Seems this summer’s ELCA General Assembly has sped up the “who can fracture the Church as quick as the Episcopal Church can” game. From the ELCA News Service:
Voting 10 to 5, with one abstention, a resolution on the “bound conscience” of the synod said that the ELCA’s current ministry polices, adopted in 1990, “shall remain in effect” for the synod. The council encouraged the synod’s candidacy committee and the synod bishop to abide by those standards until the synod’s next assembly. The action also recommended that the 2010 assembly adopt a continuing resolution that the synod will continue to abide by the policies adopted in 1990. . . A second resolution adopted by the synod council, 8 to 6 with two abstentions, repudiates the decisions of the assembly to adopt the new ministry policies and the social statement. It calls those actions “violations of the Confession of Faith, Chapter 2 of the ELCA Constitution.” The council also asked the ELCA Church Council to “repudiate” the assembly’s actions, “and begin the process to overturn these decisions at the 2011 Churchwide Assembly.”
