Sexuality Report

Human Sexuality: Gift and Trust. A proposed social statement.

The Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA) develops social statements through an established process. Once an issue has been framed and the church-wide Assembly adopts a charge, ELCA staff work with a task force to study the issue. They develop positions, put them out for local study and comment, reshape them, review them again, and consider them at the synod (district) level. Final action takes place at a later church-wide Assembly.

A charge made by the Assembly in 2001 and expanded in 2007 resulted in two documents. The first is this report that addresses “how do we understand human sexuality within the context of Jesus’ invitation to love God and love our neighbor?” The report, following as it does earlier stages of the Task Force's work, omits earlier documents, but references them. The approach is distinctly Lutheran, founded on an understanding that we read and discover the Bible’s message in the light of Jesus’ incarnation, death, and resurrection as the Christ. Thereby God’s grace frees from captivity to sin and allows us to respond to God’s mercy through love for and service to the neighbor, which is our vocation in the world.

The report summarizes the relevance of theological documents from Lutheran history in regard to scripture and develops a concept of “bound conscience.”

This church draws on the foundational Lutheran understanding that the baptized are called to discern God’s love in service to the neighbor. In our Christian freedom, we therefore seek responsible actions that serve others and do so with humility and deep respect for the conscience-bound beliefs of others. We understand that, in this discernment about ethics and church practice, faithful people can and will come to different conclusions about the meaning of Scripture and about what constitutes responsible action. We further believe that this church, on the basis of “the bound conscience,” will include these different understandings and practices within its life as it seeks to live out its mission and ministry in the world. – lines 629-636

Concerning the question of same-gender relationships, the report admits lack of community agreement and states four positions, each of which some Lutherans hold in their own conscience. But none of these positions is a matter of faith. Thus in the absence of general agreement, the Task Force upholds the necessity of respecting one another's bound conscious.

The report spends most of its coverage on Lutheran social ethics, questions of trust in relation to the complexity of human sexuality, social structures that enhance trust, sexuality and social responsibility and issue of moral discernment and mercy towards one another; that is, bearing the burden of one another’s conscience. “Bear one another’s burdens, and in this way you will fulfill the law of Christ” – Galatians 6.3.

The report offers fifteen implementing resolutions.

For full documents, see http://www.elca.org