I.C.M. - SW MN WordAlone

CCM AFTER FIVE YEARS

Walter Sundberg

“Called to Common Mission,” passed at the Denver Churchwide Assembly in 1999, is now half a decade old. It is firmly in place. No pastor elected to the office of bishop in any synod in the last five years has refused to be installed according to the agreement’s demands. In the election for Presiding Bishop at the Indianapolis Churchwide Assembly in 2001, all three of the finalists promised to accept the laying-on-of-hands in historic succession. The effort of Word Alone in February 2000 to get the ELCA to allow exceptions for the installation of bishops and the ordination of pastors, even though initially accepted by representatives of the ELCA leadership, failed in the Church Council and the Council of Bishops. Instead they agreed to a bylaw, passed in 2001, which permits ordination by pastors in unusual and highly controlled circumstances. Most seminarians I have talked to, even if they are opposed to CCM theologically, are afraid to avail themselves of the bylaw. In one case I know of in Minnesota, the request to be ordained according to the bylaw was refused by the bishop. In at least one synod on the east coast, candidates are simply told that the bylaw on ordination will in no case be allowed; all ordinations are done by the bishop at the synod convention. The upshot of all this is that CCM is alive and well. And no wonder: Before it was even passed the trappings of episcopal government were being put in place. If anything, CCM ratified and formalized what many ELCA administrators were determined to practice, with or without it. But CCM provided a legal grip on administration and with each passing year, this legal grip on the ministry of the ELCA increases.

Joe Burgess, longtime theological director of the old Lutheran Council and experienced hand in ecumenical matters, loves to tell the story of the Church of South India formed in 1947 out of the union of episcopal and non-episcopal churches, Anglicans, Methodists, and Congregationalists. The church promised to move boldly into the future by embracing its Indian heritage. As it turned out, the church never fulfilled its initial promise to be a beacon of the Christian future in India. The church’s Methodist and Congregational roots soon became hard to discern. But from its origin one doctrine unwaveringly survived in the Church of South India: Episcopal ordination. Once this doctrine is put in place, said Dr. Burgess, it takes over the practice of ministry and the exercise of authority. Discontent, weakness, and even decline of the church body will not dislodge it.

We see this in the Roman Catholic Church in America today. The priesthood is nearly in shambles; the scope of the crisis of sexual scandal is enormous. American Catholics, in good old American fashion, have called for reform of the authority structure of the church by means of democratic representation and oversight. To date they have gotten absolutely nowhere; only district attorneys, taking the Roman hierarchy to court, have gotten the leadership to budge and begin to make restitution.

The lesson is that bishops do not give up power willingly, especially if they can justify it theologically. Luther and the Reformers found that out. It continues to be a fact of ecclesiastical existence to the present day.

But with power in the church comes responsibility. And in America, home to 70% of the world’s lawyers, responsibility is often defined in terms of legal liability. In the Gerald Thomas case in Marshall, Texas settled last April – Gerald Thomas, you will remember, is the Lutheran pastor and homosexual pedophile convicted of multiple counts of sexual abuse of boys and sentenced to 397 years in jail – the ELCA had to cough up a staggering amount of money to settle the civil liability of having prior knowledge of this man’s perversity. Higgins Road and Trinity Seminary settled out of court for $32 million. The local synod, specifically, the bishop and his assistant, who placed Thomas in the congregation where he wrecked havoc, was found liable in a jury trial. To establish liability of the synod, the plaintiff’s lawyer pointed to, among other things, two salient facts of the bishop’s action: First, that Thomas was the only candidate submitted to the congregation in Marshall; they were given no other person to interview. And secondly, the bishop had referred to Pastor Thomas, when he had previously interned in the synod, as “an extension of the bishop’s ministry… acting in my stead.” This is the way bishops talk when they believe in episcopal theology. The jury’s judgment against the synod was $36.8 million.

The full consequences of this terrible event are yet to play out. There are sure to be more cases like Thomas. I am not saying that episcopal government was the cause of a wayward pastor like Thomas; what I am saying is that the form of government and theology that we have embraced as a church, and have ratified legally through CCM, affect the legal liability of synodical agencies when such cases arise. The judgment in Marshall, Texas will serve as future legal precedent for those bringing suit against the ELCA. What this will mean over time is impossible to predict.

It has been an eventful five years for the ELCA and the consequences of CCM have been at the center of much controversy. Unfortunately, many of these consequences have been negative.

Walter Sundberg is Professor of Church History at Luther Seminary, St. Paul

and a member of the WordAlone Theological Advisory Board