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No, Jesus did not mean it when he said “love thy brother.” That’s why the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, after voting in August to not TOTALLY FREAK OUT if churches approved gay clergy, is seeing even more churches looking to split off. The conservative group Lutheran CORE, having already floated a doomsday scenario, is drafting up a whole new denomination for other churches to join if they find ELCA too faithful to that “treat everyone equally” thing.
Led by director Rev. Mark Chavez (pictured), CORE has already called ELCA’s vote “a departure from God’s clear word” and advised churches to stop sending money to the mothership. And now he wants a whole separate faction — and “>isn’t hurting for followers. At a meeting Wednesday, CORE outlined its plans for splintering.
“We don’t feel we have a choice,” said Paull Spring, a retired Pennsylvania bishop now chairman of Minnesota-based Lutheran CORE. “The vote on sexuality opened the eyes of many to how far the ELCA has moved from biblical teaching.”
Local pastors who have aligned themselves with Lutheran CORE said it’s too early to decide whether their congregations would sever their ties with the ELCA, the largest Lutheran church body in Wisconsin and the nation.
“We’re taking baby steps at this time,” said the Rev. Mark Knappe, pastor of Gloria Dei Lutheran Church in Menomonee Falls, who was surprised by the move.
“I guess I have mixed feelings about a new denomination,” said Knappe, who voted against the decision to allow gay clergy and attended a CORE conference that drew 1,200 like-minded Lutherans to Indianapolis in September.
“The body of Christ does not need one more schism, but I’m not unsympathetic to it either, given what the ELCA has done.”
The Rev. Phil Nybroten, pastor of Calvary Lutheran Church in Brookfield, said his congregation is in the “pondering stage.”
“It’s a big decision that we’re not jumping to make right now,” he said.
Mike
Headline:
“Lutheran Line Up for Form Awesome New Anti-Gay Church Body”
First line:
“No, Jesus did not mean it why he said “love thy brother.”
This is the level of writing at Queerty?
terrwill
More Smilin’Scumbags………….
Rick
But you’re OK by me here, Mike. Pretty bad, Queerty.
edgyguy1426
Who let’s shit like this through to be published? I’d rather have accurate and legible postings rather than crap done in a hurry. This looks like the homework I used to hand in when I did it an hour before it was due…
Pariah
Can Queerty write legibly? Fuck. In addition, can it get it’s shoddy site to load content at all? This site is a wordpress site, so it goes without saying it sucks donkey vulva.
FakeName
While I agree with the sentiment regarding the slipshod proofing, I must point out that not knowing the difference between “its” and “it’s” rather undercuts the critique. “Its” is the possessive. “It’s” is a contraction meaning “it is”. Also, “let’s” is a contraction meaning “let us”.
FakeName
Anyway, to the point, this seems little different from the squawking that various Episcopal congregations have been doing for years over the ordination of a gay bishop and other gay-positive actions and stances taken by the American Episcopal church. It never amounts to anything because any individual congregation that splits has to give up its church building and any other church property because it belongs to the national Church. Principles take second place to money again.
The link “isn’t hurting for followers” doesn’t lead to anything.
B
The headline should have been “Homophobic Lutherans asked to jump ship by leaving the ELCA”.
This is not bad news because the ELCA needs a 2/3 vote to get something positive done and with fewer homophobes around, it will be easier to get that on decisions that support LGBT rights.
PopSnap
Why the hell are they members of a liberal denomination anyway? Are they retarded? How many liberal Southern Baptists do you know? Why not go join the ten thousand or so other anti-gay denominations?
I’m so glad im non-religious. I’ll never get the mental hurdles people go through when deciding “Oh, some God whom I’ve never seen/spoken to before thinks my denomination of a few hundred people that broke off from a broken off denomination that broke off of a denomiantion that broke off of the Catholic church is correct!”
WillBFair
I was raised Lutheran. But that aside, I might have thought the headline should have been ELCA Votes to Allow Gay Clergy, Bigots Threaten Schism. In my view, the issue is that the largest Lutheran church in America has taken a step toward fairness. That’s a big deal.
It’s predicatable that the bigots would jump ship. It’s also predictable that a queer blog would dwell on the negative, harping about our enemies instead of praising and thanking our freinds.
hyhybt
#1: Reminds me of a pet peeve: every hymnal I’ve seen printed later than 1990 still includes “Joyful, Joyful, We Adore Thee” but has removed the line “brother love binds man to man.” So Queerty and “The Baptist (and Presbyterian, and Methodist, and others) Hymnal” have the same editors, or at least the same mindset 🙂
Conservative Mark
I don’t think people who dislike sexual deviancy makes them a bigot or homophobe (a made up word by the gay community in 1980).
It just makes them, well, normal.
Besides, if some fag calls me homophobic, doesn’t that prove them to be both intolerant and guilty of hate speech?
hyhybt
@hyhybt: The first thing I do when I see a hymnal I haven’t looked through before is to look that one up. The original (“Father love is reigning o’er us, brother love binds man to man”) is by far the best; two parallel loves where newer versions have one or none.
Definitely *not* the same editor, since the only thing they agree on is not leaving all four verses as-is. It doesn’t seem to be for the same reason, though. The Methodists seem to have left it the most nearly alone: for theirs I can only go on memory, but I think they changed only that one line. But not because they thought “brotherly love” referred to gay sex, but because they were trying to make everything gender-neutral wherever possible. In the same line, they replaced “father love” with “love divine.” I believe the line is now “Love divine is reigning o’er us, bringing all within its span.”
The Presbyterian Hymnal (1990 edition), I happen to have handy. It says “Love divine is reigning o’er us, joining all in heaven’s plan,” deletes the *third* verse entirely (probably again thinking it’s “sexist”) and, inexplicably, also changes the “mighty chorus” to a “happy chorus.”
The Baptists probably did think it was a reference to gay sex, because they certainly have nothing against sexist references, real or imagined. Hard to tell, though, as they don’t include the last verse at all.
And yes, I realize that almost nobody here cares about any of this.