IS FREEDOM POSSIBLE?
Ever since the Garden of Eden, we humans have tried to shift the blame to Eve, to the serpent, and nowadays to our parents. Should we expect anything different when activist homosexuals are challenged to acknowledge the Bible's teaching that this life-style precludes one from inheriting the Kingdom of God (I Cor.6:9)? Even the former presiding Bishop of the ELCA was quoted in The Lutheran (May 1997), defending this sin in front of "predominantly heterosexual audiences," with, 'Did you choose to be heterosexual? Could you change?'"
The answer is "Yes," as every bi-sexual aberration, if nowhere else, testifies. Homosexual and heterosexual behavior can be changed. Widely suppressed in the public media and studiously ignored in some church circles, is the evidence that homosexual behavior can be renounced and forsaken. Despite half-informed media pronouncements to the contrary, no respectable scientific research establishes that, "My genes made me do it." Slavery to this behavior-pattern is not God-inflicted by some genetic inheritance. Of course we must choose for freedom. Christians want to share that good news. "The truth shall make you free." In more than 36 states, support groups which have "come out" from homosexual behavior, are within phone's reach to bestow a helping hand. Dozens of books and scientific research articles confirm the report of the sexologists, Masters and Johnson, that a 77% successful cure rate is found among those who seriously want to be treated and freed from this burden. At least two nation-wide ministries by liberated homosexuals are ready to help:
Homosexuals Anonymous Fellowship Services, Box 7881, Reading, PA 19603, (610) 376-1146; and Exodus International, Box 77652. Seattle, WA 98177, (206) 784-7799. A list of helpful books can be secured by writing the editorial office of FOCL-POINT. For all who want dependable information and further guidance, visit the web site, "Another Way Out," at http:// www.anotherway.com/ or at http:// www.stonewallrevisited.com/ In the earnest desire to be of help, FOCL-POINT is reprinting the following article from the Wall Street Journal, by five mental health therapists.Don’t Forsake Homosexuals Who Want Help
By Charles Socarides (Clinical Professor of Psychiatry as Albert Einstein College of Medicine), Benjamin Kaufmin Clinical Professor of Psychiatry at the University of California, Davis), Joseph Nicholosi (Director of Clinic, Encino, CA), Jeffrey Satinover (Westport, Connecticut psychiatrist), and Richard Fitzgibbons (Director of Clinic, West Conshohocken, PA).
Suppose that a young man, seeking help for a psychological condition that was associated with serious health risks and made him desperately unhappy were to be told by the professional he consulted that no treatment is available, that his condition is permanent and genetically based and that he must learn to live with it. Perhaps this young man, unwilling to give up hope, sought out other specialists only to receive the same message: “Nothing can be done for you. Accept your condition.”
How would this man and his family feel when they discovered years later that numerous therapeutic approaches have been available for his specific problem for more than sixty years? What would be his reaction when informed that, although none of these approaches guaranteed results and most required a long period of treatment, a patient who was willing to follow a proven treatment regime had a good chance of being free from the condition? How would this man feel if he discovered that the reason he was not informed that treatment for his condition was available was that certain groups, for political reasons, pressuring professionals to deny that treatment was available?
Every day men are seeking help because they are experiencing an unwanted sexual attraction to other men, and are told that their condition is untreatable. It is not surprising that many of these young men fall into depression or despair when they are informed that a normal life with a wife and children is never to be theirs.
This despair can lead to reckless and life-threatening actions. Many young men with homosexual inclinations, feeling their loves are of little value, are choosing to engage in unprotected sex with strangers. Epidemiologists are well aware that the number of new HIV infections among young men involved in homosexual activity is rising at an alarming rate; within this population, the “safer sex” message is falling on deaf ears. One recent study revealed that 38% of homosexual adolescents had engaged in unprotected sex in the previous six months.
Young men and the parents of at-risk males have a right to know that prevention and effective treatment are available. They have a right to expect that every professional they consult will inform them of all their therapeutic options and allow them to make their own choices based upon the best clinical evidence. A variety of clinical studies have shown that between 25% and 50% of those seeking treatment experienced significant improvement. If a therapist feels for whatever reason that he cannot treat someone forthis condition, he has an obligation to refer the patient to someone who will.
Also, these young men and their parents have the right to know that, contrary to media propaganda, there is no proven biological basis for homosexuality. A November 1995 article in Scientific American pointed out that the muchpublicized brain research by Simon Le Vay has never been replicated and that Dean Hamer's gene study has been contradicted by another study.
The truth is that the clinical experience of many therapists who work with men struggling with same-sex attractions and behaviors indicates thatthere are many causes and various manifestations of homosexuality. No single category describes them all, but the disorder is characterized by a constellation of symptoms, including excessive clinging to the mother during early childhood, a sense that one's masculinity is defective, and powerful feelings of guilt, shame and inferiority beginning in adolescence.
If the emotional desire for another man is primarily a symptom of the failure to develop a strong masculine identity, then a man's unconscious desire to assume the manhood of another male may be more important than the sexual act. The goal of therapy in such cases is to help the client understand the various causes of his feelings and to strengthen his masculine identity. It has been our clinical experience that as these men become more comfortable and confident with their manhood, same-sex attractions decrease significantly. Eventually many find the freedom they are seeking and are able to have normal relationships with women.
Help is available for men struggling with unwanted homosexual desires. The National Association for Research and Treatment of Homosexuality offers information for those interested in understanding the various therapeutic approaches to treatment. In addition, a number of self-help groups have sprung up to offer support to those who suffer from this problem.
As we grieve for all those lives so abruptly ended by AIDS, we would do well to reflect that many ofthe young men who have died of AIDS have sought treatment for their homosexuality and were denied knowledge and hope. Many of them would be alive today if they had only been told where to find the help they sought.*Reprinted with permission of The Wall Street Journal, (Jan.9,1997), copyright 1997, Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All rights reserved.
At the 1982 convention of the American Lutheran Church in San Diego, "interim eucharistic agreement" (pulpit & altar fellowship) with the Episcopal Church was adopted. Opposing its passage, a number of pastors read excerpts from leading Episcopal Church figures which denied the historic teachings of Christianity. In response, President Dr David Preus opined that we may not judge another church by the eccentric behavior of its individual members-since we also partake of the same burden. We must judge a church only by its official statements offaith and practice.
This would remain true also when the other church has no obligatory confession of faith. Such is the case with the United Church of Christ, with which the ELCA established "full communion" at its recent Assembly. Because there is no church-wide obligation to confessional faithfulness in that denomination, the ELCA is free to select for fellowship and mutual work those who agree with our Lutheran teachings. It does not have to accept responsibility for holding hands with those who might be unfaithful to their own profession-since, admittedly they do not even so bind themselves ..After the Concordat
by Dr. George MeudekingAccountable Church Structures
Dr. Preus' comment also fits when another church with which "full communion" is proposed has a structure of mandatory discipline that gives the necessary organizational empowerment so that no member can violate the code without facing censure. Such a church presumably can be trusted to maintain its publicly affirmed confessions and behavioral patterns.
The Episcopal Church, with its operational supervisory structure enshrined in its historic succession of bishops has that kind of accountability, at least in theory. Its expectation of church-wide loyalty to its declared teachings, is the prime attraction for the "evangelical catholics" in the ELCA who pushed zealously for the Concordat. They did so in the anticipation that the historic episcopate has power enough to throw out the rascals who don't conform. They hoped this forced conformity of word and deed would then by osmosis infect our own bishops and give them the requisite stiffened backbone and a sense of accountability for the doings of their office over against any maverick congregations and clergy.It seems clear that the Episcopal Church has available neither of these two sources of strength for faithfulness, however. First, it does not recognize its own confessional statements as binding. This we may conclude from the heresy trial of Bishop Richter in 1996, where the Ecclesial Court of the Episcopal Church precisely said, "We are not a confessional church."
As in Richter's case, despite its aura of authority derived from the "historic episcopate," it also seems not to have the power to enforce responsible behavior and voice. Thus Bishop John Shelby Spong of the Newark, NJ Episcopal Diocese ordains self-acknowledged homosexuals, (as do some 40 other dioceses), conducts same-sex marriage ceremonies, and recently has suggested that St. Paul's "thorn in the flesh" was nothing less than his self-hatred as a homosexual. Spong has trashed every major Christian doctrine from the resurrection to Jesus' divinity itself, but remains "a bishop for life," unrebuked in his derogations of the faith of the Church. The "historic episcopate" does not appear virile enough to effect or to affect the most critical clerical behaviors. The ELCA Assembly turn-down of the Concordat was its answer to the vain hope that "function follows structure."Is It Anti-institutionalism?
When the Concordat was turned down, a chief ELCA Dialogue member fulminated. He laid the result to the "anti-institutionalism" of Midwestern ELCA members. That may have been more true than he realized. Note the paucity of debates on doctrine that preceded the approval of the agreements with the Reformed churches and with the Roman Catholic Church. Some sociological explanation must be in order, because faithful and accountable loyalty to doctrine is apparently now a matter of minimal concern in our ELCA.
When the resolution to affirm that the condemnations hurled by the Council of Trent against the Lutherans and the Lutheran divines against the Romanists, no longer apply, the Assembly entertained a single speaker from the floor. That delegate favored the resolution. Immediately the question was called and debate terminated. That, after 480 years of mutually recognized and deplored doctrinal disagreements between the two denominations!! The blood of the Catholic and the Protestant martyrs was spilled in vain as far as this Assembly was concerned.
While Midwest Lutherans appear less than zealous for true doctrine, they do understand one thing clearly. They know who gets to push, and who gets pushed. Erstwhile immigrants from Scandinavia have not forgotten the elitist and arrogant impositions of a state church upon their peasant pieties (Such as the 14 year imprisonment of an impudent lay-preacher, Hans Nielsen Hauge, who gathered a flock and communed them without the imprimatur of the hierarchy).
I always admired the astuteness of the general president of the American Lutheran Church. He never harangued the congregations to "send your benevolences to Minneapolis." His exhortation was, "Send your benevolences through Minneapolis." He knew the mind of his people-they wanted the freedom to give, not the compulsion. Germanic authoritarianism and 20th century top-down mega-company power charts do not impress these independent-minded farmers, tradition-honoring families and small-time business operators. Not to wonder then that political and ecclesial democracies find a sympathetic response in midwestern Lutheranism, and generate a hearty suspicion of all displays of institutionalized unearned power.Was Doctrine Also Involved?
There was a basic doctrinal conflict in the Concordat-the priesthood of all believers. This doctrine affirms that God deals directly with each person. He does not restrict his dealings with us to specific channels of church officialdom, so that unless such functionaries are present, nobody can play church. It is the true Word presented and the sacraments rightly administered that determine where the church is. Augsburg Confession, Article VII). That official Lutheran doctrine is in full conflict with the Episcopal demand that "full communion" will never actually have happened via the Concordat until the ELCA finally embraces the doctrine that the church is carried on and identified through history by the office of bishop, and not by the purely taught Word. While it was "anti-institutionalism" in the sociological sense that cast the deciding vote against the Concordat, it was the theological issue that should have determined the result.Will Doctrinal Integrity Prevail?
The ELCA should be alarmed also at the huge majority by which the delegates approved the resolutions for full communion with the Reformed churches. They simply took the word of a committee that doctrinal differences between the Reformed and Lutheran were no longer of consequence.
Will the ELCA use the interim before the next ever-popular wave of ecumenicity swamps us, to ask serious questions of itself? Are we now at the place where we can no longer find any Lutheran teachings that are distinctive of our faith? If so, does the Lutheran Church still have a reason for existing? Does or does it not still treasure certain biblical truths because it believes those truths do make an eternal difference to those who believe or disbelieve them?
If we have passed the point of no return where the "I believes" no longer control the life of the ELCA, then we can anticipate our hastening demise. We can only pray that the gracious Lord will once again step in with prophets and apostles to call us back to his Word Alone. If He does, there will still be Lutherans, for that church exists because it discovered its foundation in the Scriptures.
The ELCA Assembly-A Pastoral Response
by Pastor John Bradosky*This was the tenth anniversary celebration of the ELCA. While it's great to know we made it to ten years, there are many ways in which our church's childlike behavior still shows. Our commitment must be towards growing and maturing as faithful disciples of Jesus Christ.
If we are still uncertain about who we are, then let's commit the time and energy necessary to discover the unique gifts we bring as an integral part of the Body of Christ.
The Assembly was a roller-coaster event of ups and downs, highs and lows. It had much to be thankful for and much about it with which we need to be concerned. There is both cause for celebration and tears.
Many times I wanted to shout, "Lord why does it have to be this way in your Church? Shouldn't your Church be exempt from the struggles we face in the world?" The only answer I received to my prayer was this insight: it would be exempt were it not for the fact that Jesus established His Church in this world. I found both consolation and direction from Ephesians 6: 10-20.
St Paul's words describe the battlefield armor of God's people. He is clear that we are in a battle and that preparation is necessary to survive and thrive. We often ask Jesus to take away the battle and fail to realize that only in struggling with the shadows do we see the light; only by opposing the darkness of evil does our attention remain steadfast on the light of Christ's presence.
Paul reminds us that Jesus designed armor that is perfectly suited for each of us, designed to protect us from harm and keep us ready to do battle.
Our call is to put on the armor and take an active role in standing against the devil's schemes. We must not underestimate the enemy. This is not a mere struggle between people with differing opinions, but a struggle against "rulers, authorities and powers of this dark world. It is a struggle against the spiritual forces of evil in heavenly realms." Even the Church of Jesus Christ Is not exempt from the devil's influence. Since evil is pervasive and persistent we must be ready to do battle and put on the whole armor of God.No Theology by Compromise
We cannot afford to do theology and establish the direction for this Church's ministry by COMPROMISE. Compromises rarely satisfy both sides in equal measure. I found this to be true in the Assembly's ecumenical discussions, as well as in discussing the proposed Sacramental Practices statement. Trying to find the lowest common denominator in order to speak of unity, neither strengthens our witness in the world nor produces internal strength of faith, nor clarity of purpose. To judge what "should be," primarily on the basis of what is currently done around the churches, is an abandonment of norms based on Biblical and Confessional Theology.
Of course, it is a way to em brace the methodology of our new ecumenical partner, The United Church of Christ; and if our world view no longer includes the presence of evil in this world, affecting even the Church of Jesus, this methodology will not offer a problem.
Parameters based on Scriptures and Confessions are necessary and helpful, however, in a world where evil exists and exerts its influence on Christ's Church. "Therefore, put on the whole armor of God, so when the day of evil
The ELCA Assembly comes you will be able to stand your ground. You mustdo everything you can to stand!"
Obedience to Christ and faithfulness in following Him as disciples is a far more important resource in strengthening our witness in this world and increasing our faith and commitment to Christ's purpose for our lives than any number of churchly alliances of one kind or the other.A Diverse Church
At a recent meeting of our conference, Pacifica Synod bishop Bob Miller summed up one of his Insights from the Assembly by saying, "I learned that we are a very diverse Church." He is correct.
But I must confess great sadness, when that's the extent of what can be said. I found myself wondering often-have we attempted relevancy by simply following the course set by our society with its political ideology of Tolerance, Acceptance and Openness? Is there such diversity in this Church that there is little or nothing upon which we can take a stand together?
If the Word of God seems too limiting compared to these political values, are we quite willing to avoid controversies, even to compromise the very foundation of our Confessional theology, "Word Alone?" One could come to the conclusion that our interest in pursuing an identity as an ecumenical Church is founded more on those political ideals than on the Biblical understanding of the nature of the Church with its members as the Body of Christ (cf. I Cor. 12: 14-27).
I was saddened by the Assembly's unwillingness to say that our ELCA's previously adopted social statements concerning abortion should still be the normative guidelines for the Board of Pensions when it provides hospitalization coverage for members of its program. Are we so "tolerant" that we set up statements which we ourselves are not then willing to abide by? Who then, will listen to such a Church? How can we expect others to take what we profess to believe more seriously than we ourselves do?
While the sexuality document was not on the agenda, at least one issue came before us referring to that subject. This Assembly asked the Division for Ministry and the Division for Church and Society to consider a memorial from two Synods to change the ELCA policy which refuses the the ordination, consecration or commissioning of non-celibate gay and lesbian individuals in the ELCA. We do have precise procedures for the development of social statements or teaching statements of the Church. Instead, two divisions ofthe Church were handed the responsibility for bringing back a recommendation to the next Assembly that could change this policy, and therefore undermine the process for appropriately addressing this issue. It is my belief that the leadership of both the5e divisions are advocates for changing the ELCA policy. It will be interesting to see what these two groups will put before the next Assembly as recommendations.
The support for legislation that would make it illegal for employers to discriminate against gay and lesbian persons on the basis of "sexual orientation" sailed through without significant discussion. Many comments from the floor added a desire to expand our understanding of sexual orientation to include bisexual and transsexual persons. How can a Church which gives its hasty comprehensive support to such legislation be expected to do anything but change its future policy regarding the ordination and consecration of noncelibate gays and lesbians? (And will such inclusion of bisexual individuals involved in "triangular" relationships compel the church to a complete redefining of what we mean by monogamous relationship also?)More than Diversity
Can we still be the Church of Jesus Christ if we are ready to embrace any and all versions of faith that any group claims to be "truth?" If we are, we will have stepped over the line and embraced "cheap grace." Then we are simply dishonest aboutthe faith we claim holds us together. And worse still, we are guilty of justifying the sin apart from the justification of the sinner. For then we are reducing faith in Jesus to be nothing more than a belief in a "concept" of a loving, forgiving God who spreads his love and forgiveness over all who profess this idea.
I believe Bonhoeffer has a prophetic word we need to consider in the face of the actions of the Assembly.
He said, "We Lutherans have gathered like eagles around the carcass of cheap grace and there we have drunk of the poison which has killed the life offollowing Christ. It is true, of course, that we have paid the doctrine of cheap grace divine honors unparalleled in Christendom. In fact we have exalted that doctrine to the position of God himself. Everywhere Luther's formula has been repeated, but its truth perverted into self-deception. 'So long as our Church holds the correct doctrine of justification, there is no doubt whatever that she is a justified Church!' So they said, thinking that we must vindicate our Lutheran heritage by making grace available on the cheapest and easiest terms ....
"But do we also realize that this cheap grace has turned back upon us like a boomerang? The price we are having to pay today in the shape of the collapse ofthe organized Church is only the inevitable consequence of our policy of making grace available to all at too low a cost. " (The Cost of Discipleship, p.53, 54.)
It is not as if we are without the resources to make the appropriate course corrections. After all, we have the Scriptures and the Confessions. I pray for a new vision for our Church that sees the value in obedience to Christ and is willing to develop new ways to nurture and renew, a commitment to the process of Christian discipleship. This is what the world needs most and the only way for us to grow as Lutherans, stronger and become more stable internally.* Ecclesiastical evaluations and factual rehearsals have been available from the public press. We thought our readers would appreciate this adapted version of a pastorally oriented response which delegate Pastor John Bradosky submitted to his Grace Lutheran congregation in Huntington Beach, CA. Grace Church is the largest ELCA church on the West Coast. Bradowsky is also Adjunct Professor at Lutheran Bible Institute in Irvine, CA.
Reader Responses
Dear Editor,
Previous to the ELCA's national Assembly, Christ's words in John 17:21 were used all overthe church to leverage Lutherans to accept the Concordat with the Episcopal Church. "Be one," says our Lord to his followers, "so that the world may believe." To oppose the Concordat, we are still being told, is to oppose Christ. Opposition prevents unbelievers from coming to faith in Christ. When Christ said "Be one," the unity He sought, we are further told, was visible, corporate, institutional, organizational, administrative and governmental church unity.
Had the Concordat been passed in August new signs would have gone up on our buildings, "Episcopalians and Lutherans Worship Here In Full Communion." We were assured that seeing the signs, people would beat the doors down to get in, out of relief over the end of denominational competition! All this makes John 17:21 to be about BIG BUSINESS, corporate merger and getting more people to church.
But this is to misread that Scripture. In the September 16, 1983 issue of the old Lutheran Standard, the esteemed Lutheran New Testament scholar, Roy A. Harrisville, wrote that "the seventeenth chapter of John's Gospel does NOT show Jesus getting down on his knees to pray for organizational merger."
If that is not the unity he wanted, then what was? In John 13:34-35 we have the answer. It is a UNITY IN LOVE! This passage parallels the verse, John 17 :21. Both have the command-design goal structure. John 17 says: Be one (command), as Jesus and the Father are (design), so that the world may know the Father sent Jesus (goal). John 13 says: Love each other (command), as Jesus loved us (design), so that people will know you are Jesus' disciples (goal).
Furthermore John 14: 31 and 15: 9 also show that love is what makes Jesus and the Father one-not common orders of pastoral and episcopal ministry as in the Concordat! To force John 17: 21 into that straitjacket would be to "tamper with God's word" (2 Corinthians 4: 2)! We should rather see in John's First Letter (4: 11) the precise restatement of John 17:21, "Beloved, if God so loved us, we ought also to love one another." "Hence, the unity of believers is one of love (not organizational structures or doctrine, for instance)" (Robert Kysar, John, Augsburg Commentary on the New Testament, 1986).
This love unites the Church because it comes from listening to Christ's words. According to John 10:16 this listening makes Christians who are "other sheep" into "one flock" with "one shepherd." Luther knew this and accordingly argued that "the church is a high, deep, hidden thing which one may neither perceive nor see, but must grasp only by faith, through baptism, sacrament, and word." (Luther Works, 41: 211) So don't be fooled by the ELCA's promotion of the Concordat through such manhandling of the Word.
As Luther did, argue instead against "all those who make the Christian unity ... physical and external..[like] true Jews. Forthey, too, waitfortheirmessiah to establish an external kingdom at a particular external place, namely, Jerusalem. Thus they drop the only faith that makes Christ's kingdom spiritual and internal" (Luther Works, 39: 67).Pastor Ronald T Marshall
First Lutheran Church of West SeattleDear Editor,
Enclosed is a donation; please use it as you need it. I don't understand that the Church plans to go ahead with the Concordat. We all know that big government has not been productive, so why do we think big church will produce in fact after several mergers, the mission program has suffered. Our prayers are with you; continue!Pastor Fred Wolff
Lincoln, NEDear Friends,
It is again time to give you an accounting for the way your gifts were used this past year and to solicit your continued encouragement and support through your prayers and your gifts. Did your support to FOCL this year make a DIFFERENCE? We are certain it did. Here is why.
'!be quarterly issues of our news letter FOCL Point we sent you were packed with meaningful articles on Christian faith, life and practice. '!bey had pertinent news of theological developments and practical happenings within our church that demand attention, cause concern and call for action. We increased FOCL-Point from six pages to eight to bring more information to you each time. '!be response has been gratifying. Circulation almost doubled. Many eagerly look forward to reading the next issue. As one woman in California repeatedly says, "I can't wait to get the next FOCL Point. It's so interesting and challenging!"
During the year, FOCL provided you with many thoroughly researched articles, especially on the ecumenical resolutions our ELCA Assembly acted on this summer. One article was by our FOCL president, Dr, Herbert Schaefer, and a second by an official member of the Lutheran-Episcopal Dialogue, Dr. Paul Berge. '!be authors gave you a fuller picture of what the ELCA was being asked to vote on and the implications of a "yes" vote for our church's theology and practice in the future. '!bey raised the grave prospects awaiting us if we so easily surrender the teachings of our church about the Word of God and the Lutheran Confessions.
A copy of FOCL Point on the ecumenical resolutions was sent to the national Assembly delegates. We think that perhaps FOCL had a part in defeating the vote for full communion with the Episcopal Church. ('!be vote failed to reach the required two thirds majority by six votes.)
This matter will come back to the 1999 Assembly. Until then, FOCL will provide well researched articles from outstanding church leaders, theologians and pastors presenting alternatives that are scripturally sound, confessionally accurate and practically workable. FOCL is for church unity; but it will not support a falseunity resting on human organizations and programs. FOCL wants the world to know that unity in God's love rests on the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.
In 1997 FOCL initiated two scholarships to help congregation pastors do further studies in areas related to Scripture and the Lutheran Confessions. We can think of no greater way to bring the church back to the center--that is, back to the centrality of Christ and His Word and faithfulness to our Lutheran Confessions--than by equipping those who preach and teach his Word as ministers of Christ's church.
So we again ask for your support of our endeavors. By your generous gifts and your ever-reminding prayers you join us in our struggle "to encourage biblical, evangelical and confessional faithfulness to our Christian heritage." We rely entirely on your gifts since we pay no salaries, charge no dues and have no other source of revenue.