ELCA Releases Documents from ELCA Task Force on Sexuality — Clarification

We are members of a Lutheran Church Missouri Synod congregation.

There is often confusion in America when a person reads a story about Lutherans.  There are different Lutheran church bodies and there are  fundamental differences between them.

The largest Lutheran church ‘body’ in America is the ELCA (Evangelical Lutheran Church in American).  The second largest Lutheran church ‘body’ is the LCMS (Lutheran Church Missouri Synod) followed by  WELS (Wisconsin Evangelical Lutheran Synod.  There are other smaller Lutheran churches.

The ELCA made the news this week.  The conclusions represent the ELCA official synod position and DO NOT represent all Lutherans! This is important for non-Lutherans in particular to understand.

This is an LCMS response to the Task Force Report:

“Today the ELCA’s Task Force for ELCA Studies on Sexuality released its “Report and Recommendation on Ministry Policies” (http://www.elca.org/faithfuljourney). The report recommends a path for the ELCA’s 2009 church-wide assembly to recognize and accept publicly accountable, lifelong, monogamous, same gender relationships of clergy in those synods (ELCA regional divisions) and congregations, which desire to approve of such relationships… (Read the entire response at Pastor Matthew Harrison’s blog)

Pastor Harrison’s response is also available at the LCMS website.

(Note:  There are lots of links allowing interested readers to go to the original sources of information.)