I spent the last three days of last week at the synod assembly, church lingo for the annual get together of the surviving churches here in the Texas-Louisiana Gulf Coast Synod of the ELCA, wherein we do our worship and business as that expression of the church, have discussions, vote on things, party, and gossip. The theme for this year: ‘Outrageous scandal: living like Jesus.’ And so we gathered at the Marriott, on the fairy tale mall in Sugar Land (really), home of that outrageous scandal himself bug man and ex-legislator Tom ‘The Hammer’ Delay, living like Jesus. Lutherans are nothing if not ironic. A few years back the theme was living boldly in the scandal of the gospel or something like that—I didn’t get a chance to memorize it because they took the banner down after somebody was offended by it at the opening worship. I suspect our assembly themes reflect the same spiritual pipe dreams as congregational names, ala, Peace Lutheran—’come, join one of our many bickering cliques.’
Like the other old-line mainline denominations we Lutherans have been getting our asses kicked numerically for a couple of decades—from a high of 5.5 million to the current 4.5 million, a lot of whom are just plainly insane, not to mention we’re also getting creamed financially. It costs money to be the church and have seminaries and social services and when the money isn’t there somebody’s life is being hurt. We’ve been getting creamed by the ‘evangelicals’ who offer the maximum certainty of simplistic morality, i.e., ‘anyone who is different than me.’ And of course we’ve been getting creamed by the cultural wars, too, especially after 9/11 and fear was fed and escalated by the shrill hucksters of the airwaves screeching their hate, violating all the normal rules of human decency and respect in discourse, bullying those who disagree, justifying their own righteousness by destroying the disagreer, and this cancer infected our congregations and there were a whole bunch of people who did the bullying, and a whole bunch of people who got beat up by them. It’s hard to remember you came to drain the swamp when you’re up to your ass in alligators. And, oh yeah, here in the Gulf Coast Synod we’ve been also creamed by four major hurricanes in the last four years, beginning with Katrina in New Orleans and moving west from there to Galveston wreaking devastations on people and churches. Our current synod population of about 120 congregations probably won’t be that in a year, given that a bunch of ‘em have just been blown away, as it were. Our last bishop lived his final two years of 16 like a zombie. Servin’ the church is a great life if you don’t weaken.
But our fresh meat Octo Bish and his minions—who are also my good friends—are fired up! ready to go! Looking toward the future the Spirit has in mind for us. This ain’t the twentieth century anymore, Toto. We’re doin’ business in the world-wide-wired 21st and we’re rearrangin’ the Titanic’s deck chairs just like we have to do every generation. Matchmaker Don introduced the newly recreated and now fully salvific call process. Biker Kerry who recently left the security of his 15-year tenure at a growing suburban congregation to take a temporary position for the synod doing I guess outreach and who has an uncanny ability to boil the most profound thoughts down to simple phrases if you can make it through the 45 minutes it takes him to get there says, ‘I’m wonderin’ about taking this job and why I should do it and clear as a bell God tells me “Make More Lutherans. I make Catholics and Presbyterians and Jews and Muslims. I like the diversity. And I like Lutherans, too. Make more Lutherans.”‘
Most lucid evangelism comment I’ve ever heard. Lutherans, nor even Christians, need not conquer the world, just take our place in rounding out creation. We don’t have the whole and exclusive truth, natch, but we do have stuff to offer.
Like yet another vote about sexuality. Hot diggity dog.
What to do about ‘them gays’ has been an albatross around the church’s neck for the last twenty years at least, beginning with the first attempted statement (for the newly-formed ELCA) back around 89 – 90 that earned the task force leader so many death threats that she resigned for safety. (Islam isn’t the only religion used to justify terrorism, as I also write this a couple of days after the assassination of Dr. Tiller while ushering at his ELCA church service. Insane hatred is not reserved for foreigners only; violence as the will of God is all over the place.) So the generally hidden parts of the church—Biblical scholars, theologians, historians, sociologists, psychologists—all went to work in their disciplines studying ‘the issue’, while the debate turned vitriolic among our congregations; at least, among the ones who had the courage to talk about it—a lot of people and pastors wished it would just go away. But it didn’t, and around the Church the cry went up, ‘Let the pummeling begin!’ So we designed a boxing match process wherein round one would be congregational discussions and reports/recommendations to the sex commission or whatever it’s called, followed by round two with discussions and recommendations on the local synodical level, and round three, discussions, reports, and decisions on the church-wide level at those biannual assemblies (“churchwide” being comprised of voting members selected from each of the 65 synods). The culmination of the process happens at the upcoming churchwide assembly somewhere in August, when the vote will be taken regarding our policies about ordaining gay people in ‘monogamous, publicly accountable (etc, etc)’ relationships. Essentially the recommendations are to leave it to the discernment of the local synods, who better know the mission necessities of their areas, shorthanded to ‘the local option.’ A bunch of us could have told you ten years ago that’s where we’d end up coming out.
But there are 10,000 or so congregations in the ELCA with about 15,000 pastor-types and, as mentioned 4.5 million members. For the non-enlightened, we are not corporately hierarchical—we have no pope, our bishops are elected locally but have no real power beyond persuasion over our congregations; nor do they have a vote on our churchwide church council, by the way—just like I’ve not had a vote on the councils of the churches I’ve served—I’ve got the pulpit; if I can’t persuade ‘em from there, a vote ain’t gonna help. As a matter of fact, ‘political’ power in the ELCA is loaded in favor of the laity: all of our assemblies require that 2/3’s of the voting members be laity. Undoubtedly the directions we take as a church are initiated by ordained leadership people, but they can never be dictated by us.
Rats.
So instead of fiat we have a process that tries to include everybody and for that reason the church is about as easy to maneuver as the Titanic (which is why the church is forever doing the mad scramble of Peter suddenly sinking in his dash across the chaotic sea toward Jesus crying kyrie). Consider my own story: in the year of my pummeling by the homohysterics on the congregational level, Matchmaker Don and I were returning from a synod assembly in pre-Katrina New Orleans to currently flooded by Allison Houston and on the drive composed an email to the bishop ragging about the format of the assembly, who promptly responded with an email to the whole synod expressing his appreciation that we would be co-chairing next year’s assembly, which we did, pulling off a Smother’s Brothers routine. And leading the assembly in the practice of congregations and people talking to each other instead of going to workshops to hear yet another ‘expert’ lecture. We choose the most innocuous topic we could—the third commandment, ‘remember the sabbath’. Easy stuff—goin’ to church and restin’ that takes you into a consideration of materialism.
We did that ’cause the following year was bringing the synodical discussions about sexuality. Matchmaker and I chaired that sucker, too. By that time I was on disability and had no career future to worry about, and thought I could deflect the heat some from the bishop since he’d been getting hammered at from all sides for a decade and, besides, he’d taken some heat for me at the congregation, thus offering for him plausible deniability (‘You know how crazy Keene is’) when people give him crap. This worked. So we brought in a new testament scholar and a theological ethicist as presenters, both of whom supported changing the policies requiring the celibacy of gay clergy. When people bitched at the bishop for not providing ‘equal time’ for ‘the other side’ he said talk to Keene, who said, ‘Tough. You don’t need to make the case for the status quo because it already is. You need to make the case for the change’ and walked off and they stood there wondering what I’d just said, thinkin’ ‘what an asshole’ but not thinking about the bishop. We also brought in famed church referee and psychospiritual bouncer Dr. Pete Steinke to umpire the discussion/debate and to set the rules and call ‘foul’ as—actually not too often—necessary. The discussion itself was very heated and intense with conviction, but thanks to the work of Bouncer Pete we were prevented from name calling and ad hominem attacks and all that other destructive nastiness, even if it means enforcing Lutheran niceness with threat of expulsion, so we debated to a draw and sent the discussion reports off to the sex commission for our ‘journeying together in faithfulness’ as the whole process was beautifully called, and waited for the results and recommendations of the whole thing to come back, which is, as I said, in August.
‘Course there were those who, in their monomaniacal faithfulness refused the humility needed for the journeying together part, sought only to impose their understanding on everybody else and through secrecy and deceit and fear they spread their dittoheaded cancer in the Body of Christ, capable only of destruction, not creation. 4.5 million people; 15,000 clergy: some of ‘em are flat insane, but they do their damage nonetheless, ruining people and ignoring decency to prove their unique righteousness by bullying.
And then at the assembly there was. . .The Aggie, earning that by a rootin’ hootin’ every time Texas A & M was mentioned. Oh, and by the cowboy hat he wore throughout the thing in the hotel ballroom and the 20 pounds of metal hangin’ off the side of his belt, as if he were just on the verge of mountin’ his palomino and ridin’ off to fix some fence out on the prairie. A young guy, he proved his assembly rookiness by rootin’ n’ tootin’ n’ clappin’ every time somebody sided with his heterosexist orientation. Dude. It ain’t a football pep rally or a political convention. We’re tryin’ to understand the mind of Christ here. Shut the hell up.
And take off that stupid hat—we worship in here.
When I read the final (maybe) report and recommendations of the commission a couple of months back I was blown away, not so much by the recommendations themselves—as mentioned, ‘the local option’—as the rationale behind them. ‘Twas absolutely and classically Lutheran, starting with the acknowledgment that we’re flat stale-mated on the thing. Then finding a way through it by exploring the Lutheran heritage of ‘the bound conscience’ ala Brother Martin, ‘my conscience is prisoner to the word of God alone. To go against conscience is neither wise nor safe. Here I stand, God help me, I can do no other.’ (Keene ed.) Yeah, we all gotta live that noble sentiment, ‘a man’s gotta do what a man’s gotta do’.
But then a twist: what about the bound conscience of my disagreer? Does my bound conscience mean that he must be condemned as wrong? If not, then how is it that we live together as the Body of Christ, when the church may be doing those things I am bound in my conscience to oppose? How does that work?
To be bound in conscience is not merely to have deep feelings about something, but far more profound. It is to be convinced by the Spirit of the Scriptures and the witness of the church that I must take a particular position or action or betray my Lord Jesus Christ. My conscience before God is bound to that. Regardless of the outcome I cannot betray my lord. So for over a decade the church studied those scriptures and history and all I mentioned and discussed and debated and at the current end of all the ages came to a stalemate—though with a new respect for the bound conscience of the other, a new humanizing tone toward each other, the recommendation being that we trust each other enough to allow for the needs of the local mission to make that discernment. The spiritual challenge to it is to live our conviction with the humility that I might not necessarily be the only truth in the household of God (though how that may be possible is beyond me).
At the assembly we had the same old flurry of motions trying to stop change by the same old flurry of people doing it for years. I was set to join the debate with my tale of standing before the Hairy Thunderer God accounting for my pastoral work and he says, ‘well, Keene, basically you’re toast over that whole homosexuality thing. You told ‘em it was okay. But before I flick my eternal bic, tell me what in my name were you thinking?’ ‘I was tryin’ to do the Jesus thing, being the good samaritan to that guy that was beat up and laying in the ditch.’ With a snort he turns to Jesus, ‘fire ‘im up, son. ‘Sorry, dad. He might have been stupid, but he was showin’ some mercy’ and with that dumps a bucketful of baptismal water over my head, and the Hairy Thunderer goes stomping off muttering ‘where’s James Dobson when you need ‘im?’
It would have been a great debate moment, but it wasn’t, finally, necessary, because the opponents to change soon ran out of speakers and it made no sense to continue to hammer them with supporter speeches. Ultimately the vote to support the recommended changes passed, with a good enough majority. From the days of needing Pete the Bouncer, the whole thing was nearly a yawn. So get this: the people of the Lutheran churches of southeast Texas and southern Louisiana voted to recommend to all the people of the ELCA gathered in August that we change our policies to provide for the ordination and call of gay people in appropriate partnered relationships to serve as pastors of the church. (There is never a threat of a church being forced to have one, ’cause pastors are always selected by their congregations.)
Texas, bubba! ‘Course work still is being done for the August assembly, but that we passed it here gives me good feelings.
Sometimes the church gets it right. Sometimes the church even gets it right in a uniquely Lutheran way—that of acknowledging our differences and respecting the bound conscience of the other, who must also say, ‘here I stand, God help me, I can do no other.’
On this day I am awed by the wisdom and the courage of the ELCA in deciding to journey together faithfully through our fear and bewilderment. That’s what I think is really cool about being a Lutheran: we know how to live with ambiguity. We are at the same time assholes and saints.
And we can live with that.
Larry
