VoyForums
[ Show ]
Support VoyForums
[ Shrink ]
VoyForums Announcement: Programming and providing support for this service has been a labor of love since 1997. We are one of the few services online who values our users' privacy, and have never sold your information. We have even fought hard to defend your privacy in legal cases; however, we've done it with almost no financial support -- paying out of pocket to continue providing the service. Due to the issues imposed on us by advertisers, we also stopped hosting most ads on the forums many years ago. We hope you appreciate our efforts.

Show your support by donating any amount. (Note: We are still technically a for-profit company, so your contribution is not tax-deductible.) PayPal Acct: Feedback:

Donate to VoyForums (PayPal):

[ Login ] [ Contact Forum Admin ] [ Main index ] [ Post a new message ] [ Search | Check update time | Archives: 1, 2, [3], 4 ]

[ Next Thread | Previous Thread | Next Message | Previous Message ]

Date Posted: 06:42:38 02/21/09 Sat
Author: pastor lewis
Subject: Lutherans consider actively gay clergy

Lutherans consider actively gay clergy
Julia Duin (Contact)
Friday, February 20, 2009
Comment
Print
Font Size Share
Got a Question?
You Report
Click-2-Listen
Buzz up!America's largest Lutheran body inched closer to ordaining actively gay clergy with a recommendation Thursday that the 4.7-million-member church vote on the matter at its convention this summer.

A 15-member task force of theologians, academics, bishops and laity with the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA) released in a 17-page statement Thursday afternoon a proposal for delegates to vote on at the ELCA's next convention, Aug. 17-23 in Minneapolis. To pass, the proposal needs the support of a simple majority of the delegates representing the ELCA's 65 synods.

According to the proposal, each geographical synod would be allowed to decide whether to “call people in publicly accountable, lifelong, monogamous, same-gender relationships” to the ministry. Only celibate gay clergy can now serve in any ELCA churches.

Although stressing repeatedly that the ELCA must vote decisively on the matter at its biennial meeting, the task force said a homosexual candidate in a “publicly accountable” relationship may sometimes be the “best-suited” person for a certain church.

The recommendation was accompanied by a 33-page treatise defining human sexuality as a “gift and trust,” along with a series of proposed resolutions for a liturgical rite for divorce, for partners of gay clergy to be included in denominational pension plans, and for sex-education programs in public and private Lutheran schools.

Local Lutheran bishops had mixed reactions.

“I think the church should move toward inclusion, diversity and the maximum amount of flexibility,” said Bishop Richard H. Graham of the 40,000-member Metropolitan Washington Synod. “The question is how fast and to what expense.”

He has one celibate homosexual serving in one of his 130 churches, he added, plus “several people in our candidacy process who are in various stages of coming out publicly.”

Bishop H. Gerald Knoche of the 94,000-member Delaware-Maryland Synod called the series of proposals “a detriment to our church.”

He said, “What they are proposing here is that different synods and churches can handle the problem according to their conscience. That will make it difficult to have clergy mobility in the national church. There will be different standards in different places.”

[ Next Thread | Previous Thread | Next Message | Previous Message ]
[ Contact Forum Admin ]

Forum timezone: GMT-8
VF Version: 3.00b, ConfDB:
Before posting please read our privacy policy.
VoyForums(tm) is a Free Service from Voyager Info-Systems.
Copyright © 1998-2019 Voyager Info-Systems. All Rights Reserved.