Lutheran Assembly Is Divided on Gay Clergy Policy

ORLANDO, Fla. —  With one day to go before a scheduled vote, an hour of debate Thursday revealed a Lutheran assembly sharply divided on whether to change church policy that required gay and lesbian pastors to remain chaste.

Gathered in Orlando for their biennial meeting, more than 1,000 pastors and parishioners from the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America are expected to decide whether to ordain homosexuals in committed relationships and continue permitting pastors to bless same-gender unions without penalty.

But Thursday, no consensus emerged, and debate ended with scores of people lined up at the microphones waiting to state their case.

Robert Benne, a delegate of the Virginia Synod who opposes changes to the policy, said that “to move away from that which I think is deeply embedded in our people, in our parishes, and churches ... is tectonic.”

“And as an earthquake, all the reverberations will go out far and wide and it will have an enormous effect on our ecumenical relationships, on our local parishes, our life as a church and our life in the world,” Benne said.

Some supporters of change believe the proposals do not go far enough in treating gay pastors as equals.

The church also has no official blessing for same-sex unions, though pastors may do it without censure.

“I hope we can make some changes because we are now stifling the use of the very gifts we promised to the segment of the church that wishes to offer them to us to build up the body of Christ and the healing of the world,” said the Rev. Scott Cady of the New England Synod. “That stifling, it seems to me, is not what we were called by Christ to do.”

The Lutheran proposals stem from a four-year study on human sexuality in which a church task force surveyed members on their views about whether Scripture defined homosexuality as a sin.

Just as gay rights advocates have marshaled forces to lobby for change, opponents of the proposals have committed themselves to reverse what they see as the liberal direction of the church.

The Rev. David Housholder, a pastor from the Pacifica Synod in California, told the assembly that he opposed blessing same-sex unions. But if that is what the assembly decides to do, he said, he will not leave.

“I find it unbelievable that people would break fellowship with brothers and sisters with whom we disagree, brothers and sisters with whom we’re going to share eternity,” Housholder said. “But I would invite my brothers and sisters on the far left to join me in a pledge to keep our church together.”

The assembly also will consider calling on Israel to tear down the security fence that separates it from Palestinian territories and urging the church’s financial officers to use church funds to work toward a peaceful resolution in the Middle East. The proposal does not specify divestment as a strategy, as some other Protestant denominations have done.

On Thursday, Rabbi Eric Yoffie, president of the Union for Reform Judaism, asked the assembly to reconsider its approach to the conflict in the Middle East.

He was the first rabbi ever to appear before the Lutheran body.

“Others will not always see the conflict as we see it,” Yoffie said. “But what we have asked of our many friends in the Christian world is simply this: Do not minimize the impact of terror and do not demonize or isolate Israel, as if, somehow, she alone were responsible for the current conflict.”

Other Protestant churches have considered divestment as a tool for peace in the Middle East. Last week, a Presbyterian Church USA committee named five companies it had targeted for negotiations.