On Wednesday, August 19, at the ELCA assembly in Minneapolis, I stood for a long time at the microphone waiting for a time to speak. There was a lot of confusion since the bishop of the church had not given any instructions separating debate on amendments from debate on the sexuality statement as a whole. After a number of amendments were debated and voted upon, after a motion was defeated calling “for all matters before the house,” and after further debating and voting on amendments had been completed, the proposed social statement on human sexuality came to the floor. I had logged in early on in the debating on amendments, fearing I might be too far back in the line of speakers to make it to a microphone. I had stood aside for persons who wanted to speak against amendments. It was nearly my turn: the lines of those speaking “for” were long, and those of us wishing to speak “against” were relatively short.

Then the young man in front of me “called for the question.” I was dumbfounded; I couldn’t fathom why someone against the social statement would wish to end the debate. The delegates voted to close debate, and I returned to my seat. At first I couldn’t sit down; I wanted to leave the hall. My husband gently persuaded me into my seat, and I sat quietly and prayed. The woman sitting to my right put a caring arm around me, and I sobbed silently. The next day I sought to explain to her why I was so upset and to share with her the speech I would have made.

The Holy Spirit did not call me to be a pastor. I was called, I believe, to be a moral philosopher, an ethicist. The skills and knowledge I have gained in my study of the history of ethical theory have led me to discern that the ELCA’s social statement on human sexuality is seriously flawed. On Wednesday afternoon, I felt called to speak a word in behalf of the Lord. My two-minute speech would have been as follows:

1) The Human Sexuality social statement is seriously flawed in its interpretation of God’s grace. It interprets Luther’s “only by grace, through faith” as God’s unconditional love toward us, which we in turn pour out upon our neighbors.

2) Let me suggest that Luther (following Augustine) taught that God’s grace comes to us through no effort on our part, that we have the free will to “turn away from God,” and that the faith part of “only by grace, through faith” is our ongoing relationship with God, provided we don’t turn away from Him.

3) It is our faith relationship with God which enables not one, but two responses:
* That we love the Lord our God with all our heart, soul, and mind; and
* That we love our neighbor as ourselves.

4) Luther’s teaching on grace is not only a theology of the cross; it is also an ethic of the cross. The vertical dimension of the cross is symbolic of God’s unconditional love and our ongoing relationship with Him. The horizontal dimension of the cross is the love of neighbor, each for the other.

5) Luther’s ethic is a both/and ethic: both love of God and love of neighbor. The social statement before us gives much attention to the “loving our neighbor” part, but very little emphasis on the “loving God” part. What is left out entirely is St. John’s instruction (I John 5:3) that “to love God is to keep His commandments.”

6) Luther’s ethic is not just a gospel ethic. It is a law and gospel ethic: love of God (that is, to love God is to keep His commandments) and love of neighbor. The social statement on human sexuality fails to emphasize the keeping—as best we can, enabled through grace—of God’s moral law (that is, loving the Lord our God with heart, soul, and mind: conforming our wills to God’s will).

7) The social statement is seriously flawed. I urge that you vote against it.

If a motion had not been made to reduce the length of speeches from three to two minutes, my three-minute version would have included a comparison of God’s grace to sunshine coming down on us (Luther following Augustine following Plato) and the example—if time permitted—of the unconditional love of a parent for her child. I would have explained that my love for my sons is unconditional (that is, there is nothing any one of the three of them could do that would cause me not to love him), but that if they love me in return they will strive to live lives that will honor me. Note that the living of his life so that it honors his mother is done freely in response to the unconditional love of the mother; living in such a way as to honor his mother is done not in order to earn his mother’s love, but rather because his mother loves him no matter what he does!

If I had had the time for a full lecture or two, I could have explained more about Plato’s “Analogy of the Sun,” more about Augustine’s interpretation of Plato’s Good as God, more of Augustine’s progressive steps from belief to understanding to mystical vision and how these compare to Plato’s educational progress toward the Good—both made possible by the Good enabling the soul to know what can be known (Plato) and grace enabling our faith relationship with God through belief and understanding (Augustine). I could have reminded our Lutheran brothers and sisters that Luther knew both philosophy and theology and used knowledge and God-given reason to come to the truth of “only by grace, through faith.” But the reality of Minneapolis was that I had two minutes at the most—and then not even that!

On Friday evening, after the final vote on the ministerial resolutions, we were invited to join our neighbors in prayer for the church. I prayed with the people on my left, “Father forgive them, for they know not what they do.”

We left the assembly on Saturday morning hoping to return to our home congregation in time for Sunday-morning worship. Before leaving, we inquired of the secretary of the church if I could have my votes recorded as “dissenting” on the social statement and its implementing resolutions and on the four-part recommendation on ministry policies. At first, Mr. Swartling said “yes” and that all that was necessary was filling out a form or leaving a statement. As I was writing my name and synod on the steno pad I was offered by a member of the clerical staff, Mr. Swartling came up and said that the parliamentarian had ruled that recording dissenting opinions was out of order.

For the record, in case anyone tries to explain what happened in Minneapolis as “the Holy Spirit doing a new thing,” let me bear witness to the following.

On Wednesday afternoon, when the sexuality statement was being debated and voted on, we in the convention hall were under a tornado warning. The tornado actually touched down on the top of our building, but with little damage to it. Of greater import, perhaps, was the fact that the tornado damaged the steeple of Central Lutheran Church, across the street from the convention center. The cross spire on the top of the steeple was bent over so that the cross was hanging down, dangling. The tornado destroyed the tents that had been set up in the church courtyard.

Another extraordinary occurrence was the report of the vote on the social statement on human sexuality. The statement was adopted because exactly 2/3 of the voting members of the assembly voted in favor of it. When the vote report came up on the video screen in the great hall, the percentage was revealed as .666667!

It is my opinion that what happened in Minneapolis last week was the result of the work of a powerful political machine. The advocates have been working for at least twenty years to accomplish their goals. When the work of the first task force (early 1990s) did not yield their desired outcome due to overwhelming negative response from ELCA church members, they saw to it that there would be a second task force. When the Orlando assembly did not ratify the changes recommended by that task force, already in place was the sexuality study. Political maneuvering yielded the changes in ministerial policies as recommendations requiring only simple majority votes. Community organizing—synodical-level organizing—gave them the rest.

Those of us whose consciences are captive to the Word of God made good arguments based on sound Biblical principles all the way through. For example:

* That the Holy Spirit would not do a new thing against His own teaching or against the teaching of God the Father or against the teaching of God the Son—the three are one, and they cohere!

* That the issue of same-sex blessing as in marriage and the rostering of practicing homosexuals is not a justice issue. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., in “Letter from Birmingham Jail” states, unequivocally, that the way we can know whether or not a human law is a just law is by whether or not it conforms to the moral law of God.

* That the proposed same-sex inclusion policies are decidedly different from our policies allowing for women clergy. We pointed out that while the Bible includes some passages which exclude women from priestly callings, there are numerous examples of women serving in holy callings. The Bible speaks with one voice, however, concerning same-sex relations.

* That the numerous ceremonial laws of custom that are no longer thought to be relevant (for example, “You shall not wear clothes made of wool and linen woven together” in Deuteronomy 22:11) are not equivalent to God’s moral law, which does not change.

The outcome in Minneapolis finally boiled down to emotion and its legitimating foundation, the self. Each time there was lengthy debate, those on the side of the tradition had the better arguments, but the revisionists have always had the advantage of emotional appeal, which evokes sympathetic response. It’s hard to argue persuasively for coherence and scriptural authority when the speaker before or after is telling his heartrending story of exclusion and hurt feelings. But in the end, it didn’t matter! Those whose consciences were bound (to their own moral autonomy) had the votes!

For the record, emotion was evident even among those of us on the side of the tradition. On Wednesday afternoon, I found myself compelled to jump up and clarify the fact to the whole assembly that a motion to “call for all matters before the house” meant that we would not be allowed to debate the statement on sexuality as a whole piece when many of us had been waiting patiently in line to do so. Later, I found myself sobbing silently because I had been prevented from speaking during the debate. I cried that same night, sensing that I had just witnessed the destruction from within of the church body I have loved since childhood.

My academic discipline is profoundly rational. I can make persuasive, substantive arguments, pro or con, on almost any controversial topic. Philosophers are critical thinkers. We look for coherence and substance in the arguments that are made by our colleagues. We can see when coherence is lacking between theory and practice, between founding principles and actions. The social statement on sexuality (“Human Sexuality: Gift and Trust”), the implementing resolutions, and the recommendations on ministry policies do not cohere with the teachings of the Holy Scriptures and the Lutheran Confessions. We are no longer a church with integrity (“integrity“ from “integer” = “whole”) if our policies and actions do not follow from—do not cohere with—our founding documents: God’s revelation to us in the Holy Scriptures and the witness of the saints across the centuries, the witness of the catholic faith. Our church bears the name of Martin Luther. Luther stated his standard for coherence at Worms, “Unless I can be persuaded by plain reason and the Holy Scriptures…” In the case of the Minneapolis assembly, critical thinking and adherence to the Holy Scriptures did not prevail. The appeals of the emotivists carried the day.

We have come to a time when the logical positivists and the emotivists are telling us that “right” and “wrong” are merely terms of expression sometimes tied to strong feelings, that the only factual statements about ethical concerns are the ones that reveal statistically the opinions of people or their votes. Emotivism is the prevailing ethical understanding in our culture today, and perhaps the majority of people in our democratic society think that is as it should be, even though emotivism is a path to radical subjectivism. But in the church? How can we be a church if we say God’s moral law is only a matter of perspectival truth, only a matter of perspective as in “my opinion” being opposed to “your opinion,” or “my bound conscience” being opposed to “your bound conscience”?

Throughout the assembly we were reminded by church leaders that the water of baptism unites us regardless of our opposing views on the sexuality documents. What they failed to emphasize was the “dying to sin, rising to Christ,” the cleansing nature of baptism. The waters of Minneapolis—the rains before, during, and after the tornado—have become for me a symbol of God’s salvific cleansing. Those of us whose consciences are bound to the Word of God have been set free from the bondage of a “church” whose leaders sought to stifle and marginalize us because we were holding fast to the Holy Scriptures. We gained unambiguous clarity in Minneapolis: the ELCA is no longer a law-and-gospel church; the ELCA is no longer the church of Luther.

Martin Luther was a law and gospel theologian and ethicist. The eternal law of the Creator/Designer, the natural law within human beings leading them toward their God-given natural inclinations and purposes, and the divine law (the decalogue given to Moses, the Great Commandment, and the New Commandment of our Lord) were all included in his teaching. Luther emphasized that it is because God loves us, because we are in a faith relationship with Him, that we strive, enabled by grace, to live our lives in conformity to His will. When we fail, we repent and are forgiven, redeemed by the precious blood of Christ, our Savior. A church that ignores God’s revealed law is not Lutheran. Luther taught that it is the law and our inability to keep it which drives us to Christ—to the gospel—in the first place. Without the law, there is no need for redemption.

Luther and his followers understood that the church of the Reformation is always in the process of reforming. With God’s help, we continue the reforming, back to who/Whose we are: a law and gospel church of those who are at the same time saint and sinner, ever penitent. We are thankful to God, Who in His abounding and steadfast love saved us by the cross of Christ and calls us to the two directional + life of loving Him and loving each other.

Marianne Howard Yoder is a member of Grace Lutheran Church in Newton, North Carolina. She is a wife, a mother, a grandmother, and a philosopher.