In early April the Church Council of the ELCA transmitted a progress report about the church's studies on sexuality to the 2003 ELCA Churchwide Assembly, and it was placed on the agenda for the assembly’s August 11-17 meeting in Milwaukee.

The report summarizes the work of the Task Force for ELCA Studies on Sexuality since its inception in 2003, including highlights of the participation of Lutherans in the studies process and reflections from Dr. James Childs, studies director.

ELCA bishop Mark Hanson, sensing in his visits across the country that “the vast majority of this church has chosen not to be involved in this work,” has urged the task force to reverse that trend and get the church talking, “as uncomfortable as it is.”

Dr. Childs has called the lack of participation a “most worrisome thing.” In the concluding remarks to the sexuality task force’s progress report, he commented:

“The discussion of matters involved in the studies on sexuality is difficult for many of us and fears abound over the consequences of discussing what are often emotionally charged issues. It will take special resolve on the part of pastors and other leaders to enable that participation and promote it. The task force for its part is making every effort to produce study materials that invite participation and reflect faithfulness.”

Even though the word on the street and from Bishop Hanson is that congregations are not talking, Emily Eastwood, RIC Executive for Lutherans Concerned/North America gave us some encouraging news:

“ . . . as RIC Executive, I receive inquiries each week from churches across the country wanting to pursue an RIC process. We have received over 20 new RIC congregations since the first of the year. My travel schedule in the past four months has been extensive by any standard. On one seven-day swing through the Southwest I visited with three congregations in Phoenix, AZ, Las Cruces, NM and El Paso, TX,— all considering RIC. I also met with two chapters, Phoenix and Tucson, interested in forming RIC Core Teams. I am booked for travel well into the fall. Clearly, some folks are talking and, in fact, are being moved past talking to action.”

Now more than ever, Lutherans Concerned is a very important resource for human sexuality discussions. We are available to pastors and lay persons who want to talk about sexuality, but are afraid to “let the genie out of the bottle.” Current RIC congregations can mentor congregations who are just beginning to explore a fully inclusive welcome—supporting their dialog and encouraging them to make it clearly known that they welcome people of all sexual orientations and gender identities.

The ministry of Lutherans Concerned is recognized for it’s excellence in promoting Christian understanding of GLBT persons. Let us pray that God will provide many opportunities to further this understanding.‚

Final Words: Beyond the Science
by Tim Fisher

It’s clear Dr. Merton Strommen and the bulk of the scientific community disagree with one another—especially concerning “conversion therapy,” which attempts to change a person’s sexual orientation from homosexual to heterosexual. Of course the church is not a scientific body, and so it seems necessary and good to move our discussion away from a merely scientific argument, where one side pits its favored researcher against that of the other, and instead discuss the issue in a context in which the church is more directly and distinctly active.

One of the ways in which the church has been especially active is in consigning a severe stigma upon its non-heterosexual members. For hundreds of years, the church has taken part—sometimes intentionally, sometimes unintentionally—in the creation and support of an at-once religious and social setting that judges gays and lesbians to be unhealthy, abnormal, undesirable, and un-Godly, even when many are involved in loving, monogamous relationships. Justly or unjustly, the church perpetuates the stigma. In The Church and Homosexuality, Dr. Strommen makes many of the same points about homosexual people that the stigma has supported since its beginning.

Consequences of stigma
Of course the church, Dr. Strommen included, has never condoned all of the effects of the stigma it has helped shape, nor should it be held responsible for all of them. Yet when we, the church, discuss any aspect of the issue of homosexuality, scientific or otherwise, we must never allow ourselves to forget the full severity of the stigma’s consequences in the church and in the world. When we have seen public humiliation spread across the backs of faithful non-heterosexual ministers, leaving their careers and their personalities in ruins; when we have heard the word abomination uttered by perfectly sweet, gray-haired ladies in the church sewing circle; when we have seen a man’s extraordinary passion and talent for music—which is God’s glory—applauded and salaried, but his passion for another human being, his unique talent for loving one particular person like no other, yet is taxed and levied against him, so much so he feels more prostitute than priest; when we have watched our home churches enjoin self-appointed authorities who draw charts and graphs attesting that because a few are shown to be promiscuous or disloyal, all gay and lesbian members are suspected of these same “tendencies”; when we have seen how the words of the very scripture many have devoted their lives to studying and preaching are used to picket the faithful in their homes and in their home sanctuaries; when we have observed these things and more, how can we faithfully argue that the research about “conversion” therapy—the therapy which Dr. Strommen supports as a “middle ground,” promulgated as it is on the presumption that homosexuality is pathological and erroneous—how can we argue that this research is not contaminated by our false witness against both our neighbors and ourselves? When one is told one’s homosexual desires are sick, that they are “against creation,” who wouldn’t say he wants to be healed? Or, more to the point, who shouldn’t tell his therapist he has been released from depravity? The social sciences have yet to even come close to finding a way to factor out the effects of an unjust stigma when evaluating the self-reports of those who enter into counseling.

Injustice to God
When we participate in such injustice, as we all have done, the truth is not in us. Any injustice done to our neighbor is injustice done to God. While we may disagree about whether or not homosexual behavior in itself wrongs God, one thing, at least, is clear from Romans 1: injustice against God leads to our inability to distinguish good from evil, to distinguish virtue from vice, and truth from falsehood. As St. Paul writes, “For though they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking, and their senseless minds were darkened” (Romans 1:21). In such a stigmatized environment as surrounds the issue of the church and homosexuality—the mark of which is present in the self-report of even the most earnest participant in conversion therapy—in such injustice, neither the calculators of scientific validity nor the victims of stigma should be relied upon to offer a true word; no accurate measurement, no proper discernment, is yet available. Our minds are darkened.

Looking to the light
How should we, the church, go about our work so that light shines on this contentious issue and on our minds? Where do we look for a true word?

Perhaps one place to turn is right back to Romans, the very bible text wherein we learn of how our minds are made senseless, darkened by injustice; the very text used most often to clobber gay people today; the very text which may someday lead the church to wisdom. The idea that both the darkness and light of our spiritual lives are found in this text seems in keeping with the conundrum Paul describes in his theology of justification by faith. To paraphrase Paul’s difficult, dialectical argument, the conundrum is this: we desire to be in a right relationship with God, and so we desire to follow his commandments. Yet, because of the presence of sin, we invariably strive to win God’s favor, to earn his saving grace. By striving to do this—which because of our weakness (sin) we cannot avoid—we dishonor God. We do not give God his due, which is glory and gratitude for the grace only God can bestow. It angers God when we act as if we can save ourselves. Paul writes: “But sin, finding opportunity in the command, wrought in me all kinds of covetousness. . . . . .The very commandment which promised life proved to be death to me” (Romans 7:8, 10).

The crux of the matter in Romans, as Paul describes it, is that in our desire to be justified in the eyes of God, we stubbornly desire after things which can never satisfy. “For I do not do the good I want,” he writes, “but the evil I do not want is what I do” (7:19). We may desire to follow the commandments of God, but, because of sin, we yet find ourselves chasing that desire, never fulfilling it.

We the church have struggled in a very Pauline way when we have come to the task of ordering the life of the church. We have desired to keep ourselves right in the eyes of God in a myriad of ways, one of which is to exile so-called practicing homosexuals from the full life of the church, banning them from ordination and withholding from them the blessings enjoyed by couples in marriage. It is of course right for the church to discern what are reasonable standards of behavior, character, and academic preparation and to expect these in various ways of its ordained and un-ordained members. Nevertheless, in the church today we do the same dishonor to God told of in Romans. We see such dishonoring when we regulate certain human behaviors and claim our grounds, and our motivation, to be that God (we suppose) says the behaviors are wrong.

Now please don’t misunderstand. Certainly it is right to preach the law, as best we understand it. But the law can only be good because we know that, as Paul writes, “any . . . commandment [is] summed up in [the] sentence, ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ Love does no wrong to a neighbor; therefore love is the fulfilling of the law” (Romans 13:9-10). 

Challenge to the church
So I implore the church to teach law by proclaiming love, not by striving to earn the grace of God in fulfilling commandments. Just as with heterosexuality, there is no evidence that homosexual behavior in itself wrongs any neighbor. Those who disagree always come back to the argument that, as supposedly evidenced by scriptural commandment, God is somehow wronged because God’s law is not followed. But such an argument takes us straight back into Paul’s spiritual conundrum—doing what we think is right because we wish to fulfill what we think are God’s commandments—and in so doing we grievously wrong our homosexual neighbors. One honors God when one trusts grace to God; one does injustice  when one tries to ply God with our all too often puny notions of the good. ‚

“[T]he full humanity of gay and other sexual minority folk must be affirmed!” This is the thesis that Carl Jech—ex-Lutheran pastor, San Francisco bay area community college instructor, musician, father, and unabashed gay advocate—argues in his passionate, personal, sometimes folksy, sometimes scholarly, almost always engaging contribution to the literature attempting “to influence the opinions of folks who either oppose or prefer to ignore homosexuality.” Believing that the debate over homosexuality has reached an impasse, Jech writes that he does not intend to preach to “the gay-affirming choir.” Rather he sees his role “as providing a vehicle that members of this choir can use to encourage dialogue both with those who are hostile and with the ‘movable middle,’ the one-third or more of the population who appear to be undecided or ambivalent regarding sexual orientation issues.”

Jech organizes the ten chapters of his book around questions that attempt to take seriously the concerns of those who have moral and religious objections to homosexuality. For example, “Is the biblical worldview exclusively heterosexual?” No. “Do gay people deliberately choose their sexual orientation?” No. “If we accept homosexuality, must we condone all forms of sexuality?” No. “Can we love the gay person but hate the sin of homosexuality?” No. “Does anything in the Bible support a positive evaluation of sexual minorities?” It depends how you read it. “Does empathy for marginalized outsiders require a reformulation of sexual ethics?” Yes.

Of course, his commentary on these questions is not so simple or straight-forward. Each question he addresses from several points of view, weighing their relative merits, and for each question he manages to amass a dazzling array of arguments, illustrations, anecdotes, and observations that draw on his personal history as an out gay man and his acquaintance with sources, both popular and scholarly. On the one hand, he can cite Walter Bauer’s scholarly classic, Orthodoxy and Heresy in Earliest Christianity, or John Boswell’s eminently academic Christianity, Social Tolerance, and Homosexuality. On the other hand, he offers illustrations from public radio and television, films, popular songs, novels, lectures he has attended, and conversations with friends. How many authors would be able, as Jech does (p. 199), to work Immanuel Kant and Dr. Laura Schlesinger into the same sentence? I imagine he is a captivating teacher!

For those looking for a ways to counter the biblical arguments against homosexuality, Chapter Seven, “Does the Bible explicitly condemn all homosexuality,” offers a succinct and helpful guide. Attempting to approach conservative biblical literalists on their own turf, Jech opposes to what he calls “superficial literalism,” a “radical literalism,” which entails a serious “historical-critical” analysis of the texts within their cultural and historical contexts. “Radical literalism means that we must first be as thoroughly honest and scientifically accurate as possible in our attempt to understand the human side of where the Bible came from—what the writers were actually trying to say in their own context—before we jump to conclusions about what God is revealing to us.” And he cites Luther in support of this view:

He then presents four “distinct conclusions” about the Bible’s attitude toward homosexuality adopted by portions of “the scholarly community.” For the first group, which he calls “the old consensus” (and identifies as “superficial literalists”), the Bible “obviously condemns homosexuality.” For the second group, “the Bible is generally but not totally hostile to homosexuality.” Within this group Jech places such authors as Tom Horner (Jonathan Loved David) and Martti Nissinen (Homoeroticism in the Biblical World). According to the third group, e.g. John J. McNeill (The Church and the Homosexual), “the Bible has a generally accepting attitude toward homosexuality.” The fourth group—represented predominantly by L. William Countryman (GTU professor and author of the excellent Dirt, Greed, and Sex)—would argue that “the Bible says nothing at all about sexual orientation and homosexuality is a non-issue.” For each conclusion Jech marshals the arguments, dispatches those he finds wanting, and reinforces those that uphold a “morally neutral and even supportive attitude toward same-sex relationships.”

The book is not without its flaws. Unevenness of style, repetitiousness, and numerous minor errors bespeak the need for a competent editor. For example, the Reformation term for “a matter of confessional import” is status confessionis, not status confessiones, as Jech repeatedly has it (pp. 18 and passim). And the New York Times book reviewer, Michiko Kakutani, is a woman, not a man, as Jech assumes (p. 192).

All in all, however, if this book is something of a diamond in the rough, it is, nonetheless, a little gem of personal witness, compassionate wisdom, arresting turns of phrase, and fresh insights and associations of thought and experience. I am glad to have read it and grateful to Carl Jech for his resolve to write it. ‚

In the fourth chapter of the Gospel of Mark, there is a story of four men who dig a hole through a dirt roof to place a paralyzed man in front of Jesus so the man might be healed. The four men acted out of faith to bring one who is easily forgotten into the center of community. Today there are many elderly and disabled people living in nursing homes. They are unable to be a part of the mainstream of society, and because of this and other factors, many tend to be forgotten. The Lutheran Ministry to Nursing Homes (LMNH) seeks to bring people who have been forgotten in nursing homes back into the center of community and give them a central place in our lives.

The vision of this ministry began in 1998. Early on the goal was to call a person from the roster of the Extraordinary Candidacy Project (ECP) to be a chaplain for this ministry. In 1999 candidates were sought, but no one was available, so the ministry was put on hold. In the summer of 2001 it was revived, and this time, candidates from both ELCA and ECP were accepted. In the spring of 2002, I was selected for the position of chaplain. I was ordained on May 12, 2002 at St. Paul Lutheran Church in Oakland, Calif. Initially I was issued calls from four congregations: Resurrection, St. Paul and Trinity Lutheran Churches (Oakland) and Trinity Lutheran Church (Alameda). Immanuel Lutheran Church (Alameda) issued a call to me in January of 2003. Bethlehem Lutheran (Oakland) and Lutheran Church of the Cross (Berkeley) also support this ministry.

I am a bisexual woman in a relationship with a wonderful woman and on the roster of the Extraordinary Candidacy Project. I am pleased that this ministry serves people in nursing homes and serves to resist the policy of the ELCA that denies people in same gender relationships from serving as clergy. I am able to use the gifts I have to serve in an incredible ministry with a committed group of congregations.

A key point in the development of the LMNH has been a relationship with Eldergivers, formerly San Francisco Bay Ministry to Nursing Homes. Eldergivers seeks to uplift the gifts of the elderly. The philosophy of Eldergivers and its executive director, Brent Nettle, has significantly shaped LMNH. It opens our eyes to see that the residents have much to share and puts our work in the frame of a mutual ministry.

The Lutheran Ministry to Nursing Homes has three objectives: chaplaincy, advocacy, and building relationships with volunteers from the participating congregations. Each week, I routinely go to four nursing homes, three in Oakland and one in Alameda. These nursing homes, primarily funded by Medicare and Medi-Cal, had no chaplain in their facilities because they do not have the same resources as privately funded institutions. Many of the people in nursing homes have few or no visitors, and little or no spiritual care.

One of the joys of my role is working with volunteers. Many people are passionate about being with the elderly, and this ministry is a way for their passions to flow. There are a variety of ways that volunteers connect with people in the nursing homes—from individual visits to group activities. Volunteers include people of all ages and abilities. As time goes on we find more and more creative ways to connect with the nursing homes.

The interesting thing about the four people who brought the paralytic to Jesus is that they experienced the blessing of Jesus, the love of God. The LMNH ministry allows all of us to experience the love of God. It is a joy to get to know people, their stories, their gifts, to be with them in their joy and sadness, even to be with people who cannot talk and knowing that God is with them too. It is truly a fulfilling ministry! Mildred, one of our volunteers, said it best, “You get much more out of it than you give.” ‚

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Official selection of the SF International Lesbian & Gay Film Festival

We are pleased to announce that the film THIS obedience has been selected to receive its US premiere to the general public at the San Francisco International Lesbian and Gay Film Festival on June 21, 2003 at 3:15 p.m. at the Herbst Theatre in San Francisco. THIS obedience follows the Rev. Anita C. Hill and her congregation at St. Paul-Reformation Lutheran Church from the time they decided to commit "ecclesiastical disobedience" by ordaining Anita, on through the decisions made at the ELCA Churchwide Assembly. The organized Christian church is one of the fiercest battlegrounds for GLBT rights. Though religious in nature, the actions of St. Paul-Reformation have impacted the fight for GLBT rights in this country. The national attention from members of the press, who are generally silent regarding religious matters, is just one example of the profound effect this event has had on our nation and the battle for justice for the GLBT community. From the personal stories of those involved to high-stakes political maneuvering of a denomination, THIS obedience provides insight into an historic series of events that rocked the third largest Christian denomination in the United States.