The Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, one of the largest Christian denominations in the country, will decide this week whether to allow gay people in relationships to serve as clergy.
Currently, sexually active gay people are not permitted to serve in the clergy, but celibate gay people are. By Friday, church delegates meeting in Minneapolis are expected to vote on a proposal that would permit congregations to let gay men and lesbians in committed, monogamous relationships serve as clergy.
The Evangelical Lutheran Church is the latest major denomination to wrestle with the question of gay clergy. The issue has divided the Episcopal Church, which last month voted to make gay people eligible for any ordained ministry, further threatening to split the worldwide Anglican Communion, of which it is a branch. And earlier this year, the Presbyterian Church (USA) voted against accepting openly gay pastors, although the margin narrowed compared with a 2001 vote.
I remember a passage in Tom Wolfe’s “A Man in Full” about the Greek Stoics. A prominent Athenian approached a Stoic philosopher and said he had been offered a great deal of money to do some degrading thing, and asked whether he should. “Yes,” came the immediate reply. Taken aback at the alacrity of the response, he inquired as to why.
“Because you have considered it,” was the response.
Just so.