The battle over gay clergy
Rosner’s Blog
In On Faith you can read some interesting reactions to the "Evangelical Lutheran Church in America’s vote to urge its bishops to refrain from disciplining clergy who are in ’mutual, chaste and faithful committed same-gender relationships’".
It is even more interesting, if you go back and compare this vote to the one taken by Conservative Jews, making it possible to ordinate gay and lesbian rabbis (Here’s my take on it, The abomination debate: Jewish conservatives on the verge of a new era. I also wrote Rabbinical law and the test of liberalism).
One on the OnFaith items in an article by the (Reform) rabbi David Saperstin : "a ’Don’t Ask/Don’t Tell" policy that is punitive when such relationships become public does little to address the values that underlie the growing acceptance of same sex relationships. For me as a Jew, a people too often forced by religious prejudice and coercion to pretend to be what we were not, such pretense is utterly unacceptable".
Albert Mohler Jr. of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary writes that "All this is further evidence of why the liberal denominations are in such a decline in terms of membership and influence. These churches are divided between liberals who push constantly for doctrinal changes and conservatives who are determined to keep standards they believe to be mandated by the Bible. The conservatives are losing. The liberals are pushing for the full normalization of homosexuality. This runs right into conflict with biblical prohibitions and clashes with the standards of these churches. Liberals in these two denominations dominate the landscape in the seminaries and church bureaucracies, but they have not yet been able to muster adequate support to change the policies. Conservatives are losing a battle akin to theological trench warfare. The big battles are lost an inch at a time."
Haaretz.com