Leaders of the nation's largest Lutheran church voted Friday to allow sexually active gays and lesbians in committed relationships to serve as clergy.
Gays and lesbians are currently allowed to serve as ministers in the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America only if they remain celibate. The proposal to change that passed with 68 percent approval.
At 4.7 million members and about 10,000 congregations in the United States, the ELCA is one of the largest U.S. Christian denominations yet to take a more gay-friendly stance on clergy.
The final decision on whether to hire gay clergy in committed relationships will lie with individual congregations.
Some critics of the proposal have predicted its passage could cause individual congregations to split off from the ELCA, as has been the case with other Christian denominations, including the Episcopal Church.
The debate over the so-called "ministry recommendations" got under way first thing Friday, and delegate Al Quie, a former Republican governor of Minnesota, proposed an alternative: "Practicing homosexual persons are excluded from rostered leadership in this church."
The proposal, which would have left the church's policy more or less unchanged, failed. Conservatives had lost an important vote Wednesday night when the convention's 1,045 delegates approved by a two-thirds supermajority a "social statement on human sexuality" that said the ELCA could accommodate diverging views on homosexuality.
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Hi Entrecard friend.
ReplyDeleteJust wanted you to know, I am a Lutheran and my church body (LCMS - Lutheran Church Missouri Synod) does NOT agree with this change. We are saddened that we are lumped together with all "Lutherans" as we believe that people who practice homosexuality are living an unrepentant sinful life and we do not agree with that. Our church body believes in the completely inerrant word of God, as written in scripture, and clearly the ELCA church does not see scripture in that way. They even admit that.
It is such a shame that the ELCA church is going to give Lutherans a bad name.
Hi there,:)
ReplyDeleteIt is sad. I am so glad to hear that your church is standing strong and taking a stand for the word of God! Unfortunately I think we are going to see many more churches falling away in the days to come.