Lutheran (EL
* as of August 19, AD 2009, a liberal protestant SECT, not part of the holy, catholic and apostolic CHURCH.
Christ is in our midst!
Posted on 01/23/2015 10:13:29 AM PST by rhema
A while ago, I read a blog post over at First Things that was a blast from my past. The author, a Lutheran pastor, recently left the ELCA to become a member of the newly-formed North American Lutheran Church (NALC). He said, “My real disaffection with the ELCA didn’t start with sex. It began in earnest over the ELCA abortion statement and the subsequent decision by the national council to treat elective abortion for pastors and dependents as a reimbursable medical expense under the church health plan.”
It was this exact issue that was my first step on the path toward the Catholic Church. Until I had learned of that same decision, I had assumed that the Lutheran Church was opposed to abortion; after all, how could anyone who claimed to follow Jesus Christ support the killing of unborn children? Wasn’t “Thou shall not kill” a pretty essential element of Christianity? In my 22 years as a faithful, churchgoing member of the ELCA, I could not remember hearing a Lutheran pastor preach a sermon on abortion. It was not an issue discussed in any of the three ELCA churches I’d attended up to that point in my life. Shortly thereafter I accessed online the ELCA’s Social Statement on Abortion (SSOA), and as I read it my faith in the ELCA was shaken to the core.
The first statement that bowled me over was, “A developing life in the womb does not have an absolute right to be born…”
(Excerpt) Read more at catholicstand.com ...
Maybe some Lutheran folks can help me out here. I know this was posted by a Catholic apologist (but what the heck-I think we’re still in America-at least for now), but why wouldn’t a Lutheran pastor—or even lay person think of joining up with the other Synods —who I believe are more ethically conservative? Or is it that ELCA is more liturgical—resembling the Catholic liturgy than are the Missouri Synod or smaller Lutheran synods?
How do you go from Lutheran to Roman Catholic over abortion when there are Lutheran synods that are very conservative and pro-life?
It’s because, I think, the article is propaganda?
This is the ELCA......This is the PCUSA (Presbyterian Church, USA)...
This is any church that has gone apostate!
This is NOT Lutheran Church, Missouri Synod......Or Presbyterian Church in America......(PCA).......
There are plenty of denominations that DO NOT sanction abortion.
Guess you’d probably have to direct-message the author to find out the reasons. Most, I’m thinking, of the more than 600,000 members and more than 1,000 congregations that have fled the ELCA since its Alterations of Desolation (S. M. Hutchens’ coinage) have joined more conservative and biblical Lutheran denominations like the LCMS, LCMC, NALC, and AFLC.
LCMS President Matthew Harrison's statement on the 42nd anniversary of Roe v. Wade
The ELCA seems to be following Lady Macbeth as its spiritual advisor these days: "Things without all remedy should be without regard." No milk of human kindness for the preborn in that denomination.
Queen Mary helped him out by creating Martyrs to ensure its survival long after the Tudor line died out.
Much the same is happening in our time as the churches choose between what they think is trendy and what has eternally been moral.
Alot ECLA ers won’t join the LCMS because of our stand on women(no pastors) and communion doctrine of closed communion.
which is ironic because those 2 issues is why the ELCA is where they are at today.
2. It's because of this -- and the ELCA's positions on homosexuality (amongst pastors, for example) & sexuality in general -- that the rest of the Lutheran denominations have either distanced themselves or formed new break-offs. With the PC-USA, the PCA (Presbyterian Church in America) & some smaller Presbyterian branches have likewise distanced themselves from PC-USA.
Bottom line: Most Lutherans and most Presbyterians ARE opposed to abortion -- albeit it for too many such opposition remains in the heart or upstairs in their worldviews...and aren't fleshed out in any significant way.
One other fact about the ELCA, two of its most famous (former members) were George Tiller and the BTK killer. In the case of the latter, the church did not know he was a murderer - he was a member in good standing until he was arrested (and who knows, maybe he still is a member). Tiller, they knew he as an abortionist, the most famous late term abortionist in America. They gave him communion week after week and took his blood money. So were the murderers influenced by the callous thinking of the ELCA or was the ELCA influenced by its members who do not revere life and so attracted others like themselves.
* as of August 19, AD 2009, a liberal protestant SECT, not part of the holy, catholic and apostolic CHURCH.
Christ is in our midst!
The Roman Catholic church is more liberal than the LCMS. That is why friends and family that I know who let the ELCA have either gone to Catholic church or left church all together.
They said the Catholic church was “more accepting” of things like abnormal sexuality. Now, I now most of the Freepers here will disagree with me, but that is the reasons they list.
Most in the ELCA hate the LCMS and other synods, because we told them what was happening.
Plus young earth (six day) creationism as an article of faith, and the ability of any LCMS member, anywhere, who gets pizzed off to bring "charges" against and LCMS pastor, anywhere.
A guy with a bee in his bonnet tried to defrock the Atlantic District President because he had dared to offer an overtly Christian prayer at an interfaith service at Yankee stadium a couple days after the 9-11-01 terrorist attacks.
Well, that guy was a Pastor (Preus I believe) and had some very valid concerns. Praying with other religions is not something we should do very often, if at all, in public. Many of my pastors growing up would either offer up the opening or closing prayer and not be on stage (or whatever) during the “group prayer”, or visit the family or families discretely and privately. One old pastor I knew said that such events were often more about the pastor’s ego rather than the family and victims’ souls.
Preus was, and still is, the south bound end of a north bound donkey, and the rest of the synod pretty much knows that. He has been trying to get elected as president for a few decades now, and manages to unite the opposition against him.
The ELC = PCUSA,Methodists, Church of Christ ... it is the liberal Lutheran church.. the main Lutheran synod is the Missouri synod
The Atlantic Dixtrict lost some of its members in the NYC attack, so there was a direct pastoral need for participation, as with the nearly parallel situation (including charges, later withdrawn) after the Sandy Hook school shooting. I believe the LCMS Pastor lost two young parishioners in that violence.
In both cases, the pastors offered overtly, non-generic prayers and brought the witness of orthodox Christianity into what would otherwise have been a “COEXIST” pep rally/group therapy.
In terms of fidelity to Scripture and Confessions, yes. But not numerically.
Main national bodies by size:
ELCA
LC-MS
WELS
LCMC
NALC
I wasn’t saying the pastors at the service were wrong. I was saying that Preus’s attacks had some basis.
I also called him a horse’s rear end. He, and his followers (who I think are now in the WELS but not sure) were gunning for someone.
You might, more accurately, review which synods’ members actually show up for worship on Sundays rather than merely list claimed membership numbers. I received a post card a year or so ago from an ELCA church that I hadn’t been a member of for decades and yet they still carried me as a member.
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