Officials of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA) have filed formal charges against two San Francisco congregations that ordained three openly homosexual ministerial candidates in January 20 services. According to a spokesman for Lutheran Bishop Lyle G. Miller, hand-delivered letters to Saint Francis and First United Evangelical Lutheran Churches stated that they had “willfully disregarded and violated a criterion for recognition as congregations of the ELCA.”
All three of the ministerial candidates at issue, two of whom constitute a lesbian couple, have the necessary theological training. But church officials say they are not eligible for the ministry because clergy guidelines stipulate “chastity before marriage and fidelity within marriage” as the norm for sexual intercourse.
Assuming the situation does not change, a synodical discipline committee will conduct a hearing and issue a ruling in the case. Its three options at that time will be to remove the two congregations from the ELCA, to require censure and admonition by the bishop of the synod, or to suspend congregational rights and privileges for a designated period.
Traditionalists within the Episcopal Church would like to see similar action against those in their church who have ordained practicing homosexuals. According to (Mr.) Kim Byham, president of the church’s gay and lesbian organization Integrity, the recent highly publicized ordination of Robert Williams by Newark Bishop John Spong was “only the latest in a long series of ordinations of open, self-affirming, noncelibate lesbians and gays in the Episcopal Church since 1977.”
However, in a recent statement expressing “profound anger,” Spong said he regretted the ordination of Williams, who, after his ordination, publicly ridiculed the concepts of monogomy and chastity.
Byham said about five self-avowed, practicing homosexuals have been ordained yearly in the church since 1977, when the first was ordained. The church’s 1979 general convention passed a resolution calling the ordination of practicing homosexuals “inappropriate.” The resolution is dismissed as nonbinding by advocates of homosexual ordination.
Based on reports in Religious News Service.
