Lutherans: ELCA Debates Abortion, Re-elects Chilstrom

John Cardinal O’Connor, the Roman Catholic archbishop of New York, had a few unexpected—and apparently somewhat unappreciated—words for the churchwide assembly of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA) meeting last month in Orlando, Florida. In a letter to the assembly, O’Connor urged the ELCA, which was scheduled to consider a churchwide statement on abortion, to take a strong prolife stand.

“I should like to think that the Lutheran insight regarding the grace of God would powerfully inform the ELCA’s testimony to our responsibility to care for the utterly gratuitous gift from God that is every human life,” said O’Connor’s letter, read by a prolife delegate to the assembly.

Some church members reacted negatively to the reading. Delegates of the 5.2 million-member denomination then refused to adopt a statement declaring that life begins at conception.

Bishop David Brown of Waverly, Iowa, told the Chicago Tribune that reading a letter from a Catholic during debate at the Lutheran assembly was “very inappropriate.” William Rusch, ELCA’s ecumenical officer, said he knew of “no parallel” in the history of the assembly.

While rejecting the alternative resolution, the assembly adopted by a vote of 837 to 141 a statement that calls abortion an “option only of last resort.” The statement lists as possible reasons for ending a pregnancy “circumstances of extreme fetal abnormality,” a pregnancy that presents “a clear threat to the physical life of the woman,” or a pregnancy that “occurs when both parties do not participate willingly in sexual intercourse.”

In other action, the ELCA gave a vote of confidence to Bishop Herbert Chilstrom, 59, re-electing him to a four-year term as head of the denomination, which formed just four years ago from the merger of the Lutheran Church in America, the American Lutheran Church, and the Association of Evangelical Lutheran Churches.

Despite some opposition, Chilstrom missed election on the first ballot by only nine votes. One Lutheran group had called for Chilstrom to step down during his first term, saying he had failed to bring the new denomination together, and citing the deep financial woes that have plagued the ELCA since its formation.

But there were no serious challengers to assume ELCA’s top office. And in accepting the vote and applause of the assembly, Chilstrom was upbeat about the denomination’s future. He cited new growth over the past year—“the first time in years that a major Lutheran body in this country could make such a report,” he said.

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