Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: WEDNESDAY, October 20, 1993 TAG: 9310200150
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
Four years in the making, a draft statement going before the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America declares that the core of human sexuality should be loving, committed relationships - and not limited to heterosexual marriages.
"It is the binding commitment, not the license or ceremony, that lies at the heart of biblical understandings of marriage," says the statement.
"In those circumstances where a legal marriage is not feasible, communities of faith may need to consider other ways of publicly affirming and communally supporting a loving, binding commitment between two people."
The 21-page report - "The Church and Human Sexuality: A Lutheran Perspective" - is to be sent this week to 19,000 pastors and other church leaders in the 5.2 million-member denomination.
Local churches have until next June to respond. A second draft, taking the response into account, will be prepared for a churchwide assembly of lay and clergy delegates in 1995.
The report is the ELCA's first attempt to grapple with sexuality since the organization was formed in 1988 by the merger of the Lutheran Church in America, the American Lutheran Church and the Association of Evangelical Lutheran Churches.
Foreshadowing current U.S. ferment over gay rights, mainline Protestant denominations have been convulsed in recent years over demands by gay and lesbian members that churches accord them formal acceptance and the right of ordination.
The United Church of Christ is the only major Protestant denomination to permit the ordination of homosexuals.
In the past two years, the Episcopal Church, the United Methodist Church and the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) have rejected proposals to loosen church strictures on homosexuality.
But the issue has no more vanished from the sanctuaries than from the streets, as attested by the raucous protests by gay church members and their supporters after the votes. The Methodists, Episcopalians and Presbyterians all are engaged in new studies of homosexuality.
Within the Lutheran organization, the 67-member Conference of Bishops already has expressed reservations about the report. The ELCA falls on the moderate end of mainline Protestantism but is more liberal than the 2.6 million-member Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod.
by CNB