Three Lutheran head bishops to mourn

11/17/2025

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

The Grand Canyon Synod of the liberal Evangelical Lutheran Church in America just released the below, praising God for the “faithfulness” of the ELCA’s first three head bishops. Let's talk about each. (See here)

Bishop Herbert Chilstrom was my bishop in Minneapolis before he became head bishop over the entire denomination when it formed in 1988. He was very nice, diplomatic, but liberal, man. He did not want anyone teaching in ELCA seminaries who believed in the inerrancy of scripture. So much for diversity. During his tenure or shortly thereafter, I sent 11,000 letters to all ELCA churches when I discovered the ELCA was paying for abortions for any reason with offering dollars in the denomination’s healthcare plan. Chilstrom was pro-choice on abortion.

Next is Bishop H. George Anderson. During his tenure, it went all the way to the ELCA’s national convention to stop paying for abortions for any reason with offering dollars. That resolution failed two to one. It was then I came back to my church and suggested that we leave the ELCA.

Next is Bishop Mark Hanson. During Hanson's liberal leadership, the ELCA voted to ordain practicing homosexuals, which started the largest church split in American history at that time (I think the recent split in the United Methodist Church over the same issue is even bigger). Hanson also referred to “God Godself” in order to stay away from referring to “God Himself.” Hanson has also defended “children who are transitioning” to the opposite sex. In a sermon Hanson stated that Jesus was mean and hurtful to the Syrophoenician woman.

The Evangelical Lutheran Church in America has lost 42% of its membership since it was founded in 1988. These three head bishops are not reasons to rejoice, but reasons to mourn.

Sincerely in Christ,

Pastor Tom Brock
pastorsstudy.org

6 Comments

11/18/2025 09:25:29 am

Our family is part of the 42% -- we stayed as long as we could, but they wore us down.

Rebecca

11/18/2025 11:05:13 am

Thanking God for everything, and everyone, who is exposed as being anti-Scripture, and all that includes. I am glad to hear that 42% of the people have had the courage to leave.
It is such a shame that innocent people still sit in the pews and don't know how far down their synods have gone. Every pastor now who is NOT telling the people the Truth will be accountable, as are each of us, some day.

Didaskalos link

11/18/2025 01:17:50 pm

The ELCA's practice of recategorizing sin has long been the inevitable fruit of eisegetical "studies" whose sole purpose was to "justify" setting aside the Bible's clear teaching. The campaign to recategorize homosexual sin began decades ago under then-Presiding Bishop Herbert Chilstrom.

==> In his March 2011 reply to an open letter by Chilstrom, confessional Lutheran Pastor David Barnhart recounted the ELCA's unrelenting push toward world-appeasing apostasy:

[ . . .]"The people of the ELCA were not the ones who raised the issue of promoting homosexuality as being virtuous, nor did they raise the issue of ordaining practicing homosexuals as pastors. You, Bishop Chilstrom, and the ELCA leadership were responsible for relentlessly driving this agenda in the ELCA over the past 22 years. It was you and liberal ELCA leaders who initiated studies, costing millions of benevolence dollars, in order to reeducate ELCA members that homosexuality should be fully accepted by the church, in total contradiction to the teachings of Scripture.

"Because the Bible clearly identifies homosexuality as sin and an abomination before God, (Leviticus 18:22; Romans 1:26-28; Corinthians 6:9-11; 1 Thessalonians 4:3-8; Jude 1:7), ELCA leaders gathered theologians and teachers to write books, papers and articles that would “prove” numerous biblical passages that identify homosexual acts as sin do not really mean what the text declares. This is clearly reminiscent of the first false teacher, Satan, who used the same tactic with Eve when he asked her: “Did God really say? (Genesis 3:1). Paul described such deceitful teachers when he wrote:
[ . . .]
"Bishop, you and the ELCA leadership permitted the pro-homosexual lobby to bring their political agenda before the Churchwide Assembly year after year, even though it was repeatedly rejected. Your persistence paid off when the 2009 Churchwide Assembly approved a resolution that officially allows practicing homosexuals to serve as pastors. The fact is—the ELCA leadership had permitted practicing homosexuals to serve in the ELCA for years with little or no discipline being imposed on them or the congregations they served. . . .

[ "Bishop Chilstrom's Letter to Those Leaving the ELCA"
-- https://davidbarnhart.blogspot.com/2011/03/bishop-herbert-chilstroms-letter-to.html ]

==> The ELCA's syncretism and universalism heresy are similarly longstanding. Cf. Presiding Bishop Mark Hanson's 2006 "An Open Letter to Jewish, Muslim, and Christian Leaders": ”The one God whom we worship..” http://web.archive.org/web/20070214062821/http://www.elca.org/bishop/m_060809letter.html

Martin Luther rebutted the universalism heresy that pervades the ELCA: "..it is impossible for anyone to be saved without faith. Otherwise every sermon, the gospel, & faith would be vain, false, and deceptive, since the entire gospel makes faith necessary."
-- http://www.patheos.com/blogs/geneveith/2011/03/luther-and-the-universalism-debate/

Sasha Wm Kwapinski

11/18/2025 06:16:18 pm

As a student at California Lutheran College (now CLU) in the late 1960's, I could sense what was coming down the road in the ELCA (the ALC and LCA at that time.) I ended up backing off and turning away from religion altogether due to the liberal "PC" advocacy at Cal Lutheran and other mainline Protestant sources, so I guess I got an "early jump" in the out-migration from liberal churches.

Some years later, I did return to religious faith in another denominational tradition. That, as they say, is another story.

Interested Reader

11/19/2025 04:41:20 pm

We are also part of the 42% that left the ELCA 4 years ago. After being a member for years, the more we read about all the changes in the going on in the synod, enough was enough! Did we leave the ELCA church but it really was the church left us! The synod membership bleeding will continue.

Bryan

11/21/2025 01:42:33 pm

Three clowns is more like it. Three Bozos. Period.

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Three Lutheran head bishops to mourn

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