Below is a excerpt from a Washington Times article about the ELCA sexuality task force report. Apparently, churches who choose to call a homosexual pastor or lay leader who is in violation of the Visions and Expectations document (which requires people not in a one man/one woman marriage to be chaste) are following their consciences, just like Martin Luther did during the Reformation. Click on the title above to read the article and Paul McCain's take on it plus comments at worldmag.blog.com. There is an interesting picture there as well.
---Katie
Among Lutherans, "we found no consensus in the church on this matter," said New England Synod Bishop Margaret Payne, chairman of the Task Force for ELCA Studies on Sexuality. She cited a 2004 poll of 28,000 Lutherans, in which 38 percent opposed the blessing of same-sex unions and hiring homosexual clergy; 18 percent approved it; 14 percent said homosexuals should be welcomed as parishioners, but not hired as clergy nor should their unions be blessed; 12 percent were undecided; and the others gave mixed responses.
Thus, she added, the task force decided to treat ordination of homosexual pastors as valid dissent.
"It acknowledges the validity of conscientious objection and honors that," she said. "Because of that, discipline will not be enforced. It's a new dimension of respect ... based on individual conscience."
The task force cited Martin Luther, the founder of the denomination, as the paragon of individual conscience because of his statement at the Diet of Worms in 1521. The church reformer told the Diet -- a church court -- that he was bound in conscience to the Bible and that "it is neither safe nor right to go against conscience."
No comments:
Post a Comment