Bishop Michael Rinehart

Of course, given your views on other issues, you would be against the death penalty. The evil that some are capable of, the staying of children and women, the murder of men for purely evil motives…..none of this affects you? The removal of extremely evil killers from our midst by the death penalty is biblical, but if you do not follow the Bible on many other issues, then it simply will not matter.

But what does the Bible have to say about the dignity of all human life, especially those with no voice or protection other than what is afforded by the State? Does the ELCA take a consistent Scriptural witness for protecting human dignity and human life even when the cause is not popular?

The ELCA does not give Scriptural Christian witness in either of its social statements on the death penalty or abortion. It defends guilty life to continue in all circumstances, yet supports the taking of an innocent life in certain circumstances. Apparently Christ would be preaching and teaching the ideology of progressive liberal Democrats were he to return today, so we really don’t need the witness of Scripture.

Doesn’t Christ preach that what you do to the least of God’s, you do to Him? Are not criminals and children in the womb similarly situated in that they are “the least of society”, existing on its fringes, hidden, out of sight and beyond the thought and reach of the daily awareness, cares and concerns of society? Invisible but alive. I see the consistency in that. Is not the criminal your neighbor? Is not the unborn fetus your neighbor? Or did God ordain Roe v. Wade as law but not the state’s death penalties as law?

The ELCA opposes the death penalty in all criminal circumstances, even though it acknowledges the State’s right to regulate order in society.

In direct opposition to this, ELCA supports abortion in some civil cirumstances. Yet abortion is also a death penalty of its own, and it is more widely performed and takes more lives than the death penalty.

Let’s see the inconsistency of the ELCA position within itself:

Guilty actions by a person can and should be judged but should never condemned to death.
(Against the death penalty in all criminal cases).

An innocent person knit together and known by God, in its mother’s womb, may sometimes be condemned to death in certain circumstances to be decided only by the mother because her body is where they child comes to life and grows.

ELCA talks about “unintended pregnancies” as the secular world does. No pregnancy is unintended by God. Let’s call it what it is: inconvenient and undesirable pregnancies to the mother. If that life were unintended by God, conception would not have occurred since it is God who knits a child together and knows it from the first in it mother’s womb.

ELCA talks about the burden of pregnancy on the mother. The Mother can kill the child in her womb under the guise of health care for herself. The Father cannot do so. He would be subject to criminal prosecution and, ironically could be sentenced to death himself for terminating his child’s life in the womb. Society, of course, has no business in any of this since except to keep this process legal, safe and accessible for the mother to exercise.

Both the legalized death penalty and legalized abortion have this in common:

–They are systematic deliberate taking of human lives in our society.
— They are both remedies to a problem within society that some say go way too far.

The death penalty and abortion diverge here:

—One life is deliberately taken under only after it is adjuged guilty of certain actions and has been afforded full legal process.
—- The other life is deliberately taken while blameless of any action (except being alive) and with no legal process.

So true that the Republicans are pro-life when it comes to abortion but not when it comes to the death penalty.

But ELCA, think about removing the plank out of your eye before picking the speck out of your brother’s eye. Your philosophy offers the wisdom of the world as much as the Republican philosophy does. You commit the same sins but reach the opposite conclusions.

If Scripture is the authoritative source and norm of your faith, let’s take a look at the witness of Scripture rather than political parties in the U.S. The ELCA is not the salt and light the world so desperately needs, and yet that’s precisely what it needs to be.

John J Flanagan, I certainly hear you. The fundamental issue is that the ELCA is a political and social activist group with a specific cultural agenda. The ELCA pastors are required to pledge loyalty to the organization itself as well as to the rightly preaching Gospel and rightly administering the sacraments. When they find those two at odds, there is tremendous pressure placed upon the pastor with a threat of taking him off the roster and never issuing anoth call. If a faithful Lutheran pastor disagrees with the Synod bishop, he runs the risk of being labelled schismatic and pulled from the clergy roster if he won’t toe the mark. The hierarchy manages that change and advocates for it, and waits for the orthodox to leave (without their buildings, and preferably quietly) or just to age out. The ELCA seminaries teach symbolic and allegorical reading of Scriptures, although they don’t call it that, and they have an agenda of radical feminism and full participation for homosexual practitioners to be pastors and administer and take part in the sacramental life of the church.

Surveys are undertaken of the congregations not to determine what the faithful need to be reminded of or grounded in, but to change church teaching based on what people are already doing and already believe in practice. We actually had a young 30-something woman who was a member of our former small ELCA church state that she believed we could get more members if we didn’t require our members to be baptized as our constitution provided. Indeed. Let’s be so inclusive that we are no longer the Lutheran or even a Christian church at all. Radical hospitality. My brother calls it the Burger King of churches: have it your way at ELCA.

At present the ELCA is having congregations read and participate about what they believe and practice regarding Holy Communion. I believe this will eventually result in a policy statement which captures what most people believe and are already doing, rather than the ELCA actually bothering to catechize the faithful with confessional Lutheran teachings and correct any errors in understanding and/or practice regarding the sacrament. They will not want to reinforcing Lutheran teaching that Holy Communion is a sacrament for the baptized who believe, and that even believers must be rightly disposed to participate or should refrain (or be denied the sacrament if the pastor has knowledge).

Now the saying goes that the ELCA practices radical hospitality – ALL means ALL regardless of their understanding of Holy Communion. No matter that Scripture teaches that when you eat and drink of the Body and Blood of Christ without being properly disposed that you are bringing judgment onto yourself. That’s just one example, albeit a pretty big one, I know.

ELCA.
Asking people what they already practice and believe to ok it is hardly Evangelical.
Not calling them to learn or abide by the confessions is hardly Lutheran.
Advocating worldly social and political agendas is not being Church.

About the only word of truth left in the ELCA, then, is the last one. America.

It is true that it’s located in the United States of America.

I am waiting for the call for the Gospel rightly preached to be deemed hate speech by the culture at large. It’s coming. ELCA will soon follow and the rightly preached Gospel, the fullness of the Word, will be silenced within the ELCA churches by discipline of individual members by the Synod (this used to be done at the congregational level. In 2013 the ELCA changed the constitution to provide that the Synod now undertakes that discipline. Apparently the congregations can no longer be trusted to administer such member discipline any longer. After all, they may not toe the party line at the congregational level. But the Synod surely will.

All the beautiful Lutheran language in the well-drafted and crafted ELCA constitution has been relegated to symbolic and/ or ceremonial status in the church. Many ELCA are people are persons of good faith, but it’s just not the Lutheran or the Christian faith except in name and symbol and outward ceremony. The substance has been stripped. Nobody preaches about original sin or even sinning unless its about “sinful structures” that promote some -ism, take your pick. Like patriarchy in our culture. That is a sinful, oppressive thing that only radical feminism can make right. It’s all about inclusivity, moral relativism and the historical-critical method which sounds like a good contextual way to read the Bible and allow its truths to come through. Instead, it is the leadership’s way of teaching seminarians to dismantle Biblical truths one by one in study, all in favor of the wisdom of the age.

By the resounding failure of pastoral and theologial leadership in the Human Sexuality study, I fully expect gender fluidity and gender bias studies to be commissioned within the ELCA. After much time and money expended by a future task force the ELCA will teach will that God did NOT make them male and female, and that the term eunuch in the Bible is a pejorative term that refers to and perpetuates fear of the stranger or “other” from biblical times and perpetuates transphobia. If you disagree you will be called transphobic, even though the only thing you fear is that the Gospel is no longer rightly preached in your church.

I only wish that I were writing this tongue-in-cheek. It’s the reason we led our church out of the ELCA and joined the LCMC. Peace and blessings to you.

You are getting more and more political in your writings.

Thank you. Pastor Peter

I agree with you Bishop. Time to lead the charge against abortion in the ELCA! I look forward to you being a voice for the voiceless and an ardent supporter of pro-life movements. I assume Lutherans for Life (www.lutheransforlife.org) will now be featured prominently in the Gulf Coast Synod and your blog? Thanks for standing up against abortion!