Lutherans follow Anglicans down rocky road of dissent

August 25, 2010
By Matthew Block

Hundreds of congregations have held votes on leaving the denomination. Others have cut off funding to the national church. Bishops in Africa have condemned the actions taken by their North American counterparts. And this week disaffected members are gathering to found a new breakaway denomination.

You would be forgiven for assuming that the denomination under discussion here is Anglican, but the battleground this time is the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA), a denomination which — at least before its controversial August 2009 vote — counted more than 4.6 million members. But while the names are different, the crisis in the ELCA is remarkably similar to that rocking North American Anglicanism.

In August 2009, the ELCA narrowly voted to affirm couples living in same-sex relationships and further opened the ministry to non-celibate homosexual clergy. Members holding a historical interpretation of Scripture were outraged. For them, the authority of Scripture — a foundational tenet of the Lutheran Reformation — was being rejected in favour of cultural relativism. the rest