Presiding Bishop Mark Hanson's Pastoral Letter 

One month after the historic vote in Minneapolis that changes (or launches the process that will change) ELCA policies regarding LGBT people in the church, Presiding Bishop Mark S. Hanson issued a 3-page letter to calm the institutional fears and ask for an ongoing, reasoned conversation throughout the church that will lead not to schism but to greater faithfulness. Download the letter here (I received it by e-mail), dated September 23, 2009. 

ELCA POLICY:  IT REMAINS TO BE SEEN . . .

August 13, 2007

The ELCA's biennial Churchwide Assembly is over, after 6 grueling days. I had never been to one before. I wouldn’t want to go again. Too much stuff, too many delays, too many manipulations of important matters and obfuscation with pleasantries, ceremonies and “introductions” that each took 20 minutes.

We were all there, of course, 500+ registered visitors, out of a deep concern for whether the Churchwide Assembly would do the right thing about lesbian/gay, bisexual and transgender pastors in committed relationships. (There’s a dozen ways to refine and correct that long label; don’t go there!) We were there as Friends Accompanying Bradley (FAB) – Pastor Bradley Schmeling of St. John’s Lutheran Church, Atlanta, who was summarily purged from the ELCA’s clergy roster on July 2.

After days of heart-breaking maneuvers and suffocating floor debate (one from each side, over and over, ad nauseam), we did not get “policy change” that would have corrected the injustice of Vision and Expectations—the original core document hastily adopted in 1989 to thwart the ordination of self-respecting gay and lesbian persons to the ordained ministry.

(I do not say “self-affirming” here. It implies self-credentialing or self-aggrandizing or something. No, we are the people who have healthy, right, God-given self-esteem as gay and lesbian clergy and clergy-wannabees.)

The “policy change” motion had been floated by Goodsoil to contacts in all ELCA Synods last spring, and the identical motion passed in 22 or 23 Synods as “memorials” to the Churchwide Assembly—probably the largest pre-Churchwide consensus on an issue that has ever come before the Churchwide Assembly. But equally well-engineered was the work of the ELCA’s Memorials Committee to refer the entire matter off the floor and into the “round file” of the current Sexuality study that will issue a draft “social statement” on human sexuality next spring.

“Trust the process” said speaker after speaker, who want to get sex off the docket of this Assembly without policy change. All efforts failed to change the policy (the Churchwide Assembly has the ultimate authority to change policy on the spot.) Likewise a motion also failed that would have given each Synod the “local option” about permitting partnered gay and lesbian pastors to serve.

At the end of the week, what finally passed 58% to 42%—after a tortuous day of parliamentary manipulations—was a motion put forward by Metro Chicago Bishop Paul Landahl, as a substitute motion, to encourage synods, bishops and the presiding bishop to refrain from disciplining partnered gay or lesbian pastors, or to retrain the degree of discipline they impose.

I didn’t like this motion a lot, but now that we have it as standing policy, it is important. It remains to be seen whether its effects will be that helpful, however.

  • It encourages individuals synods and synod bishops to “refrain/restrain” but does not require them to see things that way. Individual bigots, whether members of a synod council, or a sitting bishop, could continue to harass, hurt, and expel pastors even during this time of moral deliberation. All the procedures to “bring charges” are still in place.
  • It implies (but does not say) that this is an interim measure while the sexuality study is wrapping up its business and until it reports back to the 2009 Churchwide Assembly to meet in Minneapolis. It remains to be seen if the 2009 Assembly will introduce efforts to repeal this 2007 motion.
  • More than 80 individual pastors came out as part of Goodsoil’s efforts to put a face on this issue for the voting members of the Assembly. Their names were published, mine included, in the Goodsoil devotional booklet, “A Place Within My Walls”. Nearly 2,000 copies were distributed.
  • There are countless other lesbian and gay pastors who may or may not feel the safety to come out, depending on the climate in their congregations and their synods. In theory, if single lesbian and gay clergy (not in known relationships) state that they are “in compliance” with Vision and Expectations, they would be safe in any synod. In theory.
  • It remains to be seen how many lesbian, gay or bisexual clergy or clergy-wannabees will still not feel safe enough to fall in love, to find a life partner, to make a commitment, to establish and nurture a stable, happy, public relationship.

LGBT people often “self-eliminate” from the ordained ministry, from the church, from their heart’s desire, from grace, from God, from happiness. What is the toll of this ongoing struggle and conditionalism about grace?

ELCA POLICY:  ABOUT VISION AND EXPECTATIONS

The current policy of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America attempts to close the gates against partnered lesbian and gay persons being in the ordained ministry or in professional lay service to the church. The policy is embedded in two documents, promulgated in 1990, entitled Vision and Expectations and Guidelines for Discipline. These documents are available from the ELCA; see www.elca.org for information.

In 2007, the ELCA’s churchwide Assembly, meeting August 6–11 in Chicago, has an opportunity to rescind or modify these policies, because 22 Synods of the church, meeting in assembly this spring, have adopted and forwarded identical resolutions ("memorials") to the churchwide Assembly calling upon its voting members to rescind the negative policy.

However, a Memorials Committee has just taken action to block the voting members from discussion this horrible policy – a cynical and calculated move to silence dissent. Because of these recent events, I have posted here some of my collected thoughts about the policy, which I began writing in 1993.

Talking Points

Reasons to Rescind the ELCA's Vision and Expectations Policy Banning Gay and Lesbian Persons from Ordained and Lay Professional Ministry

by Daniel M. Hooper

Bad Theology

  • Leaders in the ELCA who were ignorant of, or simply ignored, church history have produced "celibacy" as a "solution" to the homosexual "problem." But celibacy is not the norm in the Bible, and has had a disastrous history in the Christian Church wherever and whenever it was imposed. The Lutheran Church has no business trying to re-institute this as a policy or a "solution."
  • Requiring celibacy is contrary to our understanding the Gospel, because it imposes a "works righteousness" condition where grace alone should be our guide. If justification by grace is the principle on which the Reformation was structured, and the article of faith by which the Church stands or falls, then grace must be the cornerstone of the policies of the ELCA.
  • The Confessional documents of our Churchbody absolutely preclude requiring celibacy for ordination to the ministry, in Articles 23 and 28 of both the Augsburg Confession and Apology of the Augsburg Confession. Celibacy is thoroughly discussed in these documents and is rejected for more than a dozen valid reasons. Most of those reasons still have close parallels and applicability today in this current controversy.
  • Required celibacy is a policy which compromises our teaching about grace; it violates Christian freedom under the Gospel; it reinstates the Law and legalism which St. Paul rejected and the Reformers overthrew; and it burdens and tortures the consciences of gay and lesbian Christians who cannot live under this rule and are forced to hide and lie in an agonizing struggle to keep personal integrity.
  • Martin Luther adamantly opposed requiring celibacy. In 1520 he wrote: "I advise anyone henceforth being ordained a priest or anything else that he should in no wise vow to the bishop that he will remain celibate. On the contrary, he should tell the bishop that he has no right whatsoever to require such a vow, and that it is devilish tyranny to make such a demand. ... In this way he should keep his conscience free of all vows." Luther again attacked required celibacy in his Large Catechism and in his Exhortation to All Clergy Assembled at Augsburg.
  • There is in fact no theological, doctrinal or dogmatic document properly adopted by the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America which states that either behaving or being lesbian or gay is morally wrong. In addition, there is no clear consensus on Biblical exegesis and interpretation which would support that view. It is therefore entirely improper to impose a professional standard which implies that there is something morally wrong when the ELCA has not said so.

Bad Policy

  • The term "practicing homosexual persons" is nowhere defined in Vision & Expectations or Guidelines for Discipline. It is not a Biblical or theological term, and cannot be interpreted from the content of Vision & Expectations or Guidelines for Discipline. It is not even a term used in the public discourse about homosexuality today. That leaves it open to dispute and even lawsuits.
  • If the church believes it must exclude gay and lesbian people from the ministry because of its thinking about sin, then it should also exclude divorced persons from the ministry, and immediately hold trials and remove from the clergy roster every pastor who divorced and remarried because he or she is living in sin. If this policy does not have the guts or backbone to be consistent, then the church should have the integrity to withdraw the policy as badly written and ill-conceived.
  • To flatly state that a certain group or class of people "are precluded from the ordained ministry" is the worst kind of discrimination, which is an embarrassment in the public venue, would collapse in a legitimate court of law, and insults both the people who are expected to live under it and the people who are charged to enforce it.
  • Of course, there is disagreement about homosexuality in the ELCA, and the discourse should go on. But this policy as it stands is cowardly because it did not even bother to state why a group or class of people are excluded, because it knew that its only possible reasons are bigoted and misinformed.
  • The policy leaves no alternative for gay or lesbian clergy. Since the days of St. Paul, celibacy has been understood as a charism or gift, given by the Holy Spirit only to a small minority of persons. Yet gay and lesbian people comprise up to 10% of the population, and probably a large percentage of Pastors as well. If these persons do not have the gift of celibacy, and cannot marry, then this policy drives them underground where the expression of love is impossible, and the expression of sexuality results in excesses forced apart from people's ordinary and honorable needs for affection and companionship.
  • This abusive policy against homosexuals in the Vision and Expectations document was never adopted by the whole church after thorough and conscientious study and discussion. It was never reviewed for comment by the people who are most affected by its adoption, namely, the clergy of the church. Instead, it was quickly written as an ill-considered policy because of a bureaucratic "panic" in the newly-formed ELCA after three seminarians at Pacific Lutheran Theological Seminary were honest enough not to lie about their orientation in 1987, and quickly adopted by the Church Council in response to the calls for ordination of three qualified seminary graduates to serve two congregations in San Francisco in 1989.
  • This policy has driven out and continues to drive out talented, gifted people from the ministry of the church—people who are desperately needed to express and convey the faith to a hurting world. Our ordained ministry needs people of integrity who have wrestled with the real issues of life and found ways to live faithfully in the real world, not people who live on pedestals as if they are "holier than thou."

A Seriously Flawed Message to the World

  • Excluding some people as a group from the ministry insults all gay, lesbian and bisexual people within the church. It also betrays the ELCA's express intention to do outreach to gay and lesbian people by telling them that they are second-class human beings who are not and cannot be qualified to be spiritual or professional leaders. The church wouldn't dare say that to African-Americans, Asian-Americans, women, the handicapped, or any other group of people unless it intended to drive them away or tell them that God's gracious promises aren't meant for them.

Enforcement of V&E

  • It is cynical, perverse and destructive for the ELCA to enforce a policy against gay and lesbian people when the churchbody has no official sexuality statement, and has no express doctrinal or theological foundation on which to base the existing policy.
  • It is entirely wicked to enforcethat policy during the very period of time when the ELCA has officially and publicly pleaded for understanding, for further study, and for prayerful discernment about the complex issues surrounding homosexuality.
  • It is morally wrong and reprehensible to attempt to foreclose discussion, to postpone justice, and to silence dissent in this period of time. It is nothing less than a blatant refusal to seek and to listen to the guidance of the Holy Spirit.

-- Rev. Dan Hooper, Los Angeles, California

Friday, April 10, 2007 from Chicago, IL

The ELCA Churchwide Assembly this week voted down a substitute motion that would have amended Vision and Expectations to permit the rostering of same-sex partnered clergy, and instead insisted that a final 2-year study period leading up to a 2009 Social Statement on Human Sexuality must be completed first.

"Stop the Bleeding!"  Later in the Assembly, held at Chicago's Navy Pierm the Assembly did agree to allow bishops to refrain from discipline or restrain the discipline they impose against rostered pastors in same-gender relationships.

In addition to some 1,050 voting members of the Assembly (delegates from regional church units), more than 500 registered visitors attended the 6-day event.  Many of us wore rainbow-colored scarves made by people all over the United States as a witness on behalf of our LGBT sisters and brothers.

Friends gathered at the Churchwide Assembly at Navy Pier, Chicago.  The rainbow scarves are in solidarity with Pastor Bradley Schmeling and LGBT pastors serving in the ELCA.

Another Point:

The ELCA’s current practice of zero-tolerance discipline against lesbian/gay pastors is completely disingenuous. Our churchbody is in fellowship with both the United Church of Christ and the Episcopal Church in the United States of America.

The United Church of Christ began ordaining openly gay pastors in the 1970s. The Episcopal Church consecrated the Rev. V. Gene Robinson, an openly gay and partnerned Bishop, and throughout the ensuring controversy has not backed down on its national decision to do so.

In the face of this evidence about its relationship to sibling church bodies, it is disingenuous for the ELCA to maintain such fellowship while it vigorously disciplines and removes lesbian/gay pastors from its own clergy roster.  It has been said that the Church is the only army that shoots its own wounded.  It is time to stop this travesty.

More on Why Celibacy is Not a Solution

A policy of celibacy seemingly has been adopted without serious examination directly from medieval Catholicism. It does not offer a meaningful alternative to the vast majority of gay and lesbian people, or for that matter, to divorcees or anyone else.

The tradition of Christian celibacy reveals that:

  • it is voluntarily chosen,
  • it is based on a genuine charism or spiritual gift given only by the Holy Spirit of God, and
  • it is lived out in a community which recognizes and relies upon that gift for communal relations and survival.

What is typically meant in the erroneous use of the word "celibacy" in this controversy is "abstinence", as if one’s sexuality and hunger for a caring, lifelong and intimate relationship is merely something from which one can abstain. Sexuality is an ineradicable element of the human dynamic; it is part of what makes us human beings. One can abstain from individual sex acts, or as Paul suggests, for a season. But sexuality and sexual expression are not things which anyone can simply "quit" or "desist" on the whole. Abstinence is not a charism of the Spirit, and its promulgation as a requisite Christian self-discipline is not voluntary when imposed by others. Neither is it a biblically-supported alternative or "solution" to the gay/lesbian "problem." Abstinence implies a periodic or temporary state, especially for those who are young, who anticipate marriage in the future, or who are not involved in a love relationship.

Before the church— which says that it wants to be faithful and true to the Scriptural word and the conservative Christian tradition—demands lifelong sexual abstinence of gay and lesbian people, it first needs to tell all its divorced members that they too must remain totally sexually abstinent for the rest of their lives, and if they are living in a second marriage they are in fact living in a state of unrepentant sin. "First remove the log from your own eye," counsels Jesus.

The church in fact has relativized the harsh demands of the biblical texts about divorce and remarriage, whether out of pastoral concern or cultural accommodation. At the same time it has ignored St. Paul’s express pastoral concern for those unable to live in celibacy, in its desire to have one single sexual rubric binding all Christians. Without much pastoral concern the church continues to say that we must live our entire lifetimes alone, without the benefit either of a caring and intimate relationship with another human being, or the benefit of a viable spiritual community life.

Celibacy is also a practical myth. We are painfully aware of individuals who are lesbian or gay and who are single, and who have openly made a commitment to remain single, who have been shunned, excluded from their church communities, hated, attacked, and if the case of qualified candidates, denied call and ordination. Demanding life-long abstinence in fact serves as a sham—as a condition which very few can meet even knowing that those few will be treated as badly as all other sexual minorities.

We realize that St. Paul encourages sexual abstinence but places it in correct perspective: it is voluntarily chosen for spiritual reasons, and for a finite period of time by common consent of partners. He is keenly aware of the dangers of expecting lifelong abstinence for every Christian. "It is better to marry than to burn with passion" —with a natural sexual drive which cannot have an acceptable outlet.

To be honest with itself, the Lutheran church should look carefully at the whole range of arguments in the Lutheran Confessions, the Book of Concord, where any requirement of priestly celibacy is rejected and ruled out entirely. The reasoning of Martin Luther and the reformers is stated in more than a dozen premises, explained in Articles 23 and 28, each one of which has a remarkable parallel with the circumstances of gay/lesbian people today:

  • Genuine celibacy is a charism, given only to a few, and cannot be demanded of those who lack this gift; vows undertaken without the charism do not augment human ability.
  • Vows have been improperly extracted from young people unprepared to make a lifelong commitment, and should be relaxed.
  • There are legitimate needs for the physical body and its care, including "natural love" and the hunger for relationship, which are not to be confused with lust.
  • Forced celibacy leads to shameful excesses and disgraceful scandals because of burning passions.
  • There has been terrible alienation of many people because of the severity of the church.
  • The church has no right to demand celibacy or forbid marriage and the exercise of natural love.
  • The power of bishops does not include setting requirements contrary to the Gospel which "burden Christendom with the bondage of the law."
  • The celibacy of priests is against the majority of historical precedent in the church.
  • The Bible does not require celibacy but upholds marriage.
  • The church insists on celibacy not from solid theological ground, but uses theological language to conceal its real domination and demand for obedience to its authority. In fact, the requirement of celibacy is theologically flawed and in error.
  • The church has no business attempting to break up loving relationships of long standing.
  • The penalties of the church have been shameful, and have upheld and reinforced unjust civil penalties.
  • Vows must always be voluntary. Requiring celibacy is against Christian freedom and has burdened the consciences of many.
  • Neither celibacy nor a vow of celibacy merits justification, nor is the life under such a vow a "state of perfection."

The Reformers offered a good and honorable alternative to required abstinence for priests and religious: marriage. The Reformation thinking took seriously St. Paul’s suggestion that it is better to marry than to be constantly aflame with passion. But since marriage is denied to us who are sexual minorities, and the charism of celibacy has not been given to us, what third alternative does the church today intend to offer to homosexual persons?

Celibacy which is not freely chosen by those who discern the spiritual gift for it, is not only a mistake, but likely will lead to tragic consequences when the vow cannot be kept successfully.

An e-Mail to John Ballew:

In the aftermath of the disappointing Orlando Churchwide Assembly two years ago, e-Mails went flying in which all of us expressed everything from deep disappointment to unconcealed anger.  My good friend John Ballew, former President of LC/NA and currently President of St. John's ELCA in Atlanta, GA where Pastor Bradley Schmeling serves, wrote a very unhappy message about the Orlando 2005 Assembly.  Here is my reply, which touches on our appropriate response to terrible politics and policy:

"Reply to John Ballew", August 16, 2005, 1 p. Download PDF file.

Also see:  "The ELCA: A New Lutheran Orthodoxy"  Download PDF file.