveness for what they view as "sin." There are also the other homosexual Christians who see no sin in a monogomous same-sex relationship and therefore have no need to repent of a lifestyle that is deemed holy. If the ELCA preaches, teaches and confesses these opposing doctrines to homosexuals, according to each local congregation's "conscience", do both types of homosexuals, then, go home justified from the ELCA communion rail? Does the doctrine of justification in the ELCA depend each congregation's particular "conscience"? It seems the Task Force is really asking the ELCA to become schizophrenic, if not psychopathic!