c. 2007 Religion News Service
Missouri Synod Criticizes ELCA on Gay Clergy Decision
(RNS) The president of a St. Louis-based Lutheran denomination said the recent decision by the nation’s largest Lutheran body to refrain from disciplining noncelibate gay clergy “troubles me greatly” and may strain relations among Lutherans.
The Rev. Gerald Kieschnick, president of the 2.5 million-member Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod, said action last week (Aug. 11) on gay clergy by the larger Evangelical Lutheran Church in America “is causing serious concern and consternation among members and leaders” of his church.
With about 5 million members, the 20-year-old ELCA is the country’s largest Lutheran denomination and includes a number of churches that split from the more conservative LCMS for doctrinal reasons in 1976.
Delegates to the ELCA’s biennial Churchwide Assembly in Chicago voted to urge bishops to refrain from disciplining clergy “in mutual, chaste and faithful committed same-gender relationships” but stopped short of changing church policy on gay clergy.
Kieschnick said in a statement that “the LCMS firmly believes” that homosexual behavior is a sin.
Echoing previous warnings to the ELCA, Kieschnick said that “for the sake of our mutual witness and service together, the implications of such action, should it be taken, would need to be addressed, fraternally and evangelically.”
The ELCA and LCMS do humanitarian work together through Lutheran Services in America, Lutheran Disaster Response and Lutheran World Relief.
_ Daniel Burke
WCC Proposes `Six Church’ Meeting to Parallel Korean Talks
(UNDATED) The World Council of Churches has proposed a “six church” meeting to parallel and monitor the “six party” talks on nuclear and other issues affecting the Korean peninsula.
The church meeting would involve religious leaders from North and South Korea as well as the United States, Russia, China and Japan _ the six governments that began meeting in 2003 after North Korea withdrew from the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. The talks had remained at a standstill until February, when North Korea agreed to shut down its nuclear facilities in return for economic and energy aid.
WCC General Secretary Samuel Kobia made the proposal for the “six church” talks in a speech to a conference in Seoul celebrating the centenary of the Korean Great Revival of 1907. A separate conference is exploring the churches’ role in aiding reunification of the two Koreas.
WCC officials said the proposal had won favor from a broad range of South Korean churches at the conferences, including members of the National Council of Churches in Korea and the Christian Council of Korea. Christians in the North are represented by the Korean Christian Federation.
Kobia urged churches in the six nations to “persuade their respective governments to ensure the continuity of these (government) talks to diffuse tension and conflict in the peninsula so that people can live together in peace.”
“We have come a long way since the epoch when discussion of reunification was considered an offense, and time has proved that the churches’ principled stand on this issue was prophetic,” Kobia told the International Consultation on the Role of Churches in Peace and Unification.
“But today the struggle for peace and reunification has to continue in a much more complex geopolitical landscape,” he said.
On Monday (Aug. 13), the U.S. nuclear envoy for North Korea, Christopher Hill, met in Beijing with his North Korean counterpart to lay the groundwork for six-party working group talks at the end of the week. Meanwhile, a summit meeting between North and South Korea _ only the second ever _ is planned for Aug. 28-30.
_ David E. Anderson
Quote of the Day: Former New York Yankee Phil Rizzuto
(RNS) “Well, that kind of puts the damper on even a Yankee win.”
_ Former New York Yankees shortstop and broadcaster Phil Rizzuto announcing the death of Pope Paul VI in 1978. Rizzuto, who was quoted by The New York Times, died Monday (Aug. 13).
KRE/PH END RNS
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