Speaking in favor of adoption of the statement, the Rev. Elizabeth Eaton, bishop of the ELCA Northeastern Ohio Synod, said she hopes the assembly does not become “so narrowly focused on the issue of homosexual sexual behavior that we missed the point that we’re speaking a clear word that needs to be heard by our culture,” particularly on topics about co-habitation outside of marriage, sex as a commodity, child pornography and more. She said the church has high expectations for all Lutherans, especially for ELCA professional leaders.
Speaking in opposition, voting member Curtis Sorbo, ELCA Eastern North Dakota Synod, said the social statement “should be a teaching tool. I don’t think that it is. Instead we have descriptions of different sexual relationships that we are asked to accept by bound conscience,” he said. “We are asked to affirm a description of sexuality in today’s culture because of a new reality. Our church needs to address this issue based on the authority of the word of God, not a description of public opinion and personal desires.”
Though it passed by the narrowest of margins in one sense, i.e., exactly the 2/3 majority required (if even one of the 1,045 voting reps had voted differently, it would’ve lost), in actuality a 2/3 majority isn’t very close at all. It shows just how far advanced is the theological rot and moral decay within American Lutheranism.
The 1978 LBW (Lutheran Book of Worship) strongly resembles the 1979 BCP, to the point of sharing the same translation of the Psalter (they borrowed ours) and many other similar features. And alas, now the ELCA has joined TEC in drifting with the powerful relativistic currents of our culture right over a waterfall. Now they, like us, will experience the inevitable results, a disastrous crash into the rocks below, and many, many people being hurt. And some perishing—forever.
David Handy+
NRA,
I have seen some rather implausible attempts to connect the dots between such things as WO and the 1979 BCP and the current troubles. Yours is the first I’ve read that finally places the blame in the right place. It was the Psalter translation in the 1979 BCP. If only we had stuck with the Coverdale Psalter, all would now be well.
Of course, that does not really explain the 1990’s sexual scandal in the RC Church where they never used the Coverdale Psalter, but they did produce their own post-Vatican II American English liturgy that had a truly abominable Psalter. That, combined with the Roman Catholic practice of using Cantors who seem to think they are trying out for American Idol, explains a lot.
It is an interesting theory.
😉 (mandatory smily to avoid the scores of comments that would otherwise appear, not only taking the suggestion seriously, but heartily agreeing)
Dr. Witt (#2),
LOL. Delightful.
But let me take your humorous comment and make a serious point with it. It was that great Lutheran historian of the development of doctrine, Jaroslav Pelikan, who taught me that the ancient Greeks had three great cultural ideals: The True, the Good (i.e., noble or virtuous), and the Beautiful. Well, alas, it’s become all too clear that we Anglicans, and apparently now the Lutherans as well, can no longer agree on what is theologically true or morally good, and so all we have left to bind us together is a certain refined aesthetic sense of what is beautiful. And that simply isn’t enough. That glue can’t hold.
And alas, the venerable Coverdale Psalter is the perfect illustration of the fact that we Anglicans have always tended to value the Beautiful even more than the True. For after the KJV came out in 1611, it’s long been recognized that the Coverdale Psalter was an inferior translation, exegetically speaking. After all, Miles Coverdale didn’t even pretend to know Hebrew. He worked from the Greek (LXX) and Latin (Vulgate) texts. And so the version of the Psalter used by Anglicans from 1549 until 1979 (and still used in many places around the AC) was a translation of a translation of a translation of the original, with all the errors creeping in that this would suggest.
But my point is that, even though the inaccuracies of Coverdale’s version of the Psalms were widely known and freely acknowledged, we kept using his magnificent-sounding translation in the BCP long after the also eloquent but more accurate KJV/AV came out. And why was that?
Because it was so BEAUTIFUL! Coverdale’s sonorous cadences and vivid images were even more striking than in the King James Version, and we Anglicans had become deeply attached to that beautiful language. And to this day, many people are deeply devoted to the classic BCP, not because they are so committed to the theology implied by it (which is often ambiguous at key points), but because they are in love with its sheer, unmatched eloquence.
Fraternally,
David Handy+
[1] Dave,
[blockquote] The 1978 LBW (Lutheran Book of Worship) … [/blockquote]
… is a musical, literary, and doctrinal abomination not even fit to be burned. Among other things, it contains the worst hymn ever written in the history of man. Beware. The lyrics of [url=http://herzberg.wordpress.com/2007/11/13/earth-and-all-stars/]Earth and All Stars[/url] are not for the faint of heart. Few things so reveal the corruption of a church like the hymnal it adopts. And that obnoxious green hymnal was adopted 30 years ago. What would become ELCA was dying even then. I just wasn’t wise enough at the time to know it. The seeds of corruption have been germinating a very long time.
carl
Who still prefers the 1958 Service Book & Hymnal over all other offerings
How insidious is Satan! Listed on today’s (Thursday) agenda is the proposed full communion between ELCA and the United Methodist Church. With the passing of the statement on human sexuality it will be interesting to see how it plays out.
TEC’s impact on the agreement of interim Eucharistic sharing and the proposed full communion between TEC and the UMC has yet to be addressed as well. The ball has fully come into the Methodists’ court, is anyone awake and willing to play it?
No. 4 Carl,
“Earth and All Stars” gets sung in TEC as well (at least in the parish I was in). I could sing some of it without too much trouble, but the “loud boiling test tubes” finished it for me.
Please give me an example of Earth and Stars. What is this loud boiliing test tubes? In a hymn?
But for the rest. Good. Let them make their choices. This is what free will permits. It is about time the battle was joined. The congregations themselves will fight it out, and we will see who is left standing.
“Chaste gay relationships.’ Please. And what of those that aren’t chaste? Why discriminate against them? Doesn’t God love love love them too? Larry
No. 7 Larry Morse, the first verse of the hymn is as follows:
1. Earth and all stars, loud rushing planets,
sing to the Lord a new song!
O victory, loud shouting army,
sing to the Lord a new song!
That’s not so bad — echoes the Psalms somewhat. But by the time you get to verse 5:
5. Classrooms and labs, loud boiling test tubes,
sing to the Lord a new song!
Athlete and band, loud cheering people,
sing to the Lord a new song! Refrain
It gets, at best, pretty silly.
The link to the whole thing is in Carl’s comment above (no. 4.)