ELCA Wants More Refugees

8/29/2018

A letter written to the President of the United States, as reported in the article "More than 750 Faith Leaders and Faith Organizations Decry Low Refugee Arrivals" included the supporting signature of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America.

The ELCA and the other signators want the United States to resettle “at least 75,000 refugees in Fiscal Year 2019” (see here). This is a great cost to the United States and its citizens, which is something the ELCA should realize when one reads the following article, by Ann Corcoran, who reports that the ELCA's Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service (LIRS) is "95% funded by you—the taxpayers of America!" She reports that in 2014, LIRS received $55,341,275 in federal grants. (See here)

This seems self-serving. Wanting more refugees, one would think, means more tax money would be coming to Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service. That is just one of the problems I see with this.

3 Comments

Stephen Hedlund

8/30/2018 12:56:17 pm

The church (the small "c" catholic church) has no business opining (or in the ELCA's case, pontificating, purporting to speak for the small "c" catholic church or whatever it thinks it's doing) on matters concerning which reasonable minds might differ. Those matters (matters on which reasonable minds might differ) are "political matters" and the church is supposed to be "above" political matters in societies which acknowledge it as the "binding together" institution of society (as the Christian church was during "Christendom") or "aside from" political matters in societies which do not defer to it to answer the ontological questions (as the present American secular society is). In either situation it is entirely proper for the church to tell us that we "ought" to take care of each other, ("what" we should do). But, when it starts telling us "how to do it" (as in, take in X number of refugees, or whatever), it has abandoned its proper guiding role and become merely another partisan political faction. That's where the ELCA is on this and a host of other matters.

It is also beyond insulting to its members to purport to speak for all of them on matters regarding which those members or any of them may have contrary opinions and solutions to the problem of caring for the displaced or approaches to any other matters which may be subject to a variety of positions.

8/30/2018 05:19:58 pm

Besides the rapidly thinning theology and the warped morals, this is one other huge reason we finally left the ELCA. Too much coming from the pulpit and elsewhere that just assumed we all think in lockstep with the Democratic party.

george in texas

8/31/2018 01:21:18 pm

Again, spot on, Mr Hedlund. Because of the ELCA's political leanings in the "how to do these things" issue as well as its growing partisan leanings (which btw include leaning ever so quickly away from making a proper distinction between law and the unique Christian gospel) I have removed myself from the ELCA ordained roster for the LCMC roster.

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ELCA Wants More Refugees

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Dan Skogen

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