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utheran Seminarians Support Task Force Recommendation 09-107-MRC CHICAGO (ELCA) -- In an open letter to the 65 synod bishops of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA), Lutheran seminarians expressed their support for a recommendation that would allow Lutherans in committed same-gender relationships to be included on professional church rosters. On Feb. 19 the Task Force for ELCA Studies on Sexuality released a report and recommendation for a process to consider changes to ministry policies that could make it possible for Lutherans who are in "publicly accountable, lifelong, monogamous, same-gendered relationships" to serve as ELCA associates in ministry, deaconesses, diaconal...

The California Supreme Court is letting stand a lower court ruling that allowed a private religious school to expel two girls for an alleged lesbian relationship. The state's highest court this week declined a request from the girls' attorney to review the case. The 4th District Court of Appeal in Riverside in January had upheld California Lutheran High School's right as a private, religious organization to exclude students based on their sexual orientation. The teens initially sued the Riverside County school in 2005 based on a state anti-discrimination law. Advocates for religious freedom called it the right decision but the...

The long-awaited position on ordaining gay clergy in the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America isn't a clear yes or no. An ELCA task force admitted Thursday that it could not reach a consensus on the issue that has polarized its members for years. But with the matter expected to dominate this summer's national convention in Minneapolis, its position paper offers this suggested solution: The ELCA will allow the ordination of gay pastors but will leave it up to individual congregations and synods whether to ordain or appoint pastors. The term used to describe this compromise is "structured flexibility." While acknowledging...

Lutherans weigh making gay clergy a local decision ERIC GORSKI Feb. 19, 2009. The nation's largest Lutheran denomination will consider allowing individual congregations to choose whether to allow gays and lesbians in committed relationships to serve as clergy, an attempt to avoid the sort of infighting that has threatened to tear other churches apart. A task force of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America recommended that course Thursday in a long-awaited report on ministry standards. The panel, however, said the church needs to clarify a number of questions before overhauling its gay clergy policy. The report, issued at the same...

Lutherans join ''March for Life'' in Washington, D.C. March for Life logoLutherans from throughout the country will join the thousands who are expected to gather in the nation's capital Jan. 22 for the 36th annual "March for Life." LCMS World Relief and Human Care (WR-HC) also will be in Washington, D.C., providing information, insights and updated web coverage throughout the day from marching Lutherans as they affirm the blessing of God's gift of life. This year's march participants include a coalition of Lutherans, including: Synod President Gerald B. Kieschnick; members of the LCMS Sanctity of Human Life Committee (under the...

This past year, we have seen a flurry of activity around states either permitting gay and lesbian couples to marry or defining marriage as a union only between a man and a woman. The conflict in our culture is often misconstrued as a standoff between religious persons and nonreligious persons. This does not ring true for me or for many of the Christians I know. My own church, the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, has been engaged in a long, cautious process of investigating whether the unexamined conventional wisdom we have received from our ancestors in the faith rings true:...

A few weeks ago, in the historic Castle Church of Wittenberg in Saxony, Lutherans from all over the world opened the “Luther Decade,” celebrations that coincide with Martin Luther’s (1483-1546) arrival in Wittenberg 500 years ago in 1508 and commemorate the achievement and global significance of the German reformer. Nine years later, on 31 October 1517, Luther not only castigated the abuses of indulgence sellers with his “95 theses” but also offered a new understanding of what it meant to be a Christian. Ushering in the modern age, Luther held that the individual, not the institutional church, stood at the...

Officials of the declining 4.9 million Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA) have revealed what God’s priorities are in the U.S. presidential campaign. And remarkably, the divine priorities was very akin to the Democratic Party’s priorities, if not further to the left. Presiding Bishop Mark Hanson, with three other ELCA officials generously wrote both presidential candidates a public letter with the divine guidance. Although famed Protestant Reformer Martin Luther championed the Bible as God’s exclusive revelation, modern ELCA activists have located more useful counsel in the secular welfare state and environmental agenda. “The Scriptures are clear about God's concern for...

STATEMENT ON THE ANTICHRIST Introduction to the StatementAs Martin Luther grew in his appreciation of the gospel, he also grew in his recognition that the Papacy is the Antichrist. A 1954 WELS pamphlet entitled Antichrist put it this way: “It was because Luther cherished the Gospel so dearly that his faith instinctively recoiled and protested in unmistakable terms when the Pope put himself in the place of Christ and declared His work insufficient and in vain. That is the use to which Luther’s faith put the prophecy of Scripture. For him the tenet that the Pope is the Antichrist was...

ELCA Presiding Bishop, Other Religious Leaders, Meet with Obama 08-087-JB CHICAGO (ELCA) -- The Rev. Mark S. Hanson, presiding bishop of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA) was among more than 30 national Christian leaders who met here June 10 with U.S. Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.), the presumptive Democratic nominee for president. Hanson was invited by Obama's staff to meet privately with the Senator in a meeting in which Darfur, the Iraq war, gay rights, abortion and faith issues were discussed, the Associated Press reported. Hanson said the meeting's purpose seemed to be an effort by Obama "to begin...

VATICAN CITY (CNS) -- Rumors that the Vatican is set to rehabilitate Martin Luther, the 16th-century leader of the Protestant Reformation, are groundless, said the Vatican spokesman, Jesuit Father Federico Lombardi. News reports in early March alleged that Pope Benedict XVI was dedicating a planned September symposium with former doctoral students to re-evaluating Luther, who was excommunicated and condemned for heresy. The story "does not have any foundation, insofar as no rehabilitation of Luther is foreseen," Father Lombardi told the Italian news agency ANSA March 8. Vatican officials said the topic of the pope's annual summer gathering of former students...

Tom Kauffman thought that once a storm blew over people could go home, clean up a few things and return back to normal, everyday life. But two mission trips to Biloxi, Miss., changed his thinking. People are still recovering from the impact of Hurricane Katrina, which struck the Gulf Coast in 2005. "A storm doesn't just blow over and people don't go back to their homes the next day," said Kauffman, 69, of Manchester Township. "There's a lot of pain and suffering and a lot of waiting. I opened my eyes up." Kauffman plans to return to Biloxi a third...

Stockholm (dpa) - Marriage and same-sex unions were ``equal forms of living together,'' the Church of Sweden, a Lutheran church, said Wednesday. The central board of the church said it would accept pending changes of marriage laws that would offer same-sex unions the same legal status as traditional marriage. However the term ``marriage'' should be reserved for the union between man and woman, the board - elected by the Church Assembly, the highest decision-making body in the church - said. The church was one of many bodies asked to comment on proposals to change current legislation presented earlier this year....

In spring 2005, the Rev. Carol Solovitz, pastor of Zumbro Lutheran, had the honor of preaching the English service for two weeks in Wittenberg, Germany, in Martin Luther's church: the Stadtkirche (city church). Inspired by her visit, members of Zumbro met in April 2006 with the prospect of forming a tour to Germany. By September 2006 -- a year in advance -- the trip was sold out. On Sept. 10, 2007, a full bus left the church parking lot on its way to the Minneapolis airport, flying Iceland Air to Frankfurt. On our first day, we toured the Wartburg, where...

BISMARCK, N.D. (AP) -- Two state officials have been added to the list of defendants in a lawsuit filed by the nation's largest group of atheists and agnostics. The Wisconsin-based Freedom From Religion Foundation says that referrals to the Dakota Boys and Girls Ranch, which serves troubled children, are funded by taxpayer money and that staff at the ranch facilities in Minot, Fargo and Bismarck indoctrinate children with religion. The Boys and Girls Ranch, which is affiliated with the Lutheran Church Missouri Synod and the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, and state officials dispute the foundation's claims. The group initially...

ELCA and Evangelical Church in Germany (EKD) leaders signed an agreement committing the churches to information exchange and care for German-speaking congregations in the U.S. and English-speaking congregations in Germany during a Sept. 24 worship service at the Lutheran Center in Chicago. The agreement—which provides for exchange of clergy, EKD deacons and diaconal ministers, and Christian education teachers—renews a 1991 agreement between the two churches, said ELCA Presiding Bishop Mark S. Hanson. Bishop Wolfgang Huber, chair of the EKD Council, told the ELCA News Service that the agreement will help the churches work together to prepare for the 500th anniversary...

Berlin - Germany's top Lutheran leader, Wolfgang Huber, questioned Monday why Muslims in the country were mounting "a large- scale mosque-building campaign.""It's a fair question as to how far this meets legitimate religious needs or whether ambitions over and beyond that are involved," said Huber, who is the Lutheran bishop of Berlin. Speaking at the launch of a book compilation of his newspaper articles, he said more mosques were under construction than all of those currently in existence in Germany. Huber is chairman of the German Evangelical Church, a federation of Protestant churches. A Muslim think tank, the Islamic Archive,...

(AP) A national assembly of Evangelical Lutherans urged its bishops Saturday to refrain from defrocking gay and lesbian ministers who violate a celibacy rule, but rejected measures that would have permitted ordaining gays churchwide. Still, advocates for full inclusion of gays were encouraged, calling the resolution a powerful statement in support of clergy with same-gender partners. The conservative group Lutheran CORE, however, said bishops will now feel more secure in ignoring denomination policy. The 538-431 vote came on the final day of a weeklong meeting in Chicago _ and after emotional debate over how the denomination should interpret what the...

June 20 (UPI) -- Five local policemen were killed in a shootout with soldiers in the capital of Russia's war-ravaged southern republic of Chechnya, Interfax reported, citing an unidentified local military official. The policemen came under fire after they stopped a car with a soldier and got into a dispute with him, with both sides calling in reinforcements, the Moscow-based news agency reported. Russia invaded Chechnya, a mainly Muslim republic in the north Caucasus, in 1999 to quell a separatist rebellion. Russia in 2003 gave Chechen security forces control over local law enforcement. Most of the new police are former...

Chicago - By an almost two-to-one margin, Midwest Lutherans voiced solid opposition to decapitation, suicide bombing, and chemical warfare in a new comprehensive survey of their social attitudes.The Pew Research survey, conducted May 13-19, queried nearly 2,500 randomly selected Lutherans at flea markets and convenience stores across the Midwest. Interviews were conducted in High Plains Twang, Great Lakes Nasal and Flat Ohio Valley Bland.“If there is one headline here, it’s how remarkably moderate the Lutheran community is,” said Pew director Andrew Kohut of the survey, which was co-sponsored by the Council on American-Yooper Relations. “It really paints a picture of...