The Agony of Mainline Protestantism

First Things
Sep 23, 2009
R.R. Reno

This summer the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA) held their biennial Churchwide Assembly. As is so often the case with American Christianity, the headline grabbing issue was sex. The Assembly didn’t exactly affirm or endorse homosexuality, but, after agreeing to disagree about the moral significance of homosexual relationships, it opened up the possibility for same-sex blessings and homosexual clergy.

In a recent reflection posted on the new website Lutherans Persisting, David S. Yeago provides some insightful observations about how a faithful Lutheran should think about this (and other) bad decisions. They just strike me as right.

Yeago foregoes arguments against the permissive actions of the Churchwide Assembly. It’s not that the arguments are unimportant, but, by Yeago’s reckoning, a person committed to traditional Christian sexual morality faces a more immediate challenge. There is a pressing spiritual question, “a question,” as he puts it, “about how we are to live in a fallen and erring church.” What is the vocation of the faithful amidst a great deal of confusion and some outright false teaching? the rest