The Evangelical Lutheran Church in America’s (ELCA) top bishop has formally apologized on behalf of the denomination to a delegation from a Spanish-speaking “Latine” congregation whose pastor was abruptly fired last year by a transgender bishop.
“This is an opportunity to remind ourselves of all of the anti-racist commitments and apologies we have made as a church and to offer a public recommitment to become an anti-racist church,” Presiding Bishop Elizabeth Eaton told voting members at the denomination’s Churchwide Assembly in Columbus, Ohio.
The August 8-12 Assembly included a series of apologies for systemic racism as well as for mistreatment of indigenous peoples.
The Churchwide Assembly is the primary decision-making body of the mainline Lutheran denomination. It follows in-person and hybrid conferences this summer of the Episcopal Church, Presbyterian Church (USA) and Lambeth Conference of Anglican Bishops. United Methodists delayed their General Conference a third time until 2024, citing COVID-related challenges.
The Rev. Nelson Rabell-González was fired by Bishop Megan Marie Rohrer as pastor of Iglesia Luterana Santa Maria Peregrina in Stockton, California this past December. Charges of ecclesiastical abuse swirled around the firing, with Rabell-González appealing directly to Eaton.
A “Listening Team” produced an investigative report in May and the Presiding Bishop eventually requested and received Rohrer’s resignation on June 4, following allegations of corruption for closing a different San Francisco church. Rohrer, who was the first transgender bishop in a mainline Protestant Church, uses the pronouns “they/them” and was installed in September as bishop of the ELCA’s San Francisco-based Sierra Pacific Synod.
“I wish to speak a word of apology and accountability on behalf of the ELCA and as a leader of this church,” Eaton told delegates this week at the Assembly. “On behalf of all those in the ELCA involved in what happened that day, I apologize to the people of the community of Iglesia Luterana Santa Maria Peregrina. The lack of proper procedure and the intentionality of culturally insensitive actions announcing Pastor Rabell-Gonzalez’s termination on the day of the Vigil of Our Lady of Guadalupe was a sharp assault on your dignity.”
It wasn’t the only church apology this week. Wednesday’s Assembly session sought to honor Indigenous people through various observances and presentations. Some Assembly participants dressed in red to recognize and publicize the issue of missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls.
The denominational gathering is to consider a Declaration to Native American and Alaska Native People including a confession, pledge, and an acknowledgement of evil and harm caused by the Doctrine of Discovery (which the denomination officially repudiated in 2016).
The Doctrine of Discovery is a series of papal decrees issued from 1452-1493 that gave Christian explorers the right to lay claim to any land that was “discovered” — land that wasn’t inhabited by Christians — for the purpose of expanding territory controlled by Christian kings.
It has not yet been made clear to me how mostly Scandinavian and German-descended Lutherans are complicit in papal decrees, or how such declarations held any weight in the United States when the population was overwhelmingly Protestant.
An Assembly worship liturgy included a Native American smudging ceremony offering smoke to the spirits of the four cardinal directions (smudging was also part of Rohrer’s installation ceremony held at San Francisco’s Episcopal Grace Cathedral in September).
The ELCA remains the largest Lutheran body in North America at 3.26 million members, despite shedding more than 1 million members — or 25% of membership — across the last reporting decade, down from 5,288,048 members at the denomination’s founding in 1987.
UPDATE [8/30/2022]: According to the most recent ELCA Summary of Congregational Statistics, denominational membership has dropped to 3,142,777 baptized members (released November 2021).
Comment by Tom on August 11, 2022 at 5:39 pm
Again, the only true part of “Evangelical Lutheran Church in America” is that it is, in fact, in America.
Comment by Greg M on August 11, 2022 at 9:05 pm
Too funny!
Comment by Jeff on August 11, 2022 at 9:24 pm
Another brilliant quip I first saw on this website:
“ELCA = Everything Luther Cautioned Against.”
🤣👍🏻
Comment by Jeff on August 11, 2022 at 11:33 pm
Scary photo! Is it just me, or do BOTH of the “honorable” “bishops” look like dudes who shave daily? 😆
Comment by Wayne on August 12, 2022 at 1:06 am
I find it ironic that a practicing LGBTQ member would discriminate against another minority group instead of work together! Some weird and contradictory stuff going on in the ELCA. Love the acronym used in another comment.
Comment by David S. on August 12, 2022 at 12:40 pm
“smudging” to the four cardinal directions…syncretism at its finest. If they want to go all out, have a Santeria ceremony that mimics an animal sacrifice without the animal sacrifice.
On a more serious note, if it weren’t for the Doctrine of Discovery then you wouldn’t have the Monroe Doctrine and the Doctrine of Manifest Destiny (which is essentially America’s version of the Ancient Chinese doctrine of the Mandate of Heaven). That is how a Catholic decree applies to Protestants.
Comment by Didaskalos on August 13, 2022 at 5:33 am
Two other apt decodings of ELCA:
Everything Luther Cautioned Against
Egregiously Libertine Cult of Antinomianism
Were he alive today, Martin Luther would have long since fled and denounced a “church” that has wrongfully usurped his name.
“It [the Gospel] teaches us everything — the nature of God, of ourselves, and what has been and is to be in regard to heaven, hell and earth, to angels and devils. It enables us to know how to conduct ourselves in relation to these — whence we are and whither we go. But, being deceived by the devil, we forsake the light of day and seek to find truth among philosophers and heathen totally ignorant of such matters. In permitting ourselves to be blinded by human doctrines, we return to the night. . . Paul says, ‘Neither present your members unto sin as instruments of unrighteousness’ (Rom. 6:13), meaning: Let not the works of darkness get such control of you as to render your members weapons of unrighteousness.” [Martin Luther, “First Sunday in Advent,” Sermons of Martin Luther, Vol. 5, Baker Books 1995, pp. 17, 19]
Comment by Dale R Yancy on August 13, 2022 at 10:03 am
I am listening to the audiobook, “Bonhoeffer” by Eric Metaxas. Dietrich Bonhoeffer & co. founded the “Confessing Church” in Germany during Hitler’s reign of terror. The official national church, the German Evangelical Church professed allegiance to Hitler over anything else. This church was the lukewarm church of Laodicea, trying to be all things to all people and in the end, rejecting Christ, and giving their loyalty to a madman. The Confessing Church proclaimed Jesus as LORD over & above everything else. Bonhoeffer & friends would not have bowed their knees or given any support to the LGBTQ++wxyz movement today because it is bowing one’s knee to culture and societal norms rather than the Word of God.
Comment by April User on August 13, 2022 at 1:29 pm
I am tribal and I don’t want any apologies. What I want the church to do is to do its job. Don’t hand more of the culture back to me. We have plenty of churched people sitting in the pews but too many unchanged people sitting in the pews. Pastors, lead from prayer and study of the Scriptures. Laypeople, own your own faith. Do your job or get out of the church. You are hurting us!
Comment by Loren J Golden on August 13, 2022 at 1:56 pm
Someday, I would like to see the top leader of a Mainline Protestant denomination make an apology in which he or she takes personal accountability for an egregious sin for which he or she is apologizing. Such as:
“I have been reading Scripture very seriously now and taking it to heart. And as I have been doing so, I have come to the conviction that I have greatly offended my Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. I have been teaching the commandments of men as doctrines, thereby making myself a false teacher. And not only have I done so, I have participated in and approved the ordination and installation of other pastors who don’t believe some of the more contested parts of Scripture, instead teaching the mores of contemporary culture as if they were the words of God, and some who have even impenitently practiced what the Scriptures unqualifiedly identify as sin. I have coveted power and have abused that which has been entrusted to me. In so doing, I have alienated many who trust in the inerrancy of the Scriptures and in the Gospel message of Jesus Christ and have thereby caused great damage to the Church for which I was ordained and installed to serve. I am unfit for the office I now hold; I am tendering my immediate resignation and submitting myself to the discipline of the Church for the egregious sins that I have committed.”
Such would be genuine integrity of the Christian faith, and it is all too glaringly absent from most of the top leaders in the Mainline Protestant churches.
“Everyone to whom much was given, of him much will be required, and from him to whom they entrusted much, they will demand the more.” (Lk. 12.48)
“Not many of you should become teachers, my brothers, for you know that we who teach will be judged with greater strictness.” (Jas. 3.1)
“Obey your leaders and submit to them, for they are keeping watch over your souls, as those who will have to give an account.” (Heb. 13.17, emphasis added)
May God have mercy on their souls and give them the grace and wisdom to repent.
Comment by David Allen Charlton on August 13, 2022 at 4:40 pm
The ELCA passed a resolution that will have even more impact on the Church. It has voted to revise its social statement on human sexuality called HSGT. In particular, it has voted to reconsider something called “bound conscience” which allows congregations to follow one of four positions on same-sex relations. In other words, being fully pro-LGBTQIA+ in every way will be the only option. No more tolerance for those who oppose same-sex marriage or who consider homosexuality to be sinful.
Comment by Palamas on August 13, 2022 at 5:07 pm
So out of curiosity, I read the story at the link regarding Rohrer treatment of Rev. Rabell-González. From all parties, it reads like some kind of satire on woke mainline Protestantism, except everyone involved takes it all terribly seriously. Rohrer is obviously a sick, greedy individual with no more business being in an ecclesiastical position that he’d have running a nuclear power plant. Rabell-Gonzalez (who is unquestionably a victim of Rohrer’s incompetence and vindictiveness) is also a race warrior who claims his removal from his church was because of “white supremacy.” And the whole sorry episode is against the background of a denomination drenched in the ethos of “anti-racism” (as dishonest a term as there is in modern American discourse). A plague on all their houses.
Comment by George on August 14, 2022 at 7:28 am
These actions by the Lutherans (ELCA), remind me of the UMC . It wasn’t that long ago when the Methodist canceled their general conference to be held in Richmond Virginia because the local minor league team was named the “Braves”. They moved the conference down to Tampa Florida and promptly wrote a check for $50,000 for some Indians out in Colorado. It was a payment to absolve us from the actions taken by John Chivington at the Sand Creek massacre . Apportionments well spent, right? Now, what about all the other sins by previous generations ? Slavery comes to mind. Write them checks brothers. I’m sure many of the slave owners were Methodists. When will we ever stop trying to correct the past by writing a check and apologizing for the sins of others?
I have enough sins of my own to deal with without worrying about the sins of generations past. The day that they remove the UMC sign out front of our church can’t come soon enough.
Comment by David Mu on August 14, 2022 at 11:38 am
@ Wayne. Despite what would generally be believed, this LGBTQ-whatever movement is not an one for all, all for one movement. It’s made on the idea that some for more oppressed than others. Currently, the transgender believes its the most ‘oppressed’, and therefore gets its way – no matter what.
Keep this in mind when looking at them; the ‘oppressed’ will demand all to submit to them – or else. Gay men (especially the white ones) were foolish to have opened the door to them, and now all the rest of ‘queer’ group. They were pushed aside and shamed into submission. This group will try to the same to everyone. Don’t let them – you will regard it if you do.
This ‘transgender’ bishop got its hands put-down, because it was clear in corruption of power, and this was impossible to cover-over in denial.
BTW – I am not any ‘side’ in these matters. But, the transgender and queer population is an danger to us all.
Comment by Eric Lytle on August 17, 2022 at 10:26 am
Regarding the “trans” bishop Rohrer: On her FB page and website, she is now using the pronouns “they/he.” She just spent 10 days in Israel, while proclaiming that she is short of funds – I’m wondering if her supporters are still sending her funds if she can afford a foreign vacation? She really is a truly vile human being, as she has consistently portrayed herself as the victim in the story. No repentance at all.