← Autodidact Archive · Original Dissent · Centinel
Thread ID: 9129 | Posts: 12 | Started: 2003-08-18
2003-08-18 06:47 | User Profile
From The Associated Press, available online at: [url=http://www.cleveland.com/news/plaindealer/index.ssf?/base/news/1061116260205310.xml]http://www.cleveland.com/news/plaindealer/...16260205310.xml[/url]
Lutherans vote to decide gay issues by '05
08/17/03
Tim Cigelske Associated Press
Milwaukee- The nation's largest Lutheran denomination voted yesterday to stick to its schedule for making decisions on blessing same-sex marriages and allowing sexually active gays and lesbians in the clergy.
The Evangelical Lutheran Church in America voted 526 to 462 to defeat an amendment that would have postponed the deci sions from 2005 to 2007.
"I'm just afraid we're going to delay the healing of the world if we don't continue with what we'd said we do," said Stephen Bouman, the bishop of metropolitan New York synod.
Members wearing rainbow scarves, signifying support for keeping the timeline on track, hugged each other and cheered after the assembly sang the hymn "I've Got Peace Like a River" immediately following the vote.
The church's assembly in 2001 commissioned a four-year study on homosexuality in the church and called for the vote to be held when the report is completed.
Some members had sought to delay the vote until 2007, when the church's study on human sexuality is scheduled to be completed.
Later yesterday, the ELCA assembly rejected 832-139 a motion to break ties with the Episcopalians. Last week the Episcopal General Convention ratified the election of that denomination's first openly gay bishop, and affirmed same-sex blessings as "an acceptable practice in the church."
The motion to break ties was proposed by a church member before the meeting but had not been recommended by a committee that studied the issue.
The ELCA recognizes and shares Episcopal sacraments and clergy under a full communion pact the ELCA approved four years ago.
The ELCA doesn't have a definitive position banning same-sex unions, but an advisory statement in 1993 said bishops do not approve of such a ceremony as an official rite because they see no basis for it in scripture or church tradition.
The ELCA welcomes gay and lesbian members, and its ministers can be openly gay or lesbian if they are celibate.
2003-08-18 07:49 | User Profile
**Later yesterday, the ELCA assembly rejected 832-139 a motion to break ties with the Episcopalians. Last week the Episcopal General Convention ratified the election of that denomination's first openly gay bishop, and affirmed same-sex blessings as "an acceptable practice in the church." **
The Episcopalians and ELCA are in altar and pulpit fellowship with one another, meaning that laity can take communion in each other's churches and pastors can preach in each other's churches.
This may seem trivial to outsiders, but traditional confessional Lutherans take the sacrament of the altar very seriously and consider communing (or even praying) with those they are not in complete doctrinal agreement with to be blasphemy.
By refusing to practice Biblical separation and break ties with the Episcopalians, the ELCA is endorsing practicing homosexual clergy no different than if they allowed it in their own pulpits.
2003-08-19 01:01 | User Profile
Is this the same church of Luther that excommunicated Luther for his scurrilous attacks on the long suffering proboscisitzim in "The Jooze and their Lice"? I guess the Huegonots/Presbyterians can excommunate notorious antisemite John Calvin. Not to be out done, the Church of Rome should go them one better and excommunicate Jesus Christ for his sundry antisemitic references to the rat faced congregants of the "synagogue of Satan" and their father, Super K*ke YHWH/Big Jew in the sky, aka the "Father of all lies".
No rest for the wicked, sez I! Oy!
2003-08-19 01:16 | User Profile
There is a crises in American Christianity when we're increasingly stuck with the choice of pro-Israel (Assemblies of God, etc.) or pro-homosexual (Episcopal, etc.) denominations. Neither believe the Bible and both are support those who hate God.
2003-08-19 01:20 | User Profile
**Is this the same church of Luther that excommunicated Luther for his scurrilous attacks on the long suffering proboscisitzim in "The Jooze and their Lice"? **
What are you talking about?
Luther was excommunciated by Rome. The ELCA was formed in the 1980s. Pretty hard to excommunicate someone when they've already been dead for over 500 years.
2003-08-19 02:09 | User Profile
When it comes to polishing the ol' sheenie shishkeKNOB, Jerry Fagwell's and Fart Robberson's (trailer) camp followers have nothing on the headbobbing paters of the church of the great deformer.
[url=http://www.jewishsf.com/bk960503/bnheal.htm]ELCA denounces Luther and his wicked works (i.e. rides the kosher baloney pony)[/url]
Other Lutheran group(s) join in the merriment:
[url=http://www.lcms.org/cic/luther.html]Buuuuut - Jeezus wuz a Jooo!!![/url]
2003-08-19 02:31 | User Profile
So what's your complaint with the LCMS's statement?
They refute the essence of dispensationalism here:
Resolved, That in our teaching and preaching we take care not to confuse the religion of the Old Testament (often labeled "Yahwism") with the subsequent Judaism, nor misleadingly speak about "Jews" in the Old Testament ("Israelites" or "Hebrews" being much more accurate terms), lest we obscure the basic claim of the New Testament and of the Gospel to being in substantial continuity with the Old Testament and that the fulfillment of the ancient promises came in Jesus Christ
Or did you not even bother to read what you linked? If you think LCMS Lutherans venerate temporal Israel, you're sadly mistaken. In fact, they support the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Jordan's parish in Bethlehem among the Palestinians, and during the Israeli Passover offensive of 2002 the LCMS donated funds and relief supplies to Palestinians through Lutheran World Relief.
2003-08-19 04:38 | User Profile
I did read it, Bible Banger:
The LCMS, however, does not seek to "excuse" these statements of Luther, but denounces them (without denouncing Luther's theology)
Sounds suspiciously like the modern papist sophistry positing contemperaneous love of the sinner and hatred of the sin. Don't pummel that fudge packing scout leader slipping your 8 year old the old salami enema into an amorphous gelatinous blob of homoplasm! Just ask yourself what would Jeezus do?????
Doesn't sound as though these guys will take to heart A.Linder's exhortation to "finger the Jew" any time soon. What is significant is that the LCMS is reputedly the most orthodox/traditional/canonical of the Lutheran churches. This is of a piece with saying that the NeoKahnservatives are more 'right wing' than the Democrats - or that Moe is smarter than Larry or Curly. Nyuck, Nyuck, Nyuck, Nyuck, Nyuck!
Good luck on turning sows' ears into silk purses.
2003-08-19 05:42 | User Profile
Marcus,
What is it you believe you are accomplishing here with your petty insults and childish tone outside of earning the disdain of potential friends and allies?
It really makes me question your true agenda.
2003-08-19 06:03 | User Profile
Originally posted by Marcus Porcius Cato@Aug 18 2003, 23:38 * *What is significant is that the LCMS is reputedly the most orthodox/traditional/canonical of the Lutheran churches. **
False. I believe the Wisconsin Evangelical Lutheran Synod (WELS) currently holds that distinction. Perhaps you need to study up before casting aspersions.
Doesn't sound as though these guys will take to heart A.Linder's exhortation to "finger the Jew" any time soon.
A-ha. A devoted Linderite, are we? Testing the waters for a shakedown here like recent activities directed at the NA? Well, let me save you the time and trouble. There's no money to be had and no organization to kneecap behind OD, so perhaps you might get more destructive bang for your buck in other $greener$ pastures.
2003-08-19 21:23 | User Profile
Perhaps you need to study up before casting aspersions
The gravamen of the debate here was the ECLA. I supplied the appropriate link establishing their denunciation of Luther when I was called on it. If you're not disturbed by Lutherans denouncing Luther (and not just the ECLA, but other Lutheran churches as well), then I don't know what will disturb you (other than my periodic lapse of tact). Can you imagine Muslims denouncing Mohammed or Buddhists denouncing the Gautama? The whole thing is surreal at best and nauseating at worst - and more glaring than the Whore in the Vatican lionizing the unregenerate Christ killers as 'our elder brothers in Christ'. I have yet to read of any Roman Catholic group denouncing St. Peter.
When Christian churches vilify their own founding fathers in order to curry favor with the 'his blood be upon us and our children' bazaar hagglers, why are you surprised to find secularists like me holding Christians in contempt? And please spare us the 'they aren't real Christians' spiel. We can all play the 'those wiggers/shabbos goyim/feminist trollops aren't real Pagans/Atheists/Agnostics/Wiccans' game til the cows come home, but to what purpose?
PS I apologize for using the hyperbolic term excommunicate. I didn't think that the admittedly gratuitous headlineering would unduly confound anyone.
2003-08-19 21:38 | User Profile
**If you're not disturbed by Lutherans denouncing Luther (and not just the ECLA, but other Lutheran churches as well), then I don't know what will disturb you (other than my periodic lapse of tact). Can you imagine Muslims denouncing Mohammed or Buddhists denouncing the Gautama? **
1 Corinthians 11:1 Be ye followers of me, even as I also am of Christ.
A true Lutheran should be a follower of Luther "even as he also is of Christ" -- thus holding to the faith of Luther when Luther holds to the faith of Christ, and not holding to the faith of Luther where Luther differs from the faith of Christ.
Lutherans accept that Luther was a Godly man, but he wasn't a perfect man.
For the Linderites out there who wish to use Luther as a historical figure to bolster their agenda, consider these words from his last sermon three days before his death in 1546:
"We want to act in a Christian way toward them (Jews) and offer them first of all the Christian faith, that they might accept the Messiah, who after all, is their kinsman and born of their flesh and blood and is of the real seed of Abraham of which they boast. ... We want to treat them with Christian love and pray for them, so that they might be converted and would receive the Lord."