Abandoning Those Most in Need

If you follow what’s going on in the news in Africa, especially in Zimbabwe, you can see what suffering amidst chaos the church is dealing with there. Did anyone at the ELCA Assembly last August even stop to consider how the vote to roster gays would affect our ability to stand with them in solidarity and continue to support them, or would they even want our support after such a vote?

The following press release from the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Tanzania clearly states the reasons that recent ELCA advocacy for same-sex unions is both false teaching and a serious threat to the authority of scripture.

  • ELCT Press Release
  • Date: April 29, 2010
  • Press release No. 004/04/2010

The Evangelical Lutheran Church in Tanzania (ELCT) has reiterated her opposition to same-sex marriage and stated that those who are in such unions are not welcome to work in the ELCT because such practice is incompatible with Biblical teaching.

The ELCT Executive Council meeting, held in Moshi on April 27 to 28 this year, received and approved “The Dodoma Statement” prepared in January this year by the ELCT Bishops’ Council. The bishops met in Dodoma to discuss in details steps to take after the decision of some European and American churches to recognize same-sex marriages.

The Statement says: “Those in same sex marriages, and those who support the legitimacy of such marriage, shall not be invited to work in the ELCT. We further reject their influence in any form, as well as their money and their support.”

“This church affirms that love is the essence of a relationship between two people who live, or who want to live, together in marriage. But, with regard to married spouses, this is the love between two people of the opposite sex.”

“This church does not accept reasons offered by advocates of same-sex marriage and its legitimacy unless it is based on the Word of God and Biblical teaching; therefore, we reject inappropriate and false interpretations of scripture produced to justify the marriage of people of the same gender.”

“This church encourages and supports all those around the world who oppose churches that have taken the decision to legalize same-sex marriage.”

“We appeal to those of like-mind with us to continue to be salt and light in our relationships. We should direct our energy into maintaining the unity and cooperation between us. Such unity will help us avoid falling into a state which would further injure the body of Christ, that is, the Church.”

“Those supporting same-sex marriages have started to do all they can to destroy one Biblical passage after another in order to legalize homosexuality and affirm that marriage is not necessarily between a man and a woman. They do so by putting forward their new and wrong interpretation – one which displays an attitude and understanding which differs from that which has existed for many years in the Church regarding the meaning of marriage in accordance with the teachings of the Word of God.”

Some Bible passages that have been misused and given another interpretation to defend same-sex marriage are the following: Genesis 1:27-28, 2:24, Matt. 19: 5-7, Rom. 1:26-27, Gal. 3:28, etc.

The statement goes on to say: “The ELCT and other people worldwide who support our stand on the issue of opposing same-sex marriage believe that the Bible cannot be interpreted according to people’s wishes or according to other authorities or to culture. Rather, the Bible is self explanatory and is merely translated into various languages without altering the meaning.”

“The ELCT accepts that moral values may change among people as their situations change; however, ELCT believers know and believe that there are some things that cannot change, such as people having noses, ears and mouths.”

“This church believes that, based on the teaching of the Word of God, there are values that cannot be adjusted even under the pressure of changing conditions and locations. One of these unwavering values concerns the issue of marriage and its meaning.”

Issued by:
Office of the Secretary-General, ELCT

Churches splitting here, new Synods being formed, staff layoffs because of decreased funding, world missions and unity undermined.  So much for justice.

ELCA Fallout

In the cover story of this month’s “The Lutheran: ” “Sexuality issue causes division, sadness — and hope: Assessing the fallout from decisions made at the 2009 Churchwide Assembly, one can read the following:

Jo Hollingsworth, an admittedly left-leaning member of Hope Lutheran Church in Fostoria, Ohio, supports ELCA‘s decisions on sexuality issues. She finds her decision strengthened by her first-ever reading of the Bible from cover to cover in just more than a month’s time.

“In a book this extensive — more than 700 pages — of course the writers contradict themselves. They say gays are anathema, but they say divorce is anathema too,” said Hollingsworth, a lifelong Lutheran. She picked up on another theme as well: “You’d better be careful before you go around condemning people, saying that they are wrong.”

You can not see the full article unless you’re a subscriber, but this is all of Ms Hollingworth’s printed comments.  For me they highlight several important problems with Lutherans and Scripture.  First, she self-identifies as “left-leaning.”  That’s fine as far as it goes–I don’t pretend to believe that there is such as thing as pure objectivity–but one has to question the purpose for reading the Bible cover-to-cover after such a vote, in the middle of a controversy, in light of a political ideology.

If someone is just now, for the first time, reading the entire Bible, and doing so with a leftist bent then of course it will “strengthen” her decision.  I can’t imagine any other reason to do so in light of the ELCA controversy on gay rostering than to find what you want to find there.  This sense is strengthened by her description of what she read.

“Of course the writers contradict themselves,” she says.  Well of course she thinks so.  She came at the book already believing the authors are merely human writers of spiritual literature.  Rather than focus on the reader, herself, and what God may want her to have ears to hear, she focus on the writers.  The “of course” shows how she sees Scripture as literature and found what she expected and that there is not one true author but dozens of “writers.”

It’s interesting that she says they “contradict themselves,” not “one another.”  One might expect multiple writers from different cultures over thousands of years to say things that at least appear contradictory. It’s another thing to claim that John, say, asserts one truth in his first epistle and another in his second, or Matthew one thing in one chapter of his Gospel and another in a different chapter.

Nor is she willing to concede that what looks like contradiction may be a flaw with the reader, any reader, including her.  One does not have to believe that Scripture was “transcribed”–God’s mouth to the writer’s hand–in the originals to believe that God is indeed the sole author of Scripture who has a consistent message full of mystery and paradox that He wants us to hunger and thirst for so deeply that we “eat this book.”  It is a message that must be prayerful sought after in communion with the Holy Spirit and God’s people over decades, not a quick cover-to-cover reading in a month in order to confirm one’s political positions.

Apparently, as evidence that “the writers contradict themselves” she offers this: “They say gays are anathema, but they say divorce is anathema too.” What’s the logic here?  That since many Christians shamefully no longer consider divorce to be a problem that we also should think homosexuality is fine and dandy?  That somehow seeing divorce as wrong contradicts seeing homosexuality as wrong?  Does she understand that a contradiction is saying one thing about some thing and then saying something contrary about the same thing?

What’s more, it sure sounds to me like she at least concedes that Scripture condemns homosexuality.  Her solution, then, seems to be that we shouldn’t listen to that condemnation because the writers contradict themselves and also hate divorce.  It begs the question of why should we listen to anything Scripture has to say about any moral truth claim.

(Granted this reasoning can be taken too far, as in “You don’t believe God created the world 15,000 years ago so you can’t believe in the resurrection.” This, however, is not the same thing.  One thing that is clear from reading Scripture is that when it comes to sexual relations, Scripture consistently proclaims that God-pleasing sexual relationships can only be found within the covenant of marriage between a man and a woman.)

N. T. Wright addressed just this kind of thinking in an interview on his views on homosexuality.

So the attempt to get around Paul’s language on homosexuality by suggesting that its cultural referent was different than ours doesn’t work?
At any point in Paul, whether it’s justification by faith or Christology or anything else, you have to say, of course this is culturally conditioned. He’s speaking first century Greek, for goodness’ sake. Of course you have to understand it in its context. But when you do that, it turns out to be a rich and many-sided thing. You cannot simply say, as some people have done, that in the first century homosexuality had to do with cult prostitution, and we’re not talking about that, therefore it’s something different. This simply won’t work. So yes, it is impossible to say, we’re reading this in context and that makes it different. What can you still say, of course, and many people do, is that, “Paul says x and I say y.” That’s an option that many in the church take on many issues. When we actually find out what Paul said, some say, “Fine, and I disagree with him.” That raises all kinds of other issues about how the authority of scripture actually works in the church, and at what point the authority structure of scripture-tradition-reason actually kicks in.

That’s really what’s at the heart of this issue, and everyone knows it, and that’s basically Ms. Hollingworth’s reasoning: Paul says x but I say y. I once had a Christian tell me “I don’t care what the Bible says about abortion.”

If it’s just a collection of sacred stories–and I used to love that word, story, and am growing it hate it because so-called “progressive Christians” are using it in a kind of 21st century demythologizing project–from which we can find our own stories validated, and from which we can pick and choose based on supposed contradictions, ignorance of Science at the time of writing and out-dated cultural notions then it’s not really Scripture at all. It’s merely an edifying good read, like Dostoevsky.

Adultery, pre-marital sex, homosexuality are all expressly forbidden in Scripture.  Divorce is allowed because of the hardness of our hearts, but considered sin, and though polygamy was practiced (like divorce) it was not endorsed (like divorce was not endorsed), and may even have been implicitly condemned in such passages as Deuteronomy 17:17 where God commanded that the king “shall not acquire many wives for himself.”

Ms. Hollingworth’s reasoning, and I realize “The Lutheran” could not have done her full views justice, and neither can I, is like arguing “The writers say that stealing is anathema, but they say dishonoring the Sabbath is anathema, too.”  First of all, so?  Don’t do either, then.  Second, just because many people do not “remember the Sabbath and keep it holy” is hardly a rationale for stealing.  And finally, it is no way no how a contradiction of any sort.

Creationless Creation

Over at Salvo, Jennifer Fulwiler has a great article, “Mad About Babies:  What’s Sex Got to Do With It?”

Until a couple of years ago, I was militantly pro-choice. When I heard people make anti-abortion statements, it filled me with a white-hot anger that I could barely contain. Behind my views was a buried but unspoken sense that there was something inherently unfair about being a woman, and abortion was a key to maintaining any semblance of a level playing field in the world.

My peers and I were taught not that sex creates babies, but that unprotected sex creates babies. We absorbed through cultural osmosis the idea that every normal person will have sex at some point in his or her life, and that the sexual act, by default, has no significance outside the relationship between the two people involved. In this worldview, when an unexpected pregnancy came up, it was seen as a sort of betrayal by the woman’s body.

Later, after her conversion, she “started to see the catastrophic mistake our society had made when we started believing that the life-giving potential of the sexual act could be safely forgotten about as long as people used contraception. It would be like saying that guns could be used as toys as long as there were blanks in the chamber. Teaching people to use something with tremendous power nonchalantly, as a casual plaything, had set women up for disaster.”

Our society, she argues, as disconnected the once shared conditions for consideration of two questions:  When it it acceptable to have sex and when is it acceptable to have a baby.  She makes this comparison:

Conditions under which it is acceptable to have sex:

  • -If you’re in a stable relationship
  • -If you feel emotionally ready
  • -If you’re free of sexually transmitted diseases
  • -If you have access to contraception

Conditions under which it is acceptable to have a baby:

  • -If you can afford it
  • -If you’ve finished your education
  • -If you feel emotionally ready to parent a child
  • -If your partner would make a good parent
  • -If you’re ready for all the lifestyle changes that would be involved with parenthood

As long as those two lists do not match, we will live in a culture where abortion is common and where women are at war with their own bodies.

This is just another example, to me, of the Church as captive to the culture.  Most American modes of Christianity no longer speaks out against socially acceptable sexual sin (like “responsible” pre-marital sex, living together) and as homosexuality becomes more and more socially acceptable, they will gradually accept that, as the ELCA has most recently.  As long as it’s committed and monogamous, it will fulfill the conditions under which it is OK to have sex.  And, babies have nothing to do with it.