Importance of Social Statements Stressed

By Tom Heinen, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

Jul. 28–The Evangelical Lutheran Church in America will again face the potentially volatile issues of same-sex blessings and whether to allow people who are in committed, homosexual relationships to serve in ministry when 1,071 voting members gather for its national assembly Aug. 6 to 11 in Chicago.

Presiding Bishop Mark S. Hanson said in a national conference-call interview this week that he hoped the discussion would be as respectful as it was at the last assembly, in 2005. At that gathering, delegates rejected allowing homosexuals in committed relationships to serve as clergy under certain conditions and also voted, in effect, to continue allowing local bishops, pastors and congregations to decide whether and how to perform blessings of same-sex unions.

The Chicago-based ELCA has 4.8 million members. It’s the largest Lutheran denomination and the seventh-largest U.S. church. Hanson is seeking re-election to a six-year term.

Q: Some bishops now enforce the policies on clergy in same-sex relationships, and some don’t. Some bishops, synods and congregations perform same-sex blessings, and some don’t. What’s the point in adopting a national policy?

A: We in the ELCA have chosen from our beginning to develop social statements as the basis upon which we develop policies for this church and shape our public voice and response to societal, global issues. . . . Absent such a statement on human sexuality, which we do not have, we end up creating our public voice either around individual action like (resolutions) to assemblies, or around the policies that govern, for instance, who can be a pastor in this church and the standards for rostered ministry. I have contended that we really need that rock foundational statement because it needs to address more than persons who are gay and lesbians and whether they can be engaged in the practice of ministry in this church. Human sexuality belongs to all of us, and we all struggle how to be faithful stewards of God’s gift of sexuality. . . . And I look to the social statement to be much more foundational and broadly inclusive of all of us.

Q: How difficult would it be for the assembly to refer the sexuality (resolutions) to the task force (that is preparing a broader social statement on human sexuality to be considered at the next Churchwide Assembly in 2009), and would that just cause the issues to fester until 2009?

A: Well, I’ve never gotten into the position of predicting what action an assembly will take. I see my role as presiding over the assembly so that it can do . . . prayerfully the best work that it can. I think we experienced in Orlando very respectful, very thoughtful, very prayerful conversation. . . . I expect we will build upon that maturity when we come into this assembly. I fully expect someone will move to substitute actions of one of the 21 synods that have passed (resolutions) rather than waiting for 2009, and I think there will be very lively discussions.

Q: At the Churchwide Assembly in Milwaukee in 2003, you and other leaders asked delegates to embrace a new evangelization strategy that was developed over two years. It included ambitious goals for starting new congregations and revitalizing existing ones. What’s happened?

A: Well, the reality is we continue to slowly decline in baptized membership, and we continue to be a church body of membership which is 97 percent white. Both of those are of deep concern. . . . The Conference of Bishops gave major time in their agendas at the last two meetings to how do we lead a church that continues to manifest homogeneity in the midst of diversity, and declining membership in the midst of living in a mission field.

The realities of our demographics do not discourage or diminish the resolve we have to be what our name declares we are, Evangelical Lutherans. That is, proclaiming the Good News of Jesus Christ in a Lutheran (way). I think we really are recognizing that this means changing the very culture of this church. Lutherans can’t wait for the culture to produce Christians for us, or for the Lutherans to have children to continue the church. But it means every baptized member of this church, with greater clarity and courage, sharing their faith in word and deed with their neighbors, and inviting people to come and hear the story of Jesus. My speaking at this assembly, both in my opening sermon and in my address to the assembly, is going to be around the theme of what does it mean to be a sent church rather than a settled church. I think Lutherans have tended to be a settled church in this culture. We need to become a sent church. A settled church will become anxious over its future. A sent church will become restless.

Q: At the Greater Milwaukee Synod’s local assembly this year, a call for a firm timetable for a speedy withdrawal from Iraq was defeated on a very close vote. The assembly will consider (a resolution) opposing any escalation of the war. How divided is the assembly?

A:I hope there’s debate. My greater fear would be silence, to be perfectly honest. I have asked groups of ELCA leaders all over this country now for four years, how many of your congregations have gathered together around our social statement “For Peace in God’s World,” and how many of you have had lively conversations and debate about what is the just and moral response to the ongoing war in Iraq, and preciously, preciously few hands go up. Which I think is appalling, that people of faith, citizens of the nation that’s at war and has been at war for four years, are not yet gathering, either in congregations or in public places, to debate how do we live in the midst of and how do we bring to an end this tragic war.

Q: You said in your opening comments that the assembly will be asked to address biblical illiteracy by committing to a five-year effort to make Lutherans in the ELCA fluent in “the first language of faith,” Scripture. How can you avoid people standing on opposite sides of cliffs and hurling their favorite biblical quotations at one another?

A: Those that I would describe as having a hermeneutic of suspicion about this project think that it’s just about, ‘Well, if we could only get reading the Bible right then, we’d get right on human sexuality,’ for instance. That’s not the motivation for this at all. I think we have experienced for 500 years as Lutherans the power of the word of God to transform lives, to transform congregations, to transform churches. And what we are literally inviting this church into is that kind of deep engagement with the word of God, to literally hear it, to read it, to sing it, to pray it and to study it. . . . And then to say: How have we as Lutherans historically interpreted the word?

I would go so far as to say that right now among Christians in our society, the prevailing way to interpret the Bible is that way that is taught by fundamentalists. It’s a kind of apocalypticist, millennialist understanding of the Bible. That’s not a Lutheran understanding.

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