Well the ELCA has finally broken that barrier into allowing Gay relationships (if they are chaste). Today they vote on allowing Gay clergy to be called to a church. The ELCA has been playing with this for the past eight years since Bishop Hanson took office. They have been a united synod since 1988 which is 21 years, but the history of the three groups which formed this synod have always been on the liberal end of the spectrum. One of the groups the AELC was the product of the Seminex walkout in 1974. From 1969, when J.A.O Preus became the president of the LCMS and had the Seminary in St. Louis investigated on reports of professors teaching higher/historical critical methods rather than the historical grammatical methods taught by the LCMS from the beginning.

This investigation proved these things true and within 5 years, all but 5 professors walked out along with a good sized portion of the student body who supported them. They developed the Seminary in Exile a.k.a. Seminex and held classes at another College campus in St. Louis. They eventually became the AELC and later joined the ALC and LCA in forming the largest synod in American Lutheranism.

The ALC and LCA had allowed women to become Pastors in the 1960s so when the ELCA was founded in 1988, this was an automatic allowance. As the past couple of decades have passed, the GLBT has pressed for Gay rights in America citing equality especially towards getting health insurance for their significant others. The ELCA has with each passing convention, gotten closer and closer to opening up for the Gay community what it already had for women.

They all cite that Jesus would be accepting of them because he loves all those for whom he died. Historical Critical theology looks as scripture differently than Historical grammatical. They see things only in terms of history and what is valid now versus what was not valid back in Jesus time. 'surely Jesus would accept them if they are chaste.' Jesus is God. God does not change, nor has he ever. His word tells us as much.

Do I hate homosexuals? NO! They are my neighbor and I am told to love them as myself and God, but I do not have to love their sin. Homosexuality is a sin and it is punishable by the same punishment as other sins. It deserves death just as much as adultery, or murder, or stealing, or bearing false witness, or taking God's name in vain or putting other gods above the one true God. God wants for us to repent of our sins, not keep doing them.

The example I love is the one where the Pharisees took a woman caught in adultery to Jesus. We all know that he told those who have not sinned to cast the first stone and when they heard it they dropped their rocks and left. Jesus went to the woman and asked where those who were accusing her were. She noticed that all of them had left. Jesus then said to her, "Then neither do I condemn you, GO AND SIN NO MORE!"

I sometimes wonder if the ELCA stops their reading before Jesus says those last five words. This woman could have been a lesbian. His message would still have been the same.

God's message in scripture to his people has always been one of repentance. He sent his prophets in the Old Testament including John the Baptist to tell the people that the time of repentance is at hand because the Messiah would come soon.

The ELCA doesn't want to condemn sin, they want to foster it and therefore they have become a defective arm of the church. The Episcopalians, with whom the ELCA joined in 2001 in the Call to Common Mission, is already heading towards a split with their more conservative brothers and sisters in that denomination. They approved of a bishop, Eugene Robinson, who is actively gay in 2003.

This will forever certify that the LCMS will not be joining the ELCA in any joint effort to unify Lutherans in America.

I will continue to pray that the ELCA will realize their mistakes and reverse their actions.