Lutheran Blues: ELCA Has Biggest Split in American Church History

ELCA Has Biggest Split in American Church History
by Rev. Kevin Vogtshttp://steadfastlutherans.org/?p=31542
July 12th, 2013

Since shortly after its formation in 1988 the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America has been fixated on deviant sexual behavior, culminating in the endorsement of homosexual pastors in 2009, homosexual "marriage" in 2011, and the election last month of their first homosexual bishop. Dr. James Nestingen, a highly respected scholar and retired ELCA seminary professor, recently concluded that promoting acceptance of deviant sexual behavior has actually replaced the Gospel of Jesus Christ as the primary mission and message of the ELCA.

Those within the ELCA demanding these radical changes asserted it is necessary for the ELCA's very survival. Supposedly, they simply must move into the 21st century on these issues, or otherwise they will be so out-of-step with modern society that it would mean the demise of their denomination. By the way, this is the same deceptive reasoning behind similar disturbing changes recently in the Boy Scouts of America.

However, the ELCA has now released some startling statistics that show the exact opposite has actually happened:

When the ELCA was formed in 1988 they had 5.2 million members, but they are now down to only 4 million members–a staggering loss of over 1.2 million members, or 23% of their membership. They have also lost 1,500, or 13%, of their congregations, from approximately 11,000 to 9,500. As they "celebrate" this year the 25th anniversary of the ELCA, the fact is that during that time they have lost more members and congregations than make up many entire denominations.

Of these losses, over 500,000 members and 1,000 congregations have left the ELCA in just the last four years, triggered by their endorsement of homosexuality beginning in 2009. This is actually the biggest denominational split in American church history, and is directly attributable to that decision.

Another measure of the ELCA's decline is that in 1988, 2.1% of all Americans were members of the ELCA, but by 2011 that figure had fallen to 1.3%. The National Council of Churches reports that the ELCA has "the sharpest rate of membership decline" among all mainline Protestant denominations. Like Avis car rental which used to advertise "We're Number 2–But We Try Harder." the LCMS has historically always been the second-largest American Lutheran church body. However, at the ELCA's current rate of losing members–nearly 6% in 2010–in just a decade the LCMS will surpass the ELCA as the largest American Lutheran church body, and a few decades after that the ELCA will cease to exist.

Even among those congregations remaining in the ELCA average weekly worship attendance from 2003 to 2011 dropped 26%. The Lutheran Church–Missouri Synod has 2.3 million members and the similarly conservative Wisconsin Evangelical Lutheran Synod has 300,000 members, yet even with our smaller combined membership of 2.6 million the LCMS and WELS have more people actually sitting in the pews each Sunday than the ELCA with 4 million members.

Donations to the ELCA on the national level were $88 million in 2008 but plunged to only $40 million in 2011.

Luther Seminary, the ELCA's largest seminary, located in St. Paul, Minnesota, announced that last year they had a $6 million operating deficit on a budget of $27 million. This was due largely to a recent sharp decline in donations to the seminary, reportedlyincluding a couple that for many years had given $1 million a year to the seminary but stopped their donations after the ELCA's endorsement of homosexuality. The seminary was forced to cancel many of its programs and lay off a third of the faculty and staff.

Since the ELCA's endorsement of homosexuality, many other Lutheran church bodies around the world have severed their historic ties with the ELCA, and are instead seeking new relationships with the LCMS. This includes many of the largest and fastest-growing Lutheran church bodies in the world, such as the Lutherans in Ethiopia with over 6 million members–nearly as many as all American Lutheran church bodies combined. The center of world Lutheranism is shifting from Europe and America to Africa, Asia, and South America, and the LCMS is becoming the theological leader of these growing Lutheran church bodies. While the ELCA is becoming increasingly isolated in world Lutheranism, at our national convention this month the LCMS will enter into formal fellowship with the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Liberia, Siberian Evangelical Lutheran Church, and the Lutheran Church of Togo.

The Lord warns:

"There will be false teachers among you, who will surreptitiously introduce destructive heresies, even denying the sovereign Lord who bought them, bringing swift destruction on themselves. Many will follow their shameful, licentious ways." (2 Peter 2:1-2)

"As obedient children, do not conform to the evil desires you formerly had when you lived in ignorance. Instead, just as He who called you is holy, so be holy in all you do, for it is written: 'You shall be holy, for I am holy.'" (1 Peter 1:14-15)

"Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind." (Romans 12:2)

These passages show how misdirected and sinful it is to accommodate the church's doctrine and practice to the world's wicked ways. It is also foolish and futile.

On the one hand, the world will never be satisfied–until Christians completely renounce their faith. More importantly, the Lord will never bless such unfaithfulness to Him and His Word.

We see from the sad example of what's happened to the ELCA–the biggest split in American church history–that whatever churches and other organizations such as the Boy Scouts imagine they will gain by giving in to the world is dwarfed by what they will surely lose.

END

Presbyterians Split: Splinter churches realign mainline Protestantism

RNS is reporting the following at: http://www.religionnews.com/culture/social-issues/splinter-churches-realign-mainline-protestantism

(RNS) There's a popular saying in church-planting circles: It's easier to make babies than to raise the dead.

Lutheran bishops ordain the Rev. John Bardosky in 2011 as the new leader of the North American Lutheran Church, which broke away from the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America over the ELCA's decision to allow noncelibate gay clergy and other issues. RNS photo courtesy Carter Askren / The Metro Lutheran.

That principle applies to denominations as well, said the Rev. Paul Detterman, who helped found the Evangelical Covenant Order of Presbyterians in January.

"We thought it was easier in the long run to create something new rather than to keep on trying to modify existing forms," he said.

The "existing form," in Detterman's case, was the Presbyterian Church (USA), which remains the nation's largest Presbyterian denomination despite a decades-long plunge in membership.

The ECO may steepen that decline. Thousands of conservative Presbyterians, upset over the PC(USA)'s vote to lift its ban on partnered gay and lesbian clergy last year, are eyeing the new group. Planning for the ECO, which will not ordain sexually active gays and lesbians, preceded that vote, Detterman said.

Nonetheless, the ECO represents the third new mainline Protestant denomination since 2008 to split from a national church following elections to permit partnered gay clergy.

The Anglican Church in North America formed in late 2008, five years after the Episcopal Church consecrated an openly gay bishop in New Hampshire. In 2010, a year after the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America voted to allow partnered gay and lesbian clergy, conservatives formed the North American Lutheran Church.

Leaders of all three new denominations say the gay clergy issue was only the breaking point for conservatives, after years of dissatisfaction with overbearing bureaucracies, membership losses and liberal theology. Pessimistic about changing that course from within, some conservatives jumped ship instead.

"When orthodox and conservative Christians made homosexuality their flash-point issue, and they lost those struggles, in many ways they had no choice but to create these new structures," said Mark Tooley, president of the Institute for Religion & Democracy, a conservative Washington-based advocacy group.

The question now is whether these breakaway groups signal a seismic shift in American Protestantism, or just a few fissures in the theological terrain.

In some ways, the rifts are nothing new. American Protestants have been splintering since Roger Williams left Plymouth Colony in the 1630s, said Nancy Ammerman, a sociologist of religion at Boston University.

Yet the schisms counter a 20th-century trend in which ethnic and regional Protestant groups merged to form big-tent denominations such as the ELCA and PC(USA).

"What we may be experiencing at this point is the limit of that movement to draw a lot of diversity under one umbrella," said Ammerman, author of "Pillars of Faith: American Congregations and Their Partners."

Archbishop Robert Duncan, ACNA's leader, said the new denominations herald a burgeoning movement.

Archbishop Robert Duncan of the Anglican Church of North America prepares to be installed as archbishop in a June 24, 2009 ceremony at Christ Church in Plano, Texas. Religion News Service photo courtesy Suzanne Gill/ACNA.

"There is a Reformation going on in the Christian church, particularly in the West, and particularly in the mainline Protestant denominations," he said. Duncan's ACNA seeks to supplant the Episcopal Church as the U.S. branch of the worldwide Anglican Communion.

But some religion scholars say the new denominations are heading down a demographic dead end unless they can broaden their appeal beyond conservatives upset over pro-gay church policies.

"Public opinion about gays and lesbians and gay marriage are changing so dramatically that at some point in the future -- 10 years, let's say -- it's not going to matter very much," said Robert Wuthnow, a sociologist and director of the Center for the Study of Religion at Princeton University.


Wuthnow and other scholars say American Protestantism provides fertile ground for offshoots, with membership losses in one denomination often encouraging the outgrowth of another.

For more, see:
http://www.religionnews.com/culture/social-issues/splinter-churches-realign-mainline-protestantism

Greek Orthodox Churchman Does a Slapdown on PCUSA & the Recent Approval of "Same Sex Marriages"

A polite slapdown of the PCUSA's passage of permission of "same sex marriages"  (following TEC, UCC, and ELCA).  It comes from a Greek Orthodox representative to the PCUSA General Assembly 2010.  While offered in 2010, it applies to the recent passage in 2011.