 |
||||||||
 |
||||||||
|
||||||||
|
'Woefully white'
By WAVENEY ANN MOORE, Times Staff Writer
Mark S. Hanson, newly elected presiding bishop of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, worries that in a changing world, his national flock is too white and too reserved. "If current trends continue, our church -- woefully white -- will become but a footnote in history as a church that had potential but withered into nothingness," he said during a visit to the Tampa Bay area last week. The ELCA, one of three main branches of the Lutheran Church in America, has 24,000 members and 54 churches in the Tampa Bay area, which is presided over by Bishop Edward R. Benoway of the Florida-Bahamas Synod. Nationally, the ELCA has 5-million members in 11,000 congregations, but there is not much growth. Tall, slender and dynamic, Hanson, 56, paid a whirlwind visit to Tampa last week to meet with area pastors and laity. He gave the sermon at a morning Eucharist at Good Shepherd Lutheran Church, followed that appearance with a state of the church address, answered questions after lunch and then sat down for brief interview before rushing off to meet with Lutherans in Miami. During the early afternoon interview, the bishop expanded on several topics he had raised earlier that day: ecumenical and global agreements, mission, leadership and sexuality. In plain language, Hanson talked about sexual responsibility and tolerance, traditional Lutheran reserve, his denomination's lack of diversity, its still fresh accord with the Episcopalian Church and the responsibility of the United States to those outside its borders. -- Diversity: "One major issue is that we need to break out of our ethnicity. We are a church of about 94 percent descendants of European immigrants in an increasingly pluralistic context, and as I said in my sermon today, if we're serious about welcoming persons of other cultures and races, we have to be also ready to be changed by virtue of those relationships and not simply demand that they become like us," he said the Tuesday before last. About outreach efforts to minorities, he added: "Unless we confront the racism in the church and society, we're not going to get there. It's not just about attracting people of color, it's about changing the fabric of society." In the United States, the denomination, which traces its origins to reformer Martin Luther, is traditionally a community of Scandinavian and German immigrants. The Evangelical Lutheran Church in America was created in 1988, with the merger of the American Lutheran Church, the Association of Evangelical Lutheran Churches and the Lutheran Church in America. -- Outspokenness: Hanson, who was ordained in 1974, wants Lutherans to be more vocal about their faith. "We should be about evangelism, outreach and defining our Lutheran identity," he said during his state of the church message. "We have to break out of our absolute hesitancy to speak publicly about our faith," he said later. "Garrison Keillor always talks about the Lutherans in Lake Wobegon as being shy. I think it's not just the Lutherans in Lake Wobegon, it's Lutherans in the whole United States. ... We have to be a much more public church as we together engage in the issues that face this society and the world. "Lutheran Services in America is the largest nonprofit provider of social services and health care in the United States. It's a huge secret -- $5.2-billion worth of services we provide. Bigger than Catholic Charities. Bigger than the Salvation Army. So we need to continue to do that well." -- War: Continuing his passionate discussion, Hanson, who is married and has six children and one granddaughter, went on to touch on foreign policy and issues of justice and peace. He and fellow religious leaders with similar points of view have met with President Bush and national security adviser Condoleeza Rice and hope to meet with the president again in a few days. They are trying to be "an ethical voice in a very complicated time," Hanson said. "I think this is a very unique moment for the world that we are talking about a war before we are engaged in a war, and so I've been pleading with Lutherans not to agree with each other, but to have public conversation about what's the moral and just thing to do," he said. The bishop, who has released two statements about Iraq and the Middle East, believes that any action against Iraq must be taken with the support of the international community. "I have great concern about what's the intent of the war beyond regime change," he said. "We who embrace just war principles, all we say is that the means must have some relationship to the ends." Is having a conversation with the president about the morality of war made easier because of the U.S. leader's own strong religious convictions? "I hope so," replied Hanson, who served until Sept. 30 as presiding bishop of the ELCA Saint Paul Area Synod in Minnesota. "He clearly identifies himself as a born-again Christian, a person of faith. Though we who are Christian are one, we are very different in our oneness and I think he tends to listen to more fundamentalist Christian voices than he does to mainline. ... It's important for the president to be regularly engaged, as he is committed to doing, with the heads of religious movements in the United States. I'm not naive about the impact, but it is part of my call." -- Sexuality: At the last ELCA churchwide assembly in August 2001 in Indianapolis, the denomination authorized a study on homosexuality and called for a final report and recommendations to be made in 2005. The study will address such topics as the blessing of same-sex relationships and ordination of gay men and lesbians in committed relationships. Current policy requires that ordained gay or lesbian pastors be celibate. Hanson, who began serving a six-year term on Nov. 1, said the issue of homosexuality "is causing enormous anxiety and a fair amount of tension, and many feel that will be a church-dividing issue for us." The current period of discussion, he said, "cannot be a time when heterosexual people spend three to five years talking about the sexuality of people who are gay and lesbian and not spend time talking about our own. I think we who are heterosexual have an enormously difficult time talking about our own sexuality." -- LUTHERAN-EPISCOPAL BOND: Hanson also spoke about the agreement that establishes full communion between the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America and the Episcopal Church. The agreement includes mutual recognition of clergy, rituals and baptisms. In the Tampa Bay area, a merger between the former St. Joseph's Episcopal Church and Lamb of God Lutheran Church in Fort Myers has resulted in the creation of Lamb of God Lutheran-Episcopal Church. Hanson said the full communion agreement between the two denominations is "going very well." "It continues to cause some stress within some parts of the ELCA which didn't support it, so we live with that joy of this new partnership, but also the stresses, and that is fine. We're going to tend to both," the bishop said. "My goal is not a tension-free church. That would be a dying church. I can live with a fair amount of tension. I have six kids, and that has prepared me well."
 © 2006 • All Rights Reserved • St. Petersburg Times
490 First Avenue South • St. Petersburg, FL 33701 • 727-893-8111 
|
From the Times South Pinellas desks |
