Evangelical Lutheran Church Set to Approve of Gay Pastors?

“A key board of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America has voted to place before August’s Churchwide Assembly the possibility of local option to call partnered gay pastors. The Church Council voted at a four-day weekend meeting to forward a proposed social policy statement on human sexuality and a related set of recommendations on ministry to the assembly in Minneapolis. ‘What is described in the [social policy] document is that people of sincere faith are coming to different conclusions,’ said the Rev. Peter Strommen, a Minnesota pastor and chairman of the task force that drafted it. ‘This is a call … to try to live within these disagreements with civility and love.’ The 4.7-million member church now says that partnered gay people may not serve as clergy or ‘rostered’ ministers. An attempt to overturn that failed in 2005, but in 2007 the Churchwide Assembly voted 538-431 to ask bishops and synods to refrain from removing partnered gay clergy.” [Pittsburgh Post-Gazette]