Interesting ELCA Homosexuality in the Church Interview

Check this interview out over at the American Lutheran Publicity Bureau:

One Church, Two Sides
[The following is an interview with Pastors Russ Saltzman and Donna Simon, pastors of two Kansas City area ELCA congregations who are on opposite sides of the question regarding homosexuality and the church. The interviewer is Kansas City Star reporter Bill Tammeus; the interview first appeared in the Star January 7, 2006.]
Copyright © Kansas City Star January 7, 2006. Reprinted with permission.

Many faith communities are in long, often bitter battles over human sexuality issues, such as whether to ordain gays and lesbians to be clergy or to bless same-sex unions. The 4.9 million-member Evangelical Lutheran Church in America considered those questions last summer at its annual Churchwide Assembly. In effect the ELCA left in place rules forbidding both, though it continues to welcome homosexuals into church membership.

To better understand different perspectives on these matters, The Kansas City Star recently interviewed, together, two local Lutheran pastors on opposite sides of these issues, the Rev. Russell Saltzman, pastor of Ruskin Heights Lutheran Church, and the Rev. Donna Simon, pastor of Abiding Peace Lutheran Church. Simon is openly gay. Lutheran officials have recognized her ordination but don’t allow her to be on this Lutheran region’s official roster of clergy. The ELCA sanctioned Abiding Peace for calling an unrostered pastor but is allowing the congregation to remain in the denomination. (Responses by Simon and Saltzman have been edited for length and clarity.)

Q: Why are sexuality issues so divisive?

Simon: In part because the biblical witness is very divided. Churches try to remain true to the Bible, and where the Bible tells us something that seems very clear and yet our human experience and our understanding of the Gospel tells us something else, that’s very confusing for people.

Saltzman: I disagree. The biblical witness is not divided. It’s perfectly clear. The question comes in the hermeneutics, in what is the key to interpreting. There’s a 2,000-year Christian history of interpretation and long before that a Jewish interpretation. So what’s new in this issue is the assertion that the interpretation has been wrong.

Q: Aren’t there instances in which we thought the Scriptures were clear on an issue, such as slavery, but now we’ve changed our minds?

Saltzman: The so-called biblical justifications for slavery were not, in fact, justifications. Most of those writings attempted to interpret the new relationships that slaves and masters held together in Christ. I would say if Scripture was used to justify slavery, that was a wrong justification.

Simon: I’m not one who says the way we’ve read the Bible on homosexuality is completely wrong. There are people of faith who read the Bible very well and who make a very strong case that the Bible says it’s wrong for men to be in sexual relationships with men and it’s wrong for women to be in sexual relationships with women. I think you can make that case. But there is no scriptural witness on what we know now to be homosexual orientation.

Saltzman: When you get to the Levitical code, classically, according to rabbinical teachings, Leviticus is divided into the purity code, such as don’t sow two kinds of seeds in the same field, and the holiness code, and that’s where the questions of sexuality arise. “Man shall not lie with man” is held on a par with “Do not sacrifice your children to Molech (god of the Ammonites).” This tells us something very, very serious. The whole question of gay sex, same-sex attraction, falls under the doctrine of creation — created good but fallen into sin. That means we are subject to anomalous conditions just by nature of the fact that creation is not as God originally intended.

Click on the title to read the rest.

Here is one comment on the forum that I really found interesting:

I participated in a "debate" with Donna Simon and a Unitarian Universalist clergywoman who was a GLBT advocate on the topic of homosexuality and gay marriage on a local radio station a couple of years ago. The format was three separate presentations with questions from the moderator following. I was the traditional, conservative, orthodox guy, and was up first. I explained the traditional, orthodox Christian position and cited the usual passages and went into the Hebrew and Greek. When I was finished, the Moderator asked Pr. Simon if what I said about what the Scriptures really said was correct. She said that literally, they were. The Moderator asked her how she could hold her positions, then; and she said that the difference between my Church and hers was that my Church believed that the Scriptures were literally the word of God and hers did not. (!! ) I wanted to thank her. She made my case for me. . .

Hmmm. I think I have found the source of the problem.

---Katie