Michael Root, the out-going dean of Lutheran Theological Southern Seminary -- who is also the Executive Director of the Center for Catholic and Evangelical Theology, an ecumenist of great distinction, a terrific theology professor, and my friend -- has just begun a new blog, and I commend it to you. Michael is astute, incisive, plain-spoken, and eloquent, so I expect good things from it.
Be warned, fellow progressives, his blog was inspired by the decisions made at the ELCA's Churchwide Assembly (a foolish title by any measure -- e.g., how can the assembly be churchwide, when it only includes ELCA Lutherans?) regarding issues of homosexuality in the life and practice of the denomination. For those seeking a hard-nosed theological understanding of why even I, as leftist and progressive as I am, opposed the decision, that's the place to look.
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3 comments:
Compelling stuff - I'm bookmarking it. Thanks for the heads-up.
Root has some valid points with respect to Lutherans' allergy to doing ethics, but he avoids the main point: is homosexuality immoral? For many, many Christians, it's just no longer possible to see monogamous gay couples as "abominations" or "idolaters," so we simply can't read those scriptural admonitions as applying to them. Similar things happened with women's ordination, divorce, etc. So let's not pretend that just now are we deviating from some hypothetically universal church tradition.
Also: unlike some of my ELCA brethren, I don't long for a catholic-style magisterium to lay down the law. I wonder if they looked at the actually existing Catholic Church--as opposed to the one of their imaginings--would they see the same guarantees of moral and ideological unity?
Lee, because I am unable to reduce my response to your comment to the maximum allowed for a comment, I've chosen to address your point in a new post.
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