The ELCIC Task Force's invitation to provide feedback on the Study document they have prepared is quickly receiving responses. This paper is intended to guide and initiate individual and congregational input into the first draft of a new Human Sexuality Social Statement.
Rev. Dr. K. Glen Johnson served as President of Camrose LutheranCollege/Augustana University College for 28 years. As Pastor of Ascension Lutheran Church in Calgary, Pastor Johnson, along with his Church Council have prepared their response to the Study.
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RESPONSE TO THE ELCIC STUDY ON HUMAN SEXUALITY
From Pastor K. Glen Johnson And
The Church Council of Ascension Lutheran Church.
The study is long but the response will be relatively brief.
In response to the Theological Lenses that form the basis for the study we were dismayed to see that following The Bible, Human Experience was next listed as foundational; listening to one another. While listening to one another is important, the one to whom you listen to is far more important. Human feelings and experiences do not belong in the foundation. A better list of foundations is stated below.
1. The Holy Scripture, the Word of God, is to be our only authority in matters of faith and life and we are to be guided by our Lutheran understanding of Justification and the proper distinction between the Law and the Gospel.
2. The Confessions of the Lutheran Church are important because they conform to the Word of God and most carefully articulate the faith of the Church and its implications for all of life.
3. Tradition; and by tradition we mean the faith and the teaching of the Church Catholic throughout the centuries, very important to Luther and the reformers.
4. The Ecumenical Witness. If we wish to listen to voices we must first listen to the voices of the Ecumenical Community, the Roman Catholic, the Orthodox, and the Evangelical Communities. If we do not listen to them in the study of human sexuality we declare that we ourselves are not ecumenical and would rather be led by the voices of our culture. Our congregation recently sponsored the publication of the papers from two ecumenical and international commissions, Banff and Jasper, dealing with all these issues.
5. The voices of children. A recent article in MACLEANS Magazine identified ten ways to salvation, to the saving of the earth. Among the ten they listed contraception because according to them too many babies produce too much CO2. In the study you commend contraception but make no mention of abortion, leading one to believe that you consider abortion to be equivalent to contraception.
Last year there were 12,195 abortions in Alberta alone. There were about one million abortions in North America last year, the equivalent of two such deaths every minute of the day and of the night. In those cases where they were pulled out alive and perhaps strangled, we may have heard one of their voices. But every one of these children’s voices are being heard by Almighty God as they cry out from the ground. We simply close our minds to the Abortion Holocaust and refuse to listen to and be moved by the voices that God hears, both day and night. And we say that we are studying human sexuality?
The study very much resembles the ELCA Social Statement and utilizes Timothy Wengert’s concept of the bound conscience, although there are, in stating the positions on same sex blessings, three rather than four options for bound consciences listed. The only bound conscience we are to listen to and honor is that conscience that is bound, not to human trust and unity as the ELCA study says, but to the truth and the Word of God. It appears that you simply want everyone to agree to disagree so that the blessings and marriages and ordinations in same-sex relationships can be accepted. The study has been arranged to accommodate the gay agenda and overlook the truth.
“Listen, you nations of the world; listen, to the Word of the Lord.” This study is essentially devoted to lead us to listen to one community only, and not the Word of the Lord.
