Check out the website for the Upper Arlington Lutheran Church(es):
http://www.ualc.org

The church is vibrant! I’ve been there for meetings several times.

But nearly all the Lutheran churches in Europe (i.e. the place where Luther came from) already bless same-sex marriages/ civil unions!
I have posted plenty of reports up on my blog site here http://viaintegra.wordpress.com/

#1 Wow, quite a church—and nearly 6,000 members strong.  Interesting that nowhere on its vast website could I find mention of its denominational affiliation other than “Lutheran.”  And two of the three church campuses don’t even include THAT in their names. The ELCA affiliation may be in there somewhere that I missed, but maybe not for long. I see that senior pastor Paul Ulring is a member of the conservative Lutheran CORE (Coalition for Reform in the ELCA), which lobbied against the ELCA assembly’s changes re. sexuality teaching and practice.  CORE and its sister organizations in coming weeks will be discussing “Where do we go from here?” and possibly charting new directions and structures.

w.w.

#2: This is one excellent reason to be profoundly suspicious of the practice.  Larry

Larry: you don’t think your post #4 sounds a tad arrogant, then?

#2 writes, “But nearly all the Lutheran churches in Europe (i.e. the place where Luther came from) already bless same-sex marriages/ civil unions!”

Yeah, and let’s look at church attendances:

(Country - National attendance - Percent of religious attendees as Lutheran)
Iceland - 4% - 82%
Sweden - 4% - 87%
Finland - 4% - 84.2%
Norway - 5% - 85.7%
Denmark - 5% - 95%
(Source is here.)

Good evidence that the ELCA should follow the liberalization in Europe…if they want to empty the pews.

Robroy: but the pews are emptying across the board: the biggest decline in Europe is in the Roman Catholic Church (one of the MOST conservative). The trend is the same across Europe and across all mainstream churches: Scandinavia is just slightly ahead of the curve (only slightly - church attendance in France, the UK, Belgium and the Netherlands is not much different from Scandinavia, with Germany not far behind, and Austria, Italy, Spain, Greece, Ireland and Poland all rapidly following the same pattern.
Rather than trying desparately to make cheap points along the lines of “conservative = good = successful”, you would be better to ask yourslef the more difficult questions that follow from the realisation that declining church attendance in Europe is a complex reality. I think it probably has more to do with history than the present, in a way: all the mainstream churches in Europe have long been trapped in a Constantinian power-playing role in their societies, and now we are seeing that breaking up. That break up has merely happened to the greatest extent already in what were until recently the most socially advanced European societies, i.e. the North of Europe, but, as the social differences across Europe are increasingly disappearing as a result of the integration brought by the EU, the South and East are rapidly catching up. It’s nothing at all to do with straining facts to fit in with a dogmatic “conservative is always right” social narrative.

#5: Arrogant? No, not really. So we REALLY wish to make ourselves more like Europe? My answer is, “No, certainly not,” because the Old World is what we tried to get away from, all those years ago, and the reasons were excellent ones. See Emerson on this matter. HIs words are still sound as white oak.  Larry

Mark, you seem to not be able to read a simple table. The northern European countries “slightly ahead of the curve”? Christianity has been decimated by liberalization in Scandinavia. It is ridiculous, that you would mention Poland where church attendance is 55% (that’s over ten times the rate in Scandinavia). Italy is 45%. The only churches in Europe that are growing? The one’s that your lot offensively dismiss as “fundies.”

Please give me just one example of a liberal church that isn’t experiencing cataclysmic decline. Inclusive is a lie. We can see it plainly in Northern Europe. We should run in the opposite direction.

Robroy: you have a lot to say about a continent you appear to understand very little. And in fact, I wonder why it would matter to you anyway.

The “curve” is that all traditional institutional churches in Europe are in massive decline: the process started earlier and has so far gone further in Northern Europe than the South or East, but they are also now following the same trajectory. If you read any reports from Poland or Italy or Ireland, or ever actually go to church there, you will know that everyone talks of a vast falling-away from churchgoing there at the moment. The point I was trying to make is that it has NOTHING to do with whether your church is conservative or not. Europeans are simply going off the idea of churchgoing: there is NO conservative triumphalist meta-narrative point to be made here. Can you understand that, for once? There is more to understanding the world than watching Fox News avidly!

Secularism is definitely advancing in Europe, and it is being abetted by traitorous liberal “Christians.” A good, recent example is Giles Fraser pushing for the requirement of churches to hire homosexuals in non-clerical positions (e.g., youth leaders, etc.) even though this would severely compromise the orthodoxy of the parish. The Roman Catholic Church has not been immune to the scourge of liberalization,  especially in countries where it has suffered the highest declines such as Germany and France. But I would not count the Catholic Church out in Europe. Pope Benedict is working to weed it out and we are seeing things turn around in Spain and other countries.

You rather make my point: To the degree that a church liberalizes, the church proportionally declines. Where there has been radical liberalization, there has been radical decline. You are simply unwilling to see this which is before your eyes. And it is not just a European phenomenon. The United Church of Canada, the United Church of Christ, the Episcopal denomination, all point to the iron-clad law: liberalization equals denominational death.

There was a recent survey of MSD clergy with regards to homosexuality and abortion. One can take this data and plot it to the NCC data on denominational decline. What one sees is a statistically significant, high correlation between the two. You have not provided a single counterexample. Yet, you want to proceed on this disastrous course. It certainly calls to question one’s loyalty to the church if one chooses a liberal secular agenda over the integrity of the church.

Robroy: no, you are wrong. The RC Church in Spain is currently experiencing an enormous decline (I’ve posted up press reports on my site), and many Spaniards attribute this, at least in part, to the hierarchy’s disastrous stand against the marriage equality law, which they vociferously and intemperately opposed, despite three quarters of Spaniards being in favour of it. Most people can see that, in a democracy, for an organisation to expect to impose its will on a society where the majority disagrees with it is an abuse of power.

You also cite “Giles Fraser pushing for the requirement of churches to hire homosexuals in non-clerical positions (e.g., youth leaders, etc.) even though this would severely compromise the orthodoxy of the parish.” No, you are wrong again. The law of the realm (and indeed of the whole EU) is that an organisation may not discriminate in employment on the basis of sexual orientation (and quite right, too, surely?), with certain very narrow exceptions. There is no reason at all why the Church should be able to (or indeed consider it moral to) refuse to employ, for example, a gay English teacher in a church school. Is your view of the faith so brittle that you really believe “orthodoxy” would be compromised in some bizarre way? You would be better to interrogate prospective candindates to see if they hold any Christological or Trinitarian errors before employing, say, biology teachers, on that basis - I don’t think many would pass, and nor would anyone in the UK think that a reasonable or desirable situation.

Remember, Robroy, the American Religious Right style of rhetoric and triumphalist meta-narratice you evince in you comments on this and other sites is not at all the way Europeans look at things nowadays. Europe is changing very fast, and conservative America is not well-attuned to how it is changing: witness George Bush’s late government’s catastrophic relationship with European public opinion. Your meta-narrative is inadequate: the conservative denominations in Europe are haemorraging as fast (or even faster) as the more liberal ones, but you seem completely blinded to that possibility by your belief in the invincibility of American religious conservatism. It sounds a horrid kind of religion to me, I must say.

There is no reason at all why the Church should be able to (or indeed consider it moral to) refuse to employ, for example, a gay English teacher in a church school. Is your view of the faith so brittle that you really believe “orthodoxy” would be compromised in some bizarre way?

No reason in your extremely small minded, extremely liberal world view. But 99+% of the world’s Christians disagree and would strongly object to a homosexual teacher in a Christian school. I find it hard to believe or extremely sad that you don’t understand this.

Robroy: these are state-funded schools. If they take the state’s money (i.e, the gay tax-payer is paying for them!), they shouldn’t have the right to discriminate.

And I was thinking, too, that perhaps the US definition of “conservative” in a Christian context is quite different from over here. For example, the countries which you would say are most “liberal” in Europe (and indeed, probably in the world) on the issues of equality for women and gay people - The Netherlands, Belgium, Luxemburg, Norway, Sweden, Denmark, also the United Kingdom and Spain - these countries all preserve the most conservative system of goverment of all: they are all monarchies. Indeed, as a believing monarchist myself, I would argue that one cannot call oneself a conservative Christian and be a republican (a very unbiblical view contrary to the whole tradition of Christendom…).

So you see, what passes for religious conservatism in one place (irrational hatred of homosexuals and a bizarre desire to bring abortion into every argument) might, viewed from another angle, be the voice of extreme anti-tradition (coming from a nation of people who espouse the principle of revolution against the Lord’s Anointed; who have been the principal destroyers of the the ancient Christian culture of aristocracy; and who generally seem to be very happy to embrace serial monogamy as long as it’s heterosexual). It all depends on your perspective: the American Religious Right don’t have a monopoly on what it really means to be a conservative Christian, which is why I find your taunting of my “extremely liberal world-view” rather bizarre. I would hazard that I hold much a more socially conservative world view than yours, actually: I just don’t subscribe to an irrational fear of homosexuals, and nor was it ever traditional amongst cultured Christian Europeans.

And also, Robroy, I did spend years myself as “a homosexual teacher in Christian schools” and was generally regarded as a great success at it: it is incredibly insulting for you to suggest that one couldn’t have been merely on account of one’s sexuality!

Fr. Mark, traditional Christians pay taxes also.  Are their views to be ignored in their own “faith schools,” while the views of gay taxpayers must be observed?

And seriously, your last paragraph of #15 presents a bizarre and twisted view of American Anglican conservatives, your target audience on this blog.  Christianity is to be identified with a “cultured European aristocracy?”  Whatever, sir, do you think of African Christians? One is afraid to hear the answer.

Katherine: I was just trying to point out, and, evidently, irony gets lost as it tries to cross the Atlantic, that “conservative Christian” is not a cut-and-dried term and that the world, conservatism and Christianity are a lot wider than the ferociously anti-gay lobby in America make out. But I know there’s no point in trying to convince them, so I’ll go back to my glass of decent claret in the library now.

...and , Katherine, “traditional Christian” taxpayers may in fact also be gay, you know!

Do you repent of the evil modern teaching of republicanism and all its works and blandishments, I wonder…?

#20, dry British (?) humor or not, that is simply bizarre.

#18, it is certainly true that categories are not the same in the Americas and in the UK or on the Continent.

“Traditional Christianity” on all continents has always held that same-sex erotic activity is sinful, among its many other teachings, moral and theological.  I do not fear, irrationally or otherwise, those who experience same-sex attraction, nor do I hate them.

Of course faith based schools should be allowed to discriminate. If Richard Dawkins wanted to teach at my child’s school, I would certainly object. I would certainly object if Mark wanted to teach at my child’s school.

Lots of ad hominems. Don’t know why, but I will respond to them:

I, like Katherine, reject the tired, hackneyed slurs such as “hateful”, “irrational” and, “homophobic” thrown at people who oppose any part of the homosexual agenda. A big yawn. Ferociously, anti-gay? Hardly. Ferociously anti-heresy? Yes.

And no, I do not accept serial monogamy. I see the bishop of Northern California, who has been divorced twice and married thrice, as big a scandal as Gene Robinson.

And Mark is “conservative”? Hilarious.

... but you don’t spend your time popping up on every website going to ferociously denounce the “heresy” of remarriage after divorce, I notice, Robroy… Funny how it’s only us gays who get ferociously denounced by some people, isn’t it? Would you prevent remarried divorcees from teaching in church schools? Pull the other one - there is no logic in that line of argument. You would have almost no teachers at all if you insisted they all agree with your view of orthodoxy on every point of doctrine, and the ones you had would not necessarily be any good at teaching!

It shows that what we hear is merely prejudice against one particular minority, and is nothing to do with an even-handed high regard for anything approaching Christian doctrine. If you want what’s best for your kids, you want them to have the best teachers (Dawkins of course is a brilliant teacher). I’m worried by this Neanderthal retrogression into the world of witch-hunting which some “conservatives” would evidently countenance without compunction.

There is no logic in someone’s line of argument. I don’t know of any divorcé who are advocating the divorce or adultery and asking the church to bless them. I trust that the will not be proselytizing. And what did Jesus say about divorce? “Moses permitted you to divorce your wives because your hearts were hard. But it was not this way from the beginning.” Well, our hearts are still hard. But I would not have any divorced clergy. “If anyone does not know how to manage his own family, how can he take care of God’s church?”

My children are being taught by faithful Christians that build up rather than tear down the church.