Standing in a sunlit church, the People’s Gospel Choir of Montreal begin their song with slow formality. Then the tempo picks up, the piano rumbles, and the choristers dance and clap. One woman breaks loose in a kind of frenzy, boogying to and fro with her arms swaying.

All this in an online video to promote the 2008 Anglican-Lutheran worship conference, where the theme is (as you may have guessed) “Order and Chaos.”

From June 25 to 28, 2008, Montreal, Que. will host the third biennial, national Anglican-Lutheran worship conference. Keynote speakers will be Gordon Lathrop, liturgical scholar from Lutheran Theological Seminary, Philadelphia, and Karen Ward, pastor of Seattle’s Church of the Apostles.

“These conferences are wonderful learning experiences. They bring together really good people who talk both intelligently and critically about liturgy,” said Dean Peter Wall, the conference’s Anglican co-chair. “I think we have a lot to learn from each other, both Anglicans and Lutherans.”

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Africa’s Lutheran churches saw their total membership increase over the past year by nearly two million, boosting the total number of members of the Lutheran World Federation (LWF) worldwide to more than 68.3 million.

The Geneva-based federation says that Lutheran churches in Asia also registered an increase overall in the period, while slight decreases were again recorded in other world regions.

With an increase of 368,861 members, or 8.2 per cent, to 4.87 million, the Ethiopian Evangelical Church Mekane Yesus, the largest LWF member church in Africa, now becomes the second largest worldwide.

The largest LWF church is the Church of Sweden, which remained nearly unchanged over the course of 2007, with a slight drop of 0.03 per cent to reach 6,893,901 members. Still, Germany remains the country with largest overall Lutheran count at 12.63 million, but they belong to different churches, some of which are organized on a regional basis.

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A task force drafting a statement on sexuality for the nation’s largest Lutheran group said Thursday that the church should continue defining marriage as the union of one man and one woman.

However, the panel did not condemn same-gender relationships. The committee expressed regret that historic Lutheran teachings have been used to hurt gays and lesbians, and acknowledged that some congregations already accept same-sex couples.

The report released by the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America is part of the denomination’s yearslong effort to bridge internal differences over the Bible and homosexuality.

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Nevertheless, it is true that agreement among exegetes is capable of surmounting antiquated contradictions and of revealing their secondary character. It can create new avenues of dialogue for all the great themes of intra-Christian controversy: Scripture, tradition, magisterium, the papacy, the eucharist, and so on. It is in this sense that there is, indeed, hope even for a church which undergoes the afore-mentioned turmoil. However, the actual solutions which aim for deeper assurance and unity than merely that of scholarly hypotheses cannot proceed from there alone. On the contrary, wherever there develops a total dissociation of Church and exegesis, both become endangered: exegesis turns into mere literary analysis and the church loses her spiritual underpinnings. That is why the interconnection between church and theology is the issue: wherever this unity comes to an end, any other kind of unity will necessarily lose its roots.

Read it carefully and read it all (emphasis mine).

It’s always intriguing to see which churches have grown and which denominations have faded in the past year. According to the 2008 Yearbook of American and Canadian Churches (a Bible of sorts for us religion writers), the fastest-growing religious body in 2007 was the Jehovah’s Witnesses at 2.25 percent.

Following them were the Mormons at 1.56 percent and the Roman Catholics at .87 percent. Compare this to last year’s states that had the Catholics out front at 1.94 percent, followed by the Assemblies of God at 1.86 and the Mormons at 1.63.

The denomination with the biggest decrease is the Episcopalians at 4.15 percent.

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As their congregations dwindle, churches across the country are starting to merge, shoring up their numbers and strength.

In most cases, two churches of the same denomination ”” Methodist, Episcopal or Lutheran, for example ”” will come together in one building. That will happen in Simi Valley next month, when two Lutheran churches merge.

Less common is the merger of two different denominations. But that’s happening here, too. In Santa Paula, Episcopal and Lutheran congregations have agreed to share a pastor and a building.

“Unfortunately, too often we see each other as competitors instead of partners,” said the Rev. Gary Stevenson of Our Saviour Lutheran Church in Simi Valley. “But our calling from God, no matter what our denomination, is ”” or at least should be ”” the same.”

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Like many mainstream denominations, the Lutheran church in the United States is grappling with sexuality issues, including how to deal with homosexual clergy.

“Our current policy is that if a pastor or other rostered [lay] leader is homosexual, he or she is not expected to be in a relationship. It’s the same policy as for heterosexual, not married, individuals,” said Bob Fisher. He’s the communications director for the Norristown-based Southeastern Synod of the Evangelical Lutheran Church.

In 2007, after considering several proposals on the issue, a national Lutheran assembly voted not to change church policy. At that time, the assembly encouraged regional bishops to use their discretion in situations like [David] Wagner’s.

The national church expects to tackle issues involving sexuality ”” including homosexuality ”” at its 2009 general assembly. Wagner said church leaders could agree to the status quo or ban homosexuals in relationships from the ministry.

Wagner said he grew up in Minnesota in a conservative community that never allowed for differences. By age 11 or 12, he recalled that he knew he was “different.” It wasn’t the kind of thing you admitted, so he decided to repress his emerging attraction to males.

Wagner also had a deep love of God and a desire to preach the Gospel to others. He attended Gustavus Adolphus College south of Minneapolis-St. Paul. That’s where he decided to enter the ministry and where he was ordained 34 years ago.

He also married and had two children, whom he dotes on. Twenty-five years after his marriage and just before he took over at God’s Love, he finally admitted to his wife that he was gay. He moved to Newtown alone, but said he has remained close to his former wife and his children.

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Participants described current relations among Anglicans and Lutherans in their home countries. They discovered considerable diversity but also identified a number of practices which already reflect mutual recognition, support, and common mission. They reviewed the work of earlier meetings of the Commission, particularly from Harare in 1999. They discussed Dr Ishmael Noko’s analysis of steps that would lead toward a full communion agreement: mapping current relationships among our churches; analyzing the contexts; taking account of the changing ecumenical landscape; developing common projects; and giving responses to historically divisive issues, both making use of ecumenical resources and speaking from African contexts.

The Commission decided to move ahead simultaneously along several lines. First, it will seek to work with bishops to plan a joint regional meeting of Anglican and Lutheran bishops in 2009: movement to full communion will require that the bishops deepen their networks of personal relationships, commit the resources of their churches, and endorse the theological vision in their communications. Second, it will ask the LWF and CAPA offices, with other structures, to seek ways to bring together sub-regional groups from all areas of the churches’ life – youth, women, theologians, etc.: movement to full communion will require staff support from appropriate international bodies. Third, members themselves will continue to develop the narratives of local relationships which were shared during the meeting in order to contribute to the process of mapping. These narratives will form the basis for the work of a group of theologians who will meet before the next full Commission meeting. This theological reflection will allow a proposal for full communion to emerge from the life of these communities in Africa.

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The nation’s largest Lutheran denomination has issued election-year guidelines for congregations and outlined seven issues, from hunger to health care, that reflect the church’s emphasis on social justice concerns.

The guide, “Called to be a Public Church,” from the 5 million-member Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, suggests ways for churches to participate in the political process without endangering their tax-exempt status.

But unlike the “Faithful Citizenship” guidelines recently issued by the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, the Lutheran guidelines generally refrain from addressing specific issues such as abortion. Instead, the document highlights broad topics churches and parishioners could consider.

“This church understands government as a means through which God can work to preserve creation and build a more peaceful and just social order in a sinful world,” Presiding Bishop Mark Hanson writes in introducing the 76-page document.

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Sitting in sight of her father and grandfather, both Lutheran ministers, Jen Rude on Saturday became the first ordained lesbian pastor since the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America urged bishops to not penalize congregations who violate the celibacy requirement for gay clergy.

Several of the more than 100 congregants present wept as the 27-year-old stood before them, a beaming smile drawn across her face.

Under church policy, homosexual ministers are required to make a vow of celibacy before they can be ordained. But heterosexual ministers are not, and Rude, who is not in a relationship, refused to make that vow because she considers the policy discriminatory.

“We all realized that sexual orientation has nothing to do with how well a person can minister a congregation,” said Kathy Young, a member of the Resurrection Lutheran Church in Lakeview, where the ordination was held.

Young was absolute about the decision to violate church policy by ordaining Rude: “This is who we are and this is what we do.”

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For home-schooled students, Patrick Henry College in Loudon County, Va., is like Harvard University.

Many high-achieving, home-schooled students have passed through Patrick Henry’s campus, which is meant to provide a network of connections for the rest of their lives ”” like Harvard or Stanford does for others. The conservative Christian college is known for attracting top students and arming them with religious training and an Ivy League-quality education.

Hanna Rosin, a journalist who has covered religion and politics for The Washington Post and written for The New Republic, GQ and The New York Times got to know Patrick Henry’s students ”” even housing some of them who were on internships. Her new book, God’s Harvard: A Christian College on a Mission to Save America, follows the lives of students as they cope with college life.

Scott Simon spoke with Rosin and Daniel Noa, a Patrick Henry alum, about how home schooling and Patrick Henry shapes students.

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The more telling SBC statistic is baptisms, which have been declining. And the SBC annual meeting, held in June in San Antonio, drew the same kind of relatively small, definitely graying crowd that the more moderate BGCT drew in Amarillo.

One problem struggling denominations have in common is infighting. Whether it’s over gay clergy (United Methodists, Presbyterians, Episcopalians, Lutherans), or biblical inerrancy and women in the pulpit (Baptists), it’s still fighting.

Fighting ”” especially when it seems to be as much about power as principle ”” is lousy advertising.

Another shared problem is competition from the many independent churches that have sprung up, unencumbered by denominational requirements or politics, and often offering stirring worship and relevant programming for young families.

Baptists, with their loose organizational structure, face the added problem of post-denominationalism within the ranks.

Many Baptist churches have dropped “Baptist” from their name, seeing it as a turnoff to potential members. And some bigger churches are doing for themselves what Baptist churches have traditionally done together through state conventions and the denomination

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The Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams, met in Dublin last week with the leaders of the Porvoo Communion of Anglican and Nordic Lutheran churches for private talks. However Dr Williams’ Irish excursion did not bring him a change of scene as the vexing issue of gay clergy followed him to Dublin. While a spokesman for the Church of Ireland told The Church of England Newspaper there would be no formal statement of the gathering of Anglican and Lutheran bishops, sources familiar with the deliberations, held every two years, tell CEN that issues of common national and ecclesial concern were raised at the gathering.

The Lutheran Churches of the Porvoo Group: Norway, Denmark, Sweden, Iceland, Finland, Latvia, Estonia and Lithuania are sharply divided over the Swedish church’s decision to authorise rites for the blessing of same-sex unions. The Swedish move has opened a split within the Lutheran World Federation akin the divide in Anglicanism, with the Lutheran Churches of the Global South threatening to break with their Northern counterparts over the issue of gay blessings and clergy. The controversy intensified last week when on Oct 2 by a vote of six to five, the Church of Norway’s Bishops’ Conference voted to recommend to the church’s general synod that non-celibate homosexuals be permitted to serve as bishops, priests and deacons.

The moderator of the Norwegian Bishop’s Conference, Bishop Olav Skjevesland of Agder and Telemark, who attended the Dublin meeting, voted to reject the licensing of gay clergy.

The Church of Norway has three openly gay ministers serving in parochial ministry under the licence of their bishops. The issue will now go before the Church’s Nov 12-17 meeting of General Synod for resolution. In 1995 and 1997 the Norwegian Synod stated that people in registered same-sex partnerships could hold lay positions in the Church, but could not be ordained as clergy.

On Sept 13 the Church’s National Council stated that it believed the consensus within the church over gay clergy had shifted in the past 10 years. It recommended that Synod revise the church’s canons, allowing bishops the local option of whether or not to ordain and licence gay clergy.

The National Council encouraged dialogue saying that ”˜many members of the church are touched directly by this issue and that there are many who feel that their place in the church is at stake’. “Church leaders should work continuously on attitudes and forms of communication, so that fellowship in the church is felt to be open, clear and inclusive,” it said.

–This article appears in the Church of England Newspaper edition of October 19, 2007, on page 8

One of the slogans of the ELCA over the last couple of years has been “unity in the midst of diversity.” This unity has been so important that it even made it into the proposal of the task force presentation in 2005 when we discussed the blessing of same sex unions and the rostering of non-celibate clergy. The resolution was, that the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America””its members, congregations, synods, churchwide organization, and agencies and institutions””be urged to concentrate on finding ways to live together faithfully in the midst of disagreements, recognizing the God-given mission and communion that we share as members of the body of Christ.

What is the disagreement that we have that endangers our unity so much that we have to make resolutions promoting living together faithfully? Well, after I attended the 2005 assembly it became clear to me that the disagreement was not just on matters relating to human sexuality but had to do with a different understanding of theology or what I would call a new gospel. After attending the 2007 churchwide assembly I now realize that not only does this new gospel exist, but I have now had confirmed in my mind the realization that because of this new gospel we cannot have a unified church.

I say this not to be overly dramatic or divisive; I say it simply because it is the truth. Our Lord himself said that a house divided against itself cannot stand. (Mk 3:25) and Saint Paul likewise condemned the preaching of a new gospel (Galatians 1:9)

Now, first of all I need to define this new gospel and how it differs from the gospel of Jesus Christ, as revealed to us in holy scripture and the historic witness of the church catholic…

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Pastor Roger W. Rapp of the St. Paul Lutheran Church agrees that it is important to listen to differing opinions. And local congregations always have been open to all people, regardless of lifestyle choices.

“We in the Lutheran church are really trying hard to be respectful of differing opinions, and in the respect of differing opinions, we grow and journey together,” Rapp said.

“We live together in a very opinionated church. If we stay together, we are more likely to avoid a split and learn from those who differ from us.”

Rapp added that there are many Evangelical Lutheran Church of America churches that say all are welcome.

“(They) state openly that all are welcome, regardless of race, gender or sexual orientation,” he said. “As far as local congregations, we’ve always been open to all people. People are people.”

But although local Lutheran congregations appear open to the same-gender relationship issue, at least one other local congregation disagrees.

The Rev. Hume W. “Skip” Reeves of The Church of St. Peter, Apostle and Confessor says the debate will split the Lutheran church apart.

Reeves was a former member of St. Mark’s Episcopal here before splitting to form The Church of St. Peter last year, separating from the Episcopal Church.

The split was in large part due to the same issue: allowing same-gender relationships within church leadership.

“I was hoping that they would kind of learn a lesson from the Episcopal Church,” Reeves said. “The church has conformed itself to the culture instead of trying to reform the culture into the vision of God’s culture.

“It looks like they’re moving in the same direction that the Episcopalian church did. They’ll pay a huge price for that.”

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“Sometimes I think these bishop elections are kind of treated with political nice, like we don’t do politics in the church,” Hunstad said. “Sometimes I think we need to create opportunities for people to be honest.”

Several of the posters eventually revealed their identities, including the Rev. Randy Smith, pastor of Trinity Lutheran Church in Crookston, Minn. As “Holy Discontent,” he wrote that the synod was in “tough shape,” that many quality pastors had left or been fired, and thriving congregations weren’t lifted up as models for the rest of the synod.

“People were ready for change, significant change,” Smith said in an interview this week. “The people spoke with the election.”

Steve Trandem, pastor of Calvary Lutheran Church in Bemidji, Minn., also posted on the site. He described himself as a friend of Wangberg, but said he appreciated his work in the parish more than as bishop.

“I think there was a general feeling on the part of many in the synod … that we had a constitutional expert in the synod office and they were looking more for someone who could be a pastor to the pastor,” Trandem said in an interview. “To be fair, there’s a question as to whether that can happen, but many pastors, me included, feel that’s still necessary.”

The synod, essentially a geographical area covering northwest Minnesota, includes 272 congregations with more than 330 ordained ministers and about 109,000 Lutherans.

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The country’s largest Lutheran denomination officially bars openly gay people from the ministry. But in a move that advocates for gay men and lesbians are hailing as a step toward changing that policy, the denomination is urging its bishops to refrain from disciplining gay members of the clergy who are in committed same-sex relationships.

A resolution to that effect was passed last weekend in Chicago by delegates to the biennial meeting of the Churchwide Assembly of the Evangelical Lutheran Church of America.

Church officials said it did not signal a change in policy. But they said that a denomination task force was completing “a social statement,” or theological document, on human sexuality, to be discussed in 2009, and that the resolution allowed bishops to hold off, in the interim, on taking action against gay and lesbian ministers in their jurisdictions.

Robert Tuttle, counsel to the bishop of the synod of metropolitan Washington, D.C., said, “What it changes is that it gives bishops some cover who want to exercise discretion to not bring charges.”

Supporters of the ordination of openly gay men and lesbians hailed the vote.

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The new policy “is not to punish anybody,” says ELCA spokesman John Brooks. The policy – which gives two years’ “breathing room” to gay clergy – will be re-evaluated in 2009 in conjunction with a sexuality task force report.

Poland was one of 82 former Lutheran clergy who are gay who signed a letter distributed at the convention protesting their lack of an official role in the church.

For the ELCA, as for many mainline denominations, the gay issue is the most potentially divisive issue in centuries.

The 2.3 million member Episcopal Church USA – half ELCA’s size – has played out its noisy schism, complete with property lawsuits and parish breakaways, on a public stage.

The Lutheran approach has been quieter. But as the single largest Lutheran denomination in the United States, some say there could be more potential for seismic change.

Not every Lutheran thinks change is a good idea.

“This will hit the fan in the same way as it did in the Episcopal Church – that’s guaranteed,” says the Rev. Jaynan Clark Egland, a Spokane, Wash., pastor and president of the WordAlone Network, a national organization of conservative Lutherans.

“Unless we make an effort to stop this trend, we will go the way of many other mainline denominations – or maybe now we should call them the sideline denominations,” she says. “We’re all on a slide and we can’t quite figure out why. This doesn’t help.”

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Still, Saturday’s 538-431 decision was widely viewed as historic and a sign of shifting thinking on homosexuality within the 4.8-million member denomination.

“It’s a huge victory,” said Jeremy Posadas, a voting church member from Decatur, Ga. “The gospel of inclusion has won, and we’re going to keep winning.”

The Rev. Mark Chavez, leader of Lutheran CORE, a group that opposes non-celibate gays serving as pastors, called the vote “tragic.”

“This decision will be an excuse for bishops to disobey ELCA policy,” he said. “This decision does not reflect the will of the people, but of bishops and clergy who disregard God’s word.”

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Clergy members who are in homosexual relationships will be able to serve as pastors, the largest U.S. Lutheran body said Saturday.

The Evangelical Lutheran Church in America passed a resolution at its annual assembly urging bishops to refrain from disciplining pastors who are in “faithful committed same-gender relationships.”

The resolution passed by a vote of 538-431.

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Voting members at an assembly of the nation’s largest Lutheran denomination on Friday rejected an effort by the Greater Milwaukee Synod and 20 other synods to end a ban on homosexual clergy who are in committed relationships.

However, Bishop Craig Johnson of Minneapolis kept the possibility of change alive by introducing a resolution that would allow congregations, bishops, regional synodical councils and the national presiding bishop to jointly allow exceptions to the ban case by case.

Other resolutions also could come to the floor when the Churchwide Assembly, the ELCA’s highest legislative authority, reconvenes today. With 4.8 million members, the ELCA is the nation’s largest Lutheran denomination.

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On Tuesday, the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America waged a war on illiteracy. But it didn’t tackle the challenge of how to read words. The group addressed the challenge of how to understand and interpret The Word, otherwise known as the Bible.

The five-year Book of Faith initiative is intended to boost study of the Bible throughout the 4.8 million-member church. It is also a response to church research that shows 32 percent of Evangelical Lutherans believe the Bible is the inerrant word of God, which is not the position of the Evangelical Lutheran church.

“In our culture, particularly around issues of immorality, the prevailing understanding tends to be a literal understanding of Scripture, which is not a Lutheran understanding,” said Presiding Bishop Mark Hanson.

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The celibacy rule is expected to be voted on tomorrow or Friday at the 4.9 million-member denomination’s Churchwide Assembly in Chicago. The Evangelical Lutherans also will vote on whether to authorize blessings for same-sex unions.

The Word Alone Network, a conservative Lutheran group, opposes the proposals on the belief that gay sex, and all sex outside of marriage, is sinful, according to a spokesman.

Debate over the status of gay people has roiled other mainline Protestant denominations in recent years. In 2003, the Episcopal Church’s decision to ordain a noncelibate gay man as bishop nearly caused a split in that church and has led to division within its worldwide body, the Anglican Communion.

Two other Lutheran ministers from New Jersey also came forward yesterday: the Rev. Gary LeCroy, of St. Paul Lutheran Church in Teaneck, and the Rev. Bruce Davidson, director of the Lutheran Office of Governmental Ministry in New Jersey.

LeCroy, 46, said he has not been in a committed same-sex relationship since he became a pastor in 1991. “I’m technically in accordance (with the celibacy rule),” he said. “But I have no intention of staying that way.”

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The nation’s largest Lutheran denomination will again face the divisive issue of sexuality when it considers resolutions on gay clergy and same-sex blessings at its biennial assembly in Chicago this week.

After the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA) voted at its last Churchwide Assembly in 2005 to maintain church rules that ban noncelibate gay and lesbian ministers, many thought the issue would be tabled until a comprehensive study on sexuality was completed in 2009.

But 22 of the ELCA’s 65 regional synods have asked the church to again address standards for gay clergy this year, pushing for change within the 5 million-member denomination.

About half of the 125 proposed resolutions to be debated at the assembly address sexuality, standards and discipline for sexual conduct of clergy and same-sex blessings. “The battle lines are being drawn,” said one advocate, while ELCA leaders are pleading for comity amid the contentious debate.

Presiding Bishop Mark Hanson, who is expected to be be re-elected for a second six-year term in Chicago, is among those who say the church should wait for the 2009 study on sexuality, called a “social statement,” before taking action.

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The Lutheran pastor soon to be bishop of the Metropolitan Chicago Synod wants his denomination to lift a celibacy requirement for gay and lesbian clergy.

“That’s where I think the church is going,” Bishop-elect Wayne Miller of Aurora said. “That’s where I think it needs to go.”

He’s hoping the change will come next month in Chicago, where the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America is conducting its churchwide assembly. Nearly a third of the denomination’s 65 synods are asking for a policy shift in clergy standards.

Eventually, gay and lesbian clergy in monogamous, same-sex relationships could be allowed to serve.

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The Evangelical Lutheran Church in America saw a slight drop in membership in 2006, continuing a trend of decline of more than a decade.

The total of baptized members at the end of 2006 was 4,774,203, a 1.6 percent decrease from the 2005 total of 4,850,776, denomination officials said.

The denomination has lost about 466,000 baptized members in the last 16 years, said the Rev. Lowell G. Almen, ELCA secretary. In 1990, there were 5,240,739 members.

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In his written response issued July 11, [ELCA Presiding Bishop Mark] Hanson said that while the Vatican’s statement doesn’t change any existing statement “it does, however, restate known positions in provocative ways” that are under discussion in the current U.S. dialogue.
“It is no surprise that the Roman Catholic Church asserts that in it subsists the Church of Christ; surely every Christian church body makes the same assertion, for it is only because Christ’s Church survives in and lives through the community we call ‘Church’ that we preserve and promote the apostolic faith,” Hanson wrote. “However troubling such exclusive claims may be, we recall the Second Vatican Council’s ‘Decree on Ecumenism’ which affirmed that the separated churches and ecclesial communities are used by the Spirit of Christ ‘as means of salvation.'”
Hanson pointed out that the ELCA upholds the “Augsburg Confession,” a 16th century foundational document which states that the Church is the “assembly of saints in which the Gospel is taught and the sacraments are administered rightly.” He wrote that the Church is “wounded by the division that exists among Christians.” However, Hanson stated that the ELCA is not deficient in its self-understanding as ‘Church.’
The “anguished response of Christians” throughout the world to the Vatican’s statement shows that what may have been meant to clarify has caused pain, Hanson wrote.

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In the Augsburg Confession of 1530 (a conciliatory statement of faith intended to unite Lutherans with other Protestants), Luther publicly agreed with other reformers of his day that biblical references that depart from New Testament inclusiveness ”” abstaining from eating pork, for example, or requiring male circumcision ”” not only can but should be set aside. A 21st century Luther would surely recognize that the few biblical proscriptions against “sodomy” ”” shaky in themselves as condemnations of same-sex love and rooted in a worldview vastly different from our own ”” should not bar the loving union of two gay or lesbian persons. Equally, a 21st century Luther would affirm the ordination of such persons, as in line with his theology of the “priesthood of all believers.”

The American church that bears his name will have an opportunity to revisit the question when its Churchwide Assembly (the ELCA’s highest legislative body) convenes Aug. 6-12. Schmeling may yet get a reprieve, should the church revisit what the disciplinary board itself called “bad policy” regarding sexually active gay pastors. The ELCA has until Aug. 15 to act on his case.

Meanwhile, The Episcopal Church USA has until the end of September to respond to the Anglican Communion’s ultimatum. The American bishops have, so far, roundly repudiated the pressure coming from Canterbury. The extent of the potential rift remains to be seen.

One thing seems clear, however. In working through these issues in the months to come, Protestants in both American denominations would best begin by asking, “What would Luther do?”

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The Committee on Appeals of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA) ruled July 2 in favor of an appeal by the Rev. Ronald B. Warren, bishop of the ELCA Southeastern Synod, Atlanta, who sought removal of Bradley E. Schmeling, Atlanta, from the official clergy roster of the ELCA. The appeals committee ruled that Schmeling was to be removed immediately from the roster, upholding the determination by a disciplinary hearing committee that Schmeling was in violation of the ELCA policy regarding the sexual conduct of its pastors.

Decisions of the Committee on Appeals are not made public by the ELCA churchwide organization. According to the ELCA Constitution, Bylaws and Continuing Resolutions, summaries of decisions are to be reported to the next ELCA Churchwide Assembly, the church’s highest legislative authority, which will be here at Navy Pier Aug. 6-11. In this case, the decision of the Committee on Appeals was released July 5 by Warren and posted on the synod’s Web site, and it was released at a July 5 news conference at St. John Lutheran Church, Atlanta, the congregation Schmeling has served since 2000.

In the ELCA policy document “Vision and Expectations: Ordained Ministers in the ELCA,” it states: “Single ordained ministers are expected to live a chaste life. Married ordained ministers are expected to live in fidelity to their spouses, giving expression to sexual intimacy within a marriage relationship that is mutual, chaste, and faithful. Ordained ministers who are homosexual in their self-understanding are expected to abstain from homosexual sexual relationships.”

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