You have to read the response from a member of the ELCA Church Council to "The Incoherence of our Decisions" at Lutherans Persisting blog
Now that the proposals for policy revision following from the Assembly have been released, we can get a clearer picture of what has happened and where we now are. This is my sense, based on an examination of the texts, not on any insider knowledge.
The Task Force documents had within them a basic incoherence. On the one hand, the argument from bound conscience could not justify any particular national policy on same-sex blessings or the ordination of partnered gay or lesbian clergy. At most, it could justify allowing all – synods, bishops, candidacy committees, seminary faculties, congregations – to act as conscience dictated. And the Task Force proposed just such a policy in their Step Four, which related to ‘structured flexibility’. On the other hand, their Step Two on ordained ministry sounded more like the adoption of a national policy that would accept the ordination of partnered gay and lesbian persons. Because the Task Force had decided that the substantive question about homosexuality was insoluble in this church at this time, it made no comprehensive theological and biblical argument for such a national policy. I would guess that the Task Force itself was not clear on how all that it was arguing and proposing hung together
The proposals of the Task Force for widespread freedom to follow conscience may have been unworkable. In April, the Church Council removed the incoherence and altered the proposals. Because the changes were labeled merely editorial, their importance was not noticed. The listing of who got to follow conscience was removed from the structured flexibility resolutions. The proposal was now clearly oriented to the adoption of a uniform national policy on the ordination of partnered gay and lesbian persons, with the bound conscience argument becoming a limited provision for individuals who disagreed. The difficulty was that the Task Force had not made any argument that would justify such a uniform national policy. The ministry proposals had now floated free from the Task Force Report. One reason the debate at the Assembly was so unfocused is that the Task Force Report and its argument from bound conscience were mostly beside the point to what was actually on the floor. When the time came for decision, the Task Force Report was a misleading distraction.
Our situation now is that we have a set of policy decisions on a churchwide set of ordination standards that have no foundation in the Sexuality Social Statement, which declared the church at an impasse on the question of homosexuality. If anything, the Social Statement would justify a much broader set of provisions for bound conscience.
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Member of ELCA Church Council comments (sadly, amazingly):
Pastor Keith A. Hunsinger Says:
October 28, 2009
Dr Root is spot on in his analysis of what happened in the Church Council. The simple politics in the room quickly decided what some of the staff had publically wanted all along; full, unfettered acceptance of gay marriage and gay clergy.
Were the proposals unworkable in a real world sense? Probably so. But the staff, who felt strongly pro-change did not want to do the work necessary to even try. What occured was a blend of bad writing and proactive people in positions of authority and influence.
The folks in the council room were told we were only voting to “transmit” the proposals. I had argued that the new language made the proposals more radical and troublesome then first proposed but my voice was unheard.
