Liberal ELCA Lutheran denomination becomes more intolerant of conservatives

9/27/2022

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

At its recent convention, the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America passed a resolution to take a second look at its 2009 decision to allow both conservative and liberal views on homosexuality. Some feel this needs to be amended because the LGBT community does not feel “welcomed“ in some ELCA congregations.

Conservatives, on the other hand, have not felt welcomed in the ELCA for years. Here are a few examples:

As ELCA seminaries become more radical and shrink in numbers, some seminaries have had to sell off buildings. Two ELCA seminaries in Pennsylvania had to merge. When it was discovered that the new president of the newly merged seminary held a conservative viewpoint on homosexuality years ago (she has now become more liberal), people became upset and she had to resign. Who replaced her? The ELCA’s first homosexual bishop with a “husband” is now the president of the ELCA’s United Seminary in Pennsylvania.

Another example is the ELCA’s national magazine Living Lutheran, which regularly highlights the liberal view on transgenderism and homosexuality but will not allow a conservative viewpoint in its pages.

The ELCA‘s head bishop, Elizabeth Eaton, in recent years has done an annual “gay pride video“ celebrating homosexuality and transgenderism.

Such examples show the “tolerance“ of the ELCA is a tolerance of the left. If you are a conservative, you are being pushed to the margin.

I remember many years ago when I was still in the ELCA, we were asked at a church convention to get to the microphone and answer the question “Who is the ELCA pushing out of our church?“ Liberal pastors immediately said “Our LGBT brothers and sisters” (that was back when you could say “brothers and sisters“, which is now too binary, Elizabeth Eaton talks about “our LGBT siblings“). I got to the microphone and said “No, the people being pushed out of this denomination are Bible-believing Christians who desire to follow the Word of God.”

That was true back then. It is tragically much more true today.

Sincerely in Christ,

Pastor Tom Brock

6 Comments

Didaskalos link

9/27/2022 02:07:34 pm

The ELCA planned its purge of biblical Christians decades ago; it just whitewashed its intentions with the unctuous lie that it would "respect everyone’s bound conscience." Occasionally, though, the truth slipped out:

“[May 2019] . . .a former ELCA synod mission director wrote the following –
“Shortly after being called to that position I attended staff orientation at the ELCA headquarters with other new Mission Directors. We were told unequivocally that we were to start new congregations for gay and lesbian groups but to refrain from traditional church starts as there would be little if any financial support for traditional church groups. I was told directly by the then ELCA mission director it was the unspoken policy of the ELCA to NOT start traditional New churches or to provide any support for Rural Congregations because the money was to be directed to gay and lesbian church starts. . . .

“During one of my visits to the ELCA headquarters, the national mission director took me into a closet that held the congregations' responses to the first sexuality study of the ELCA. She said, and I quote, ‘we are going to ram this s____ down their (congregations') throat.’. . .
“I and many faithful pastors suffered mightily at the hands of the ELCA. In fact nearly every faithful pastor I knew as Assistant to the Bishop suffers or has suffered as a result of ELCA pressure on their ministry to conform. In the ELCA almost anything is tolerated except not accepting their lgbt policy.”
-- http://lutherancore.website/2019/05/14/pithy-responses-to-cores-april-letter-to-the-director/

Catholic archbishop Charles Chaput knows about pious frauds like the ELCA: "Evil talks about tolerance when it’s weak. When it’s strong, real tolerance gets kicked out the door...It cannot co-exist peacefully with goodness, because evil insists on being seen as right and worshiped as being right."
-- https://stream.org/great-tolerance-ruse/

Rebecca

9/27/2022 05:53:34 pm

Oh, where to start..... It is for sure that conservative views are
treated as if no one who breathes should think such a thing. We were told we were liars essentially for questioning the 2020 election.

it is really hard to get longtime members to leave elca, because they think they can change it. Or that it might get better. They are deluding themselves. That said, I am one who never gives up hope...

Those churches wonder why they cannot get new members. They don't do much except preach "community". A church I
attended for a LONG time was packed out many services per week. Sin was named and taught by using scripture! People are hungry tor Truth and the One Who is Truth. That's where they will go.

9/30/2022 06:35:39 am

Unsaved, unconverted pastors are dragging their denominations down with them.

'Why Our Churches Are Full of Unconverted Preachers'
-- https://livingwaters.com/why-our-churches-are-full-of-unconverted-preachers/
[. . .]Preached lawfully, the moral Law has the ability to put the fear of God into the hearts of careless and sin-loving sinners. . .

But, modern preachers have failed to do this, and that has resulted in a Church that has no fear of God. That has further resulted in a lack of moral influence upon the nation. We have lost our saltiness. Jesus said that flavorless salt is “good for nothing but to be…trampled underfoot by men” (Matthew 5:13). And that’s the state of the modern Church in America. It has become irrelevant. Meanwhile, the world sinks further into moral depravity.

All this has happened because thousands of the unsaved have entered our pulpits. We no longer suspect this. We now know it to be true. Dr. George Barna recently released research revealing that at least one-third of senior pastors in the United States believe we can earn a place in Heaven by being a good person. Other pastors said that moral truth is subjective, fornication is “morally acceptable,” and biblical teaching on the slaughter of babies in the womb is “ambiguous.” They have forgotten about the Sixth Commandment.

These findings reveal that these pastors are not regenerated by the Holy Spirit. Their convictions fly in the face of the words of Jesus Himself (see John 14:6). They, therefore, believe in a different Jesus and preach another gospel:

"For such are false apostles, deceitful workers, transforming themselves into apostles of Christ. And no wonder! For Satan himself transforms himself into an angel of light. Therefore it is no great thing if his ministers also transform themselves into ministers of righteousness, whose end will be according to their works." (2 Corinthians 11:13-16)

May God raise up faithful shepherds who will fearlessly and faithfully preach righteousness in the great congregation.

Snuggarunt

9/28/2022 11:06:01 am

The persistent antinomian, disinhibited behavior of the current ELCA before the Churchwide Assembly and the lack of empathy or concern for the "bound conscience" of a conservative Lutheran within their midst is more in keeping with psychopathy. It is as if the law written upon the heart no longer exists among the modern day ELCA Lutheran, but has been nullified and expunged by a false gospel. And this has happened to such an extent that any suggestion that its own theology may be in error is met, not with caution or self-reflection, but with outright hostility. And so the hard-hearted ELCA Lutheran simply doubles-down on their own biases and is convinced by a narcissistic self-righteousness that it is always that other guy who is at fault.

9/28/2022 06:42:59 pm

Pastor Brock: "...the LGBT community does not feel 'welcomed' in some ELCA congregations."

They are welcome . . . to repent of their sins, receive Jesus as Savior and Lord, and become new creations. As the Apostle Paul writes in 1 Corinthians (after naming sins that will keep the willfully unrepentant out of the kingdom of God), "Such WERE some of you..."

Jesus' "Repent and believe in the gospel" command has thus far fallen on deaf ears in the ELCA, which views repentance as a dirty word and is outraged when confessional Christian churches (including every branch of American Lutheranism except the ELCA) preach repentance. . . which they will continue to do.

"[...]The Church never can and never will give satisfaction—and the homosexual 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" -- https://www.touchstonemag.com/archives/article.php?id=26-04-003-e&readcode=&readtherest=true#therest

Born again

9/30/2022 06:47:26 pm

They only pay lip service to believing in Jesus. They are Marxist, Democrat, China, RINO, Soros operatives.

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Liberal ELCA Lutheran denomination becomes more intolerant of conservatives

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