With two congregations voting to leave the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America this past weekend, the denomination is beginning to suffer the consequences for its August decision to allow practicing homosexual clergy on its leadership rosters. But while the gay clergy vote is finally pushing these churches out of the ELCA, the rifts go much deeper and farther back.
On Sunday, a little over 70 percent of the congregation at St. John Evangelical Lutheran Church in Roanoke, Va., voted to leave the ELCA, which was followed by a second vote to affiliate instead with Lutheran Congregations in Mission for Christ (LCMC). Gerald McDermott, teaching pastor at St. John, said that the church already had disagreements with the ELCA and had been holding meetings to discuss its concerns long before the ELCA voted to allow clergy who are in “lifelong, publicly accountable, monogamous” homosexual relationships....