| U.S. News

The Evangelical Lutheran Church in America abandons orthodox Christian faith and practice by a 'majority vote.'

CHESAPEAKE, Va. (Catholic Online) – The media is filled with reports concerning the slide of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ECLA) into heresy. Yes, that is exactly what occurred when the leadership of that community “voted” to abandon Christian orthodoxy. The Associated Press in an article entitled “Lutherans’ gay clergy vote hints at major shift”, led with these loaded words “In breaking down barriers restricting gays and lesbians from the pulpit, the nation's largest Lutheran denomination has laid down a new marker…. The ELCA — the nation's seventh-largest Christian church — reached its conclusion after eight years of study and deliberation. That culminated Friday when the church's national assembly in Minneapolis struck down a policy that required any gay and lesbian clergy to remain celibate.”

What really happened is that representatives of the ECLA succumbed to heresy. Oh, I can hear it now, “how dare he say such a thing?” Because… it is true, and there is nothing compassionate about failing to help fellow Christians to reject error. Christians abandoning the clear teaching of the Sacred Scriptures and the unbroken Christian Tradition is not a new phenomenon in the 2000 year history of the Christian Church. What is new is the massive support that such a sad turn of events receives from this kind of media report. There is a “fifth column” at work, determined to present the matter as a battle between orthodox Christians (who are disparaged with labels such as “right” or “conservative” or “fundamentalist”…) and those who this kind of media report favors, the promoters of heresy and advocates of a new paganism.

All one has to do is look to the first few centuries of the Christian Church to see that this is not new. The same issues and struggles existed very early on. Irenaeus, the Bishop of Lyon, France, was born in Asia Minor in the year 125. His efforts are one example of the many early Church Fathers who contended for the truth and pulled no punches. His seminal work was entitled “Against Heresies” precisely because so much of his work was spent exposing and opposing false teaching in order to protect the Christians of that day from their poison. His treatise is a refutation of the teachings of certain “Christian” Gnostics whose followers fell for similar heresies as those which were voted upon by the ELCA this past week. Irenaeus’ goal was stated in the Fifth Book of the treatise, to “…reclaim the wanderers and convert them to the Church of God” and to “confirm at the same time the minds of the neophytes” (Preface, Book V).This is still the truly proper response of the Church in our age. Irenaeus loved the heretical Christians enough to speak the truth precisely to try and lead them back to the faith. We must follow his example.

The AP report continued “…The ELCA — the nation's seventh-largest Christian church — reached its conclusion after eight years of study and deliberation. That culminated Friday when the church's national assembly in Minneapolis struck down a policy that required any gay and lesbian clergy to remain celibate.” The length of time it took for this group to reject Christian orthodoxy and embrace this heresy has no bearing upon the matter. Truth is not subject to change based upon a vote! All “orthodox” Christians (Catholic, Orthodox, Evangelical or Protestant) need to see this sad vote in the ELCA in the light of two thousand years of Christian history. The struggle we are in today still involves a clash of worldviews, Christian and pagan. The positions being espoused by the “majority” who voted this way are heretical. The lifestyles being affirmed as "progressive" are anything but. They are an example of the regressive effort to turn the clock back to pre-Christian paganism.

It was the Christian vision of faithful, monogamous marriage, family, authentic human freedom, the dignity of every human person and the existence of objective truth from which we derive a common morality which has guided true social progress. In fact, it was these very insights which have helped to free people from the bondage of disordered appetites and unshackle them from the tyrannies - personal and social - rooted in sin and the structures which it fosters. It has been the Christian vision of the human person, the family, the just society and the true common good that has helped to overcome the slaveries which arose from flawed pagan ideologies and superstitions. From its birth, the Christian Church has been sent into cultures and societies filled with people who thought they were "progressive", when they were anything but. Many of those cultures, like the contemporary western culture, practiced primitive forms of abortion and even "exposure", a practice of leaving unwanted children on rocks to be eaten by birds of prey or picked up by slave traders.

Ancient Christian manuscripts such as the Didache (the Teaching of the Twelve), the ...