NC chapter of North American Lutheran Church meeting in Hickory

Does God still have authority to encumber mankind with His commandments? Is man still obligated to obey them?

For almost 22 months, some five million Lutherans have struggled with their answers to those questions, following a 2009 vote by the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA) Churchwide Assembly to allow homosexual clergy “in committed monogamous relationships” to serve as parish pastors.

Many ELCA Lutherans supported their church’s action, but others have left their parishes to join more conservative congregations. Some still return on Sundays to the same ELCA pews they’ve worshiped from for decades, but with new misgivings about the church’s direction.

Others have founded a whole new Lutheran church.

Delegates representing some 76,000 former ELCA Lutherans met in Columbus, Ohio, last August to constitute the new North American Lutheran Church (NALC), which answers the above questions with an unequivocal “yes.”

On Friday and Saturday, the fastest-growing area in the new NALC will hold its first annual Carolinas Chapter Convocation at Hickory’s New Jerusalem Lutheran Church at 2120 Startown Rd. In 2010, New Jerusalem became the first congregation in North Carolina to leave the ELCA.

This weekend’s NALC Carolinas annual meeting begins with check-in at noon Friday, followed by an opening worship service and Holy Communion at 1 p.m.

Later in the afternoon, the group will consider a chapter constitution and budget and elect members to a chapter executive council. Attendees also will have opportunities to join in several small discussion groups.

After dinner Friday, the Rev. John F. Bradosky, general secretary of the NALC at its Ohio headquarters, will offer a keynote address. Currently, his official duties involve working with NALC churches or with ELCA congregations considering a possible transition to the NALC.

Often, he is called upon to answer the difficult questions.

The Lutheran laity and clergy who left, or are leaving, the ELCA believe adamantly that the Commandments are what they are, and no church has a right “to re-interpret or exclude them to accommodate modern notions of ‘social justice’,” says Bradosky.

Some in the ELCA respond that the NALC and its former ELCA members are simply homophobic and narrow-minded on what the Bible really means.

“When we throw out the Sixth Commandment against adultery,” Bradosky says, “then what’s to stop us from ignoring others, too, and somehow rationalizing that God won’t mind?

“The ultimate challenge is to the First Commandment because when we move away from what God said, we begin worshipping ourselves rather than Him, moving away from the Word and toward ourselves.”

“Our popular culture is stuck on ‘me,’” said Bradosky, “my wants, my feelings, my desires, my interpretations, a whole accumulation of selfishness.”

“When we allow people to say, ‘God made me this way,’ instead of accepting that they have made a lifestyle choice, then we’re shifting responsibility for behavior away from the individual and saying, ‘This is God’s doing, not mine.’”

“Then we can say, ‘This comes from God; therefore, it must be an honorable, exemplary lifestyle and should be blessed.’ But if the church blesses the GLBT (gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgendered) lifestyle, then it must also bless those relationships. One follows the other.”

“As soon as you open the door to that,” Rev. Bradosky said, “then you don’t need to pay any attention to any of the Commandments. Lutherans can spot duplicity when they see it; and it is duplicitous of a church to just change the rules. We challenge people to know better than that.”

“The whole matter goes to the issue of integrity. We are all sinners in need of God’s grace, but the church must hold pastors accountable, too. The Gospel is shared on the basis of trust and respect; those judgments are important in deciding who will lead the church.”

“We can’t say one thing in the church for centuries and then just change things around, because a group of people come along and apply political pressure,” he said.

“This is much less about homosexuality, or serving the GLBT Lutherans, than it is about ‘what is the ultimate authority in the church.’ Is it the Word of God, or isn’t it?”

“It’s really unfortunate that some in the ECLA want to cast this as a dispute strictly about homosexual clergy. But that’s the issue they (ELCA) chose to challenge God’s authority.”

The NALC general secretary, second-in-charge to provisional bishop Paull (CQ) Spring in the church’s Columbus headquarters, said only a relative few clergy in the ELCA saw the emergence of forces demanding GLBT “rights” among parish pastors.

Bradosky, 59, uses the “frog in the kettle” analogy to explain how the issue seemed to “suddenly emerge” at the 2009 Churchwide Assembly in Minneapolis.

“You know, if you put a frog in a kettle of boiling water, he’ll immediately jump out to safety, But if the water’s only warm and you raise the temperature just one degree every so often, he’ll stay in until he’s cooked.”

“The tactic used was gradualism, and we weren’t ready,” he said, noting that Lutheran theologians first began stating their opposition in the early 1990s on “human sexuality statements” put forth by ELCA leaders.

By 2009, pro-GLBT forces had organized Churchwide Assembly delegations to the point of a thin voting majority on the issue allowing the sexually active gay pastors.

Now, says Bradosky, ELCA national leaders “are telling local congregations, ‘This won’t affect you. In the mean time, we are making all these changes in the church.’”

He said the end result is “the biggest theological struggle in the Lutheran Church in a very long time.”

He says he’s lost friendships -- the most difficult part of this for him -- and he believes the “differences (between the two churches) are irreconcilable. There are some who think, ‘If we could just agree on this, it won’t be a sin.’ Then we could say, ‘If we steal, then that’s OK, too, as long as we all agree on it.’”

“They (ELCA) are led by their values, consistent with their social justice agenda, but they can’t hang this decision on Scripture. We’d love to have those conversations; we’d say ‘show us.’ But no matter how sincerely they believe it, it doesn’t make it right.”

The ELCA, he goes on, “doesn’t want us as friends. They see us as flawed. But only Jesus matters; ultimately, friends won’t make a difference. We’re moving forward in mission and ministry. Others want to draw us back into the fray.”

Rev. Bradosky is one of several NALC theological leaders who’ve been nominated for election this summer as the church’s new national bishop, including the Rev. Dr. Larry Yoder of Hickory, director of the Lenoir-Rhyne University Center of Theology and pastor of Grace Lutheran Church of Newton.

Yoder will offer “theological remarks and discussion” at 2:45 p.m. Saturday, after morning worship, an additional business session and more group discussions. The convocation is scheduled to end around 4 p.m. Saturday, following installation of a chapter dean and executive council.

Pastors Randall Cauble and Jason Sigmon of New Jerusalem will conduct worship services during the conference.