Posted on 08/21/2009 4:14:25 AM PDT by IbJensen
MINNEAPOLIS, MN - Leaders of the country's largest Lutheran denomination have moved toward a more welcoming view of homosexuality.
Delegates of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, meeting in Minneapolis, approved a "social statement on human sexuality" that acknowledges differing views on homosexuality. It says the ELCA is strong enough to accommodate such differences.
-snip-
Wednesday's vote was a prelude to votes scheduled Friday on whether to let people in same-sex relationships serve as Lutheran ministers.
(Excerpt) Read more at onenewsnow.com ...
bump!
Could you sue the ELCA to force THEM to change THEIR name?
Heck, tell them to replace the “L” with an “O” - they might leap at the chance!
Our LCMS adult Bible study group was talking about this issue last week even though the assigned topic was something totally different. We were disgusted with the ECLA position on homos.
In a few short months it will not be the countrys largest Lutheran denomination.
The Liberal leadership wing of the ELCA have become their own Idols.
They think they are gods and they think they have made a name for themselves.
Think of the Tower of Babble.
Number one point I will state is - DO NOT PAINT ALL LUTHERAN CHRISTIANS WITH THE SAME BROAD BRUSH!
A vast number that were not there to vote are livid about this acton and they will be a splitting off.
Romans 6
Dead to Sin, Alive in Christ
1What shall we say, then? Shall we go on sinning so that grace may increase? 2By no means! We died to sin; how can we live in it any longer?
3Or don't you know that all of us who were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death?
4We were therefore buried with him through baptism into death in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, we too may live a new life.
Salvation comes by faith alone, through Christ alone.
Are you really interested in discussing these topics or were you just shaking your fists as the sky?
This happened to members in a Methodist congregation I once was part of, to those who questioned the creeping affirmation of homosexual behavior. One morning the pastor announced that the (almost all-gay) Strategy Committee had "decided that we would no longer emphasize the needs of traditional families." Can any true Jew or Christian imagine such heresy?
After walking out, I got a list of sins mailed to me, with "mine" highlighted in yellow marker. Threw it in the fireplace.
Jackals. I am so gone from there.
Yeah. At the end of the day, I think they were more concerned with losing my dues than with losing me. The way it going, we’ll all be creating our own religions in the same way we custom order PCs.
Wow. I was going to excerpt a few lines from this article here, but every single word of it is so powerful and so accurate. Thank you very much for this stunning analysis of the fundamental connection between the Church's acceptance of homosexual orientation among priests (with the expectation that gays will uphold vows of celibacy and fidelity in their priestly marriage to the Church) and the inevitable corruption of the heterosexual ethos within of the Body of Christ, and all of society.
Read the article at post 21, place it into the long sweep of history in which periods of corruption are inevitable, but have always been followed by periods of restoration, and then try to open your mind to the good advice given you in post 26.
You may not be aware of a Jewish tradition of not writing out the full name of God, as a token of respect and awe. That is why you sometimes see the initials "JHWH" to indicate the Hebrew name Yahweh (Whom Christians call Jehovah). Some Christians use the form "G-d" online as a polite courtesy because someone reading their posts may be Jewish, as on this thread; or they may do it from first principles of desiring to honor God in this ancient and harmless way.
The short answer is yes.
The Wisconsin Synod is absolutely opposed to all of this. They make the Missouri Synod look liberal!
I agree that there have been benefits from the schism. Protestantism has provided a "free market" alternative to the inevitable periods of human corruption in the long history of the Catholic Church. Its existence as a competitor has forced both Protestants and Catholics to refine their interpretations of scripture.
One of the main advantages of Catholicism over the long haul is that it derives strength from its academic and priestly traditions, so it has not swayed in the wind with the theological inventions of tinhorn evangelical hucksters using the name of Christ and the media to monetize their lifestyles. The RC Church has not given in to temporal demands for homosexual affirmation, abortion, priest marriage or female priesthood, simply because these ideas have gained secular popularity in the West -- but some Protestants have. The Catholic Church has finally confessed and repented of its priest scandal, without saying, as the ECUSA has, "But really, homosexuality is a good thing and we need to get with the times." Restoration will take a long time, but at least the RCC has held to the truth, while the Protestants continue to flirt and fantasize about homosexuality.
The powerful American Protestant churches, having grown up from colonial and frontier times to dominate Western society, have conflated American political democracy with the administration of their faith. Spread across a great frontier without the discipline of doctrinal oversight by the magisterium, Protestant faiths in America from the 1600s to the present day have through their protest forced many beneficial revisions of Catholic dogma; but their freedom has also spun off a wide variety of heresies through their American democratic processes.
Protestant annual conferences, originally intended to settle worldly questions of real estate, record-keeping, and the support of missionaries, have instead been subjecting basic denominational theology to an up-or-down vote in conference, where special-interest groups have deliberately infiltrated for the express purpose of promoting both homosexual and heterosexual heresies.
So the problem facing us now is that both branches of the Church, Catholic and Protestant, are corrupted at the same time. It's unwise to condemn one without looking at the log in the eye of the other. Spoken as someone who grew up in a family whose members were about half Protestants and half Catholics -- a few of us learned to accept the strengths and weaknesses of both traditions because loving one another forces us to. In the end, only Christ is perfect. Any churches in His Name will be populated by fallible humans.
There is Lutheran and then there is Lutheran. This does not describe all Lutherans.
All of the big denominations with hierarchies have found it necessary to take advantage of the lower cost opportunities presented by homosexuals.
The source of the difficulty is most likely Fidelity Investments, but there may be others in the business of peddling retirement annuities to churches.
Rather than renounce Christian theology and tradition it would be better for these churches to simply trim back the hierarchies and reduce the overburden.
No doubt the Missouri Synod folks look safe ~ but that's just for the moment. The long term retirement annuity problem is going to stir their hierarchy up as well.
Does anyone know how the vote turned out today?
That particular problem has been wrestled with for many centuries by the various Catholic groups, and was at one time (13th/14th centuries) thought resolved when all the deacons were gathered together into wealthy and powerful abbeys.
The Protestant Reformation swept that aside and the Counter-reformation put the priests back into the parishes ~ which did tend to muddy the waters.
The ELCA carries with it a history of Scandinavian style "Lutheranism" which involves making the ministers (priests) into government employees ~ but absent those church taxes in the old world, thrown back on their own resources as a denomination formed out of the wreckage of several dozen different ethnic/national group synods, they've become prey for hungry retirees.
One thing Fur Shur, the Roman Catholics are holding the line at allowing priests to marry, but they are living longer and costing more in the long run.
I hope no one things I've intruded into theological matters in this problem which is quite arguably purely ecclesiastical and universal!
I certainly don’t buy that. Homosexuals are not less costly especially ones who are active sexually which are the only ones that are real homosexuals. The cost of providing health care alone is enormous.
Thanks for the link Albion. :-)
We are not speaking of medical insurance ~ this is RETIREMENT INSURANCE. Homosexuals are a good 20 to 25 years less costly on the payout side.
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