Once again we are indebted to the ELCA

Thanks to the Evangelical Lutheran Church for making paragraphs in news stories like this one possible…

"It's going to be an extremely glorious and festive ceremony because it's the culmination of decades of work to welcome LGBT people into the ELCA," said Amalia Vagts, executive director of the Extraordinary Lutheran Ministries, a nonprofit that credentials openly gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender people for ministry.

Megan Rohrer, one of the pastors who will participate in Sunday's rite of reception service, grew up in South Dakota and attended a Lutheran college where she said students tried to exorcise her "gay demons" by throwing holy water on her. Some of those people are now Lutheran pastors in South Dakota, she said.

Rohrer, who is transgender and a lesbian, was ordained by four congregations in San Francisco in 2006, but could not join the ELCA roster until the denomination's national assembly approved the new policy in August

I am not even sure what that means. Ms. (Mr.?) Rohrer was once a dude and now is a transgendered, lesbian “pastor”? I am afraid I don't find that glorious or festive, I find it tragic.

That paragraph comes from the latest story out of the ELCA and shockingly enough it is NOT a sudden reversal and call to repentance for the entire denomination. No indeed, the ELCA takes another step in embracing sin. Here is the crux of it...

Churches can now hire noncelibate gay clergy who are in committed relationships.

What exactly does that mean? We have a date this weekend, I am committed to it. Are we in a committed relationship? What about a heterosexual male ELCA pastor (assuming there are any) who is living with his girlfriend. Is that OK? What if she just sleeps over, does having a toothbrush and a change of clothes at his place count as them being in a “committed relationship”? Does this interpretation require a joint checking account? What if a pastor is committed to a half dozen women? Can he/she/whatever be "hired" as a pastor?

I have a better idea. Since we are supposed to emulate the lives of the elders of the church and since God has made clear that the only acceptable “committed” relationship is one man and one woman in the covenantal bounds of marriage, how about we stop playing social engineering games and stick to the book?

Congratulations to Ms. Debby Rieselman!

Her inane Letter to the Editor in the Cincinnati Enquirer wins my coveted "Totally missing the point" award. It starts off with a cutesy headline ("Lutherans' opening up to gays a loving act") and goes downhill from there with quote after quote that shows an utter ignorance of the Bible and Christianity...

It's a little murky, but reformation, as Lutherans know, is always murky. As the leader of the Protestant Reformation nearly 500 years ago, the Lutheran church claims a tradition of "always reforming itself."... It wasn't easy. Some delegates wanted to delay the vote for two years until a church task force made more progress. Others uttered the words of our founder Martin Luther: "How soon 'not now' becomes 'never.' "

The Reformation that Luther in large part started, and that has continued throughout the centuries is not about "tolerance" or "acceptance". It is about a continual concern with and return to Biblical fidelity. The idea of an openly homosexual man (or woman) standing in a pulpit with their homosexual partner gazing on lovingly from the pews would be abhorrent to Luther.

Her final comment is an ominous one...

This was a compromise. And it was only a first step. But it was a loving step.

This is but the first step towards a goal of complete tolerance. The goal is not about minor steps but complete capitulation of the Bible to the whims and perversions of the day. This has never been about acceptance, but has always been about the submission of the Word of God to the sin of the day, remaking God into an idol of our own image. Churches like the ELCA frankly, and this sounds harsh but the truth often is, either need to repent of their sins or stop calling themselves Christian churches. I know I don't get to dictate who is or is not a Christian, but Christ does and the actions of the ELCA have put them directly at odds with the revealed Word of God and therefore against Christ Himself.

Ms. Rieselman's bio describes her as follows:

Debby Rieselman is a lifelong Lutheran, a member of Gloria Dei Lutheran Church in Crestview Hills, and a lay leader in many areas of her local church, as well as the synodical and national levels of Women of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America.

One would think that someone in a position of leadership such as hers would have a better grasp of the totality of the Biblical witness, rather than a mere sentimentalism that sees all sinners as inherently good and God as obligated to save them despite their rebellion and sin.

What would truly be a loving act would be for Lutherans to call homosexuals in their midst to Biblical repentance, calling on them to turn from their sinful lifestyle and "sin no more". But that might strike some as "intolerant"...

Another nail in the coffin

The Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA) has softened it's stance against homosexuality yet again. It has now gotten to the point of having absolutely no standards at all for personal holiness and Biblical submission. On Saturday, August 11th their annual assembly passed a resolution, 538-431, to encourage tolerance of homosexuals "pastors" living in sinful relationships with their partners.

CHICAGO (Reuters) - Homosexual Lutheran clergy who are in sexual relationships will be able to serve as pastors, the largest U.S. Lutheran body said on Saturday. ..The Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA) passed a resolution at its annual assembly urging bishops to refrain from disciplining pastors who are in "faithful committed same-gender relationships."

Openly homosexual "pastors" who live in sexually deviant relationships will now be openly and warmly accepted. Dwell on that. What do you suppose Luther would have thought of that?

But the real question, I suppose should be: Why not? Once they started down the road of selecting what Biblical standards they would accept, it was inevitable that this is where it ends up. The Bible very clearly lays out the parameters for the role of pastor. But once you start to abandon pieces of the Bible, it snowballs until the Bible is completely irrelevant. It often starts at the beginning, with an abandonment of the Biblical truth of creationism, and then drifts into the calling and ordaining of female pastors, and once you get to that point you start to abandon penal substitutionary atonement, the doctrine of eternal punishment, justification by faith alone, the inerrancy of the Bible, and before you know it the Bible is boiled down to a misinterpreted set of teachings from the Sermon on the Mount and John 3:16. The worst part is that the 4.3 million members of the ELCA have been so misled by their leadership that they have joined the ranks of churches where members are saved in spite of, not because of, their attendance.

(I think for once I beat Dr. Mohler on a news item!)