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Lutherans question new direction of church
Regan Hill photo
Pastor Rebecca Heber of the Lutheran CORE Steering Committee talks to representatives from several area churches about the relationship between the new Coalition for Renewal Lutheran affiliation and the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America.
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Published: February 8, 2010
About 75 Lutherans from in and around Iredell County met at a Statesville church Saturday afternoon to listen to a talk given by a Florida minister of the faith and ponder the idea of separating from the denomination's leading body.
Pastor Rebecca Heber, of Lake Mary, Fla., spoke St. John's Lutheran Church on behalf of a movement called the Lutheran Coalition for Renewal -- known as L-CORE -- which was formed, according to a brochure distributed at Saturday's meeting, "to represent the vast theological middle of Lutheranism in North America."
That middle would be between the faith's more conservative, Lutheran Congregations in Mission for Christ (LCMC) and its main body, the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA), which L-CORE leaders believe has gotten liberal to the point of no longer representing the views of Bible-centered Lutherans.
At the heart of the issue is a decision made last August at the ELCA's Churchwide Assembly to allow gays to become ordained ministers in the church.
Specifically, the Assembly voted to end a policy that had previously "precluded" gays from being considered as ministers.
In a press release issued by the ELCA shortly after the decision, the group's vocation and education director the Rev. Stanley N. Olsen said the action will open up the ministry to more people.
"What has changed is that the pool of potential church leaders now includes those gay and lesbian members who are in partnered relationships," Olson said. "It's a change that will affect congregations only to the extent that they wish it to affect them. They will still call their own pastors."
But L-CORE leaders see this as a departure from biblical instruction.
"We've been accused of being homophobic and unloving," Heber said Saturday. "But how can it be unloving to see someone on a track and know that staying on that track is going to kill them and not do something, even though they say they love that track?"
Heber added, "We owe it to the homosexual community to tell them the truth."
An audience member who described herself as a member of a one of Statesville's Lutheran churches said she knew of gay congregants in her church and said fellow church members "have no problem" with the gay members. That person went on to say, however, that she would not be in favor of having a gay pastor.
Heber said that having gay clergy is the start of a slippery slope down to theological relativism.
"The next thing they will be saying is that Christ is not the way to salvation but merely a way to salvation," Heber said.
Heber argued against comparisons that have been made, by some in favor of gay clergy, to the time when females were permitted to be ordained by the Lutheran church.
She said there "is a biblical case that could be made" for and against having women in positions of authority. But, she said, regarding gays, "There is no argument."
Furthermore, Heber said, it has been suggested that by remaining in the ELCA, "we tacitly approve of same-sex activities and we do not."
As for St. John's, Pastor John R. Jones III said the jury is still out on which way his congregation will move.
"We have voted to affiliate with L-CORE while also remaining in the ELCA," he said. "We're going to wait to see where all this goes."
Currently there are four L-CORE churches in North Carolina: two in Salisbury and one each in Kannapolis and Newton.
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