ELCA Statement on Sexuality Labeled Divisive
by Jim Brown
March 7, 2005
(AgapePress) - There's mounting opposition to recommendations from a Lutheran task force on sexuality. A member of that task force reports the response has been overwhelmingly negative to its report that was released in January.
The Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA) Sexuality Task Force recently issued a report that encouraged the denomination to refrain from disciplining individuals and churches that ordain practicing homosexuals and bless same-sex relationships. Louis Hesse, a member of the task force, estimates that 70 percent of Lutherans oppose the report on sexuality because it sanctions the ordination and blessing of homosexuals. (See related article)
Pastor Mark Chavez is director of the WordAlone Network, a conservative group within the ELCA. Chavez believes the task force, which has been meeting sine 2002, was completely unnecessary.
"It wasn't something that the members of the ELCA asked for," Chavez explains. "It was imposed on the denomination by a well-organized pro-homosexual lobby at the 2001 Churchwide Assembly."
The pastor says he highly doubts the task force, scheduled to reconvene in September, will meet its goal for 2007 of producing a statement on homosexuality that speaks for the entire denomination. The indecisiveness of the task force, he says, is indicative of that.
"The task force, in its report, concedes that they couldn't even decide amongst themselves whether or not homosexual activity is sinful," Chavez notes. "And if they can't even deal with that particular issue and those particular questions, how in the world are they ever going to deal with a much broader statement?"
Chavez says the ELCA church council needs to realize that presenting the Sexuality Task Force recommendations at the ELCA's Churchwide Assembly in August will only "further divide the denomination and drive people away."
Jim Brown, a regular contributor to AgapePress, is a reporter for American Family Radio News, which can be heard online.
