ELCA Homosexual Seminarian "Will Not Stand For" Lutherans Who Disagree with Homosexual Pastors

8/15/2017

(The following article was written a couple of weeks ago by Rev. Tom Brock of pastorsstudy.org. You can follow Pastor Brock on Facebook - here and twitter - here.)

Today I picked up a copy of "The Concord", the student newspaper of my alma mater, Luther Theological Seminary in St. Paul, a seminary of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America. This seminary was somewhat liberal when I graduated in 1979, today it has become extremely liberal.

The lead article of the May 2017 issue is an open letter to the ELCA's Presiding Bishop, bemoaning the fact that not everyone in the ELCA is open to homosexuals in the ministry. He writes: "I came out to my parents as gay...All were incredibly support of me...as I began the process of living into this new identity, and discovering my newfound, wholly, authentically, God-created self...I began to realize that the love and support I had received is by no means universal in the ELCA...I simply have been betrayed by the same Church that I have grown up in...It has hurt me and I will not stand for it..."

In 2009 when the ELCA decided to ordain practicing homosexual pastors, the agreement was that each congregation could follow its "bound conscience" on whether to call such pastors or not. Only one point of view on homosexuality (the liberal one) finds space in the ELCA's national magazine and here we have a seminarian (future pastor) refusing "to stand for" those who disagree. One can only wonder how long the ELCA will be able to truly respect the "bound conscience" of conservatives on this issue. But, truth be told, so many conservatives have left the ELCA that it may become a moot point.

In Christ,

Pastor Tom Brock
pastosstudy.org

2 Comments

Didaskalos link

8/16/2017 06:41:37 am

The ELCA has long since abandoned its 2009 convention promise to "respect the bound consciences of all." Martin Luther wouldn't have found this inevitable abandonment surprising: "It is the nature of all hypocrites and false prophets to create a conscience where there is none and to cause conscience to disappear where it does exist."

A "God-created self" is manifestly not a sin-justifying, sin-bound self, as S. M. Hutchens writes in Touchstone Magazine:

. . . "In 1 Corinthians 6, St. Paul gives vital clarification on a subject where there is much foggy thinking among those who ask questions like, "What should the Church's approach to homosexual Christians be?" The apostolic answer is that there is no such thing as a homosexual Christian. There are brethren who struggle with various temptations, to be sure, and may on occasion fall to them before rising again. But believers who resist homosexual lust are not "homosexuals." They are just Christians, as are the rest of us with our own besetting sins.

"Do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God? [Then comes a list of sinners, including "sexual perverts."] And such were some of you. But you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the Name of the Lord Jesus Christ and in the Spirit of
our God."

Such WERE some of you. The apostle is writing to the baptized saints in the church of Corinth who are no longer these things. He does not say they are no longer susceptible to their old sins, nor that these old sins mustn't be dealt with: addressing the problems old sins create is a large part of the epistle's burden. Given this apostolic definition, however, we cannot—we dare not—say there is any such thing as a "gay (or lesbian, etc.) Christian," for the Christian by definition has been cleansed of his homosexuality. He cannot regard himself as a homosexual—or idolater, or thief, or drunkard—nor can the Church affirm him, or the various acts associated with the old vice, as such.

There is no "homosexual voice within the Church," for the homosexual's conversion entails a choice—This, or That—the sin, or the Faith. He cannot have both, nor can the Church in any way accommodate the sin from which he has been cleansed. It is wholly and actively and vehemently against it as a destroyer of the souls it has been called to save. It labors among the saints only in the accomplishment of what has already been done in Christ: cleansing, sanctification, and justification in the Name of the Lord.
. . .

The Church never can and never will give satisfaction—and the homosexualist knows it, for he knows the words against him are ineradicable—to the declared and impenitent homosexual, the person who, through an act of the vermiculate will, has identified his person with a sin, whether he demands acceptance of his sin through "love," or vindication through identification of his perceived enemies as bigots. Whether he presents himself as an object of love or indignation, what he demands in either case is acceptance not of the person, but of the sin-bound and sin-defined person. He demands the declaration of spiritual authority that there is nothing objectively disordered about this binding of man to sin, and assurance that this monstrous amalgam can indeed enter the kingdom of heaven. This can never happen among Christians until they abandon Christianity, which is at war with every sin, and whose indelible constitution places all perversions of the perfect man at the muzzle of its canons."

"Just Christians" -- http://www.touchstonemag.com/archives/article.php?id=26-04-003-e#ixzz4pur174MJ

John

8/21/2017 10:32:09 am

The open letter ends with, "... I simply have been betrayed by the same Church that I have grown up in...It has hurt me and I will not stand for it..."
Well, there has been a lot of that going around since 2009. Sadly, irony is the least important thing that the ELCA and LTS failed to teach this young person. Like, what are the things (sins) that truly hurt us and that God will not stand for? A mind and a soul are terrible things to waste.

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ELCA Homosexual Seminarian "Will Not Stand For" Lutherans Who Disagree with Homosexual Pastors

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