A Thinking Reed

Decision time?

Written by

Lee M.

in

This article from the Christian Century gives the lay of the land on the homosexuality issue in the ELCA as we go into the churchwide assembly this month. Despite what the article says, I wouldn’t be surprised if we ended up with essentially the status quo. A “local option” has been vigorously opposed by some of our top theologians (Robert Jenson, Carl Braaten, etc.) as theologically and ecclesiologically incoherent. And a full-fledged overturning of the existing policy seems even more unlikely.

Toward the end of the article my old pastor Jeff Johnson is quoted:

To Jeff Johnson, the openly gay pastor of the University Lutheran Chapel at the University of California at Berkeley, “the trajectory of the church is clearly moving in a progressive direction.”

His bishop, David G. Mullen, has chosen not to remove at least 13 openly gay, lesbian or bisexual pastors serving in the Sierra Pacific Synod, said Johnson, who cochairs Good Soil, a Lutheran gay alliance. “The current policy of the church really serves no one,” Johnson said.

“The progressive wing is frustrated and unsatisfied because the policies intimidate a class of people unjustly,” he said. “The conservative wing is frustrated because the policies are inconsistently followed or ignored.”

Despite putting in a year at “the Chapel” as we called it, I remain a squishy fence-straddler on the whole issue. Ironically, I was considerably more pro-Bush then than I am now (this was pre-Iraq), and used to dread the anti-Bush polemics we would occasionally get from the pulpit. Ah, Berkeley…

Comments

10 responses to “Decision time?”

  1. Joshie

    maybe its just my repressed inner restorationist coming out, but some form of the “local option” seems the only viable one to these problems (as I have written elsewhere). It does involve sacrifice, though. A sacrifice of our egoes and our narrow-minded dedication to the winner-takes-all nature of Big Denominational Politics. It involves re-examining the way denominations work and hopefully, the whole fallen, sinful denominational system itself. Too often we let polity rise to the same level as doctrine or worse, to the same level as our personal and corporate faith.

    Reply
  2. Lee

    Campbellite!

    Reply
  3. Eric Lee

    Did you attend grad school in Berkeley or just live there? I have some good friends in Berkeley that I visit every few months and one of them is going to Union Theological Seminary (I think that’s it?).

    Reply
  4. Lee

    My wife went to grad school at Cal (2000-2002). You might be thinking of the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley, which is a kind of consortium of seminaries from different traditions. Union is in New York.

    Reply
  5. Lee

    Actually, come to think of it we were in CA til the Summer of ’03, but only lived in Berkeley for about a year and a half.

    Reply
  6. Joshie

    Interestingly, there is a Union Christian College in Virginia, too, Alma mater of Pistons center Ben Wallace, who, undrafted and playing at a Division III school has worked his way up to become the greatest center in the NBA. Sorry, gotta represent.

    Reply
  7. Brian

    I am in many ways, FOR ordination of gays and lesbians in lifelong, committed relationships… no, wait, I am for ordination of gays and lesbians who are married. I think married gays and lesbians can fulfill the three ends of marriage as Augustine laid them out. However, I am completely against the recommendation #3 that the ELCA Task Force has proffered. It simply is not just.

    When women were ordained, there was no local option. The church just said, “We will ordain women.” And those congregations who were against it, were not allowed to think that they were right. In the homosexual case, here everyone is allowed to think that they are right, and we are no closer to an authoritative statement than before.

    Peace.

    Reply
  8. Joshie

    “everyone is allowed to think they are right”

    And this is a bad thing? If “both sides” in the debates over this issue in the ELCA, UMC, EC, ABC or whatever continue to play all or nothing politics with this issue, there will be massive schisms in every large, diverse church body in this country.

    This is often seen as the lesser of two evils. In fact, schism is the greatest evil of all. Every rift on the body of Christ is a denial that we worship one God, in one Christ, through one Spirit with one baptism. It is tantamout to blasphemy. Stubborness is not a virtue even if we pretend that “we’re taking a stand”. Its just another expression of pride (the old-fashioned bad kind), not a mark of integrity.

    It is unjust to disallow homosexuals from the ministry if they have been called to it. But it is also unjust to force a homosexual minister on a congregation to which that minister’s homosexuality is a stumbling block. The local option is the only option.
    flame on.

    Reply
  9. Lee

    I’m not entirely sure that schism is the worst evil of all. After all, if we disagree about the Gospel (I’m not saying that the debate over homosexuality necessarily rises to that level, but there are those on both sides who think it does) aren’t we already in de facto disunity regardless of institutional affiliation?

    Reply
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