{"id":1008,"date":"2009-08-24T09:26:03","date_gmt":"2009-08-24T15:26:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/crawler\/?p=1008"},"modified":"2009-08-24T09:26:03","modified_gmt":"2009-08-24T15:26:03","slug":"lutheran-reform-on-gay-clergy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/clippings\/2009\/08\/24\/lutheran-reform-on-gay-clergy\/","title":{"rendered":"Lutheran Reform on Gay Clergy"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Over the weekend the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2009\/08\/22\/us\/22lutherans.html\">New York Times<\/a> reported on the recent vote by the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (or ELCA), the largest Lutheran denomination in the U.S. to &#8220;allow gay men and lesbians in committed relationships to serve as members of the clergy.&#8221;<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>The vote made the denomination the latest mainline Protestant church to permit such ordinations, contributing to a halting sense of momentum on the issue within liberal Protestantism.<\/p>\n<p>By a vote of 559 to 451, delegates to the denomination\u2019s national assembly in Minneapolis approved a resolution declaring that the church would find a way for people in \u201cpublicly accountable, lifelong, monogamous same-gender relationships\u201d to serve as official ministers. (The church already allows celibate gay men and lesbians to become members of the clergy.)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>The Times called in a sociologist for some additional commentary&#8230;<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Wendy Cadge, a sociology professor at Brandeis University who has studied Evangelical Lutheran churches grappling with the issue, said, \u201cIt does show, to the extent that any mainline denominations are moving, I think they\u2019re moving slowly toward a more progressive direction.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Describing the context of Friday\u2019s vote, several religion experts likened it to the court decision last year in Iowa legalizing same-sex marriage.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>And&#8230;<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>\u201cIn the same sense that the Iowa court decision might have opened people\u2019s eyes, causing them to say, \u2018Iowa? What? Where?\u2019\u201d said Laura Olson, a professor of political science at Clemson University who has studied mainline Protestantism. \u201cThe E.L.C.A. isn\u2019t necessarily quite as surprising in the religious sense, but the message it\u2019s sending is, yes, not only are more Americans from a religious perspective getting behind gay rights, but these folks are not just quote unquote coastal liberals.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The denomination has struggled with the issue almost since its founding in the late 1980s with the merger of three other Lutheran denominations.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2009\/08\/22\/us\/22lutherans.html\">Read more from the New York Times. <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Over the weekend the New York Times reported on the recent vote by the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (or ELCA), the largest Lutheran denomination in the U.S. to &#8220;allow gay men and lesbians in committed relationships to serve as members of the clergy.&#8221; The vote made the denomination the latest mainline Protestant church to [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":17,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[39074],"tags":[42,176],"class_list":["post-1008","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-sightings","tag-religion","tag-sexuality"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/clippings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1008","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/clippings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/clippings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/clippings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/17"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/clippings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1008"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/clippings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1008\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1011,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/clippings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1008\/revisions\/1011"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/clippings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1008"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/clippings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1008"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/clippings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1008"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}