ELCA Head Responds to Rival Lutheran Body

Wed, Aug. 25 2010
By Lillian Kwon,
Christian Post Reporter

The head of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America responded to plans for a rival church body, urging fellow Lutherans to avoid slander.

"We are to fear and love God, so that we do not tell lies about our neighbors, betray or slander them, or destroy their reputations. Instead we are to come to their defense, speak well of them, and interpret everything they do in the best possible light," said the Rev. Mark S. Hanson, presiding bishop of the ELCA, as he recited words from the Evangelical Lutheran Worship.

Hanson made the statement in a pastoral letter Tuesday, days before hundreds of dissenting Lutherans are scheduled to constitute a separate denomination called the North American Lutheran Church.

The NALC is intended to provide a home for Lutherans discontent with the ELCA's "ongoing movement away from the authority and teaching of the Bible."

Dozens of congregations have taken votes to sever ties with the ELCA over the past year since the ELCA's highest legislative body voted to allow gays and lesbians in "publicly accountable, lifelong, monogamous, same-gender relationships" to serve as clergy. the rest