"We Didn't Get Rid of the Quotas!" -or- David Swartling, Keeper of the Matrix

I spoke with Rev. Dee Pederson, Chair of the LIFT Task Force for a bit on Thursday evening before supper with my Synod, and mentioned in passing the Assembly votes to get rid of the quotas for Church Council membership. Her quick reply was "We didn't get rid of the quotas!" Thus began a slow re-education on my part on how Church Council members are chosen, and how it will probably work in the future. Here's what I've pieced together so far, as I know I'm not the only one who had the misconceptions I did about what LIFT was doing re: Council membership. Of course all distortions are my own.

[UPDATE 9/4/11, see end of post] Chapter 5 of the ELCA Constitution (pages 23-25 of this document) does spell out the specific demographic targets, unambiguously in the cases of representation by "persons of of color and/or persons whose primary language is other than English" (at least 10%) and lay membership (at least 60%). The targets for a 50/50 gender balance within units are to be achieved "as nearly as possible", and "where possible, the representation of ordained ministers shall be both female and male" (5.01f). There are similar targets established for synods, which are mandated to "establish processes" to ensure same (5.01g). [This is my uncorrected, wrong interpretation: The resolutions advocating demographic targets for Council (CWA, etc.) membership were always aspirational in nature, and depended on the commitment of the Council and Nominating Committee to achieve their stated aims (i.e., the quotas weren't as "hard" as I thought).]

The churchwide organization has taken the responsibility for meeting those demographic targets very seriously so far, and there is no reason to believe that that will change.

Until now, standard procedure when a vacancy came up was for David Swartling (the Secretary of the ELCA) to consult "The Matrix," which is a table of demographic and regional priorities (which may or may not require a direct brain interface or the Key of Rassilon to access). At that point, he'd call up (for example) the Southwestern Minnesota Synod, and ask them to produce a Female Clergy candidate for the open Church Council seat.

The LIFT changes affected the process in these ways:

• The category of non-voting Advisory Members, funded by the churchwide body, has been done away with (this is probably where the notion of getting rid of demographic quotas came from, since this step has decreased and in some cases eliminated representation by some minority concerns)
• Now more conditions (apart from demographic and regional concerns) can be placed on nominees to the Church Council, depending on the current needs of the council (so for example, they could now ask a given synod for a Lay Female candidate with a background in Finance).
  
• The Church Council can now have more or fewer members within a set range, depending on the needs of the Council (and in the documents detailing the changes, demographic diversity is listed first among those anticipated needs).

I hope that clears things up at least a bit: whatever "quotas" there were coming into this Assembly were not weakened, and a bigger Council will provide more opportunity to meet our demographic commitments for that body. I expect that among the first priorities of the new wave of recruitment for will be for Youth representation on Church Council. Yes, signing Youth members up for 6-year terms will be difficult (though not as difficult as predicting their contribution to regional diversity), but the strong Youth showing at this Assembly has established in many minds a theme I've heard quite a bit lately in Lutheran circles: that youth members are not merely the "future of the church", but the present as well. [UPDATE 9/04/11: The youth/young adult representational targets could more fairly be called "aspirational", as they are presented as goals in a continuing resolution, calling for the Church Council to come up with a plan for at least 10% voting representation by youth (younger than 18 at the time of election) and young adults (from 18 to 30 at the time of election) at churchwide units (6.02.A09).]

Coming soon: the exciting conclusion of the Lutheran Youth Organization floor motion!

[UPDATE 9/4/11: This update was too important to just leave this post stand and post a new one. I got notice fairly quickly that the demographic targets were in fact in the constitution but I was holding off on a correction until I could get a reference (I had done my own obviously inadequate check of the Constitution looking for the targets, but I was looking in the wrong places). Someone in Chicago was able to provide the reference however, and hopefully it's all straightened out with this update. Now to finally kick this flu so I can finish my report!]

Lutheran CORE

"Lutheran CORE (Coalition for Renewal) is a community of confessing Lutheran seeking to mobilize Lutherans for evangelical renewal." There's a lot of unpacking to do with that little statement, and the brochure which provides a fuller explanation of their principles is too long to reproduce or condense here. To give you a brief idea, they were on the opposite legislative side as Goodsoil-LC/NA at the 2009 CWA.

Curiosity got the better of me as I saw a Lutheran CORE event scheduled on the event board next to all the ELCA and Goodsoil events, from 7pm to 9pm in one of the smaller meeting rooms on the other side of the hotel. I believe that was the only Lutheran CORE "event" scheduled that week, and sparsely populated: there was one representative from the organization when I was there, and as I was coming in, only one other person was there (clearly only there for informational purposes), and as I was leaving, one other person came in. This gave me a chance to have a more in-depth chat with the representative, which was good. In session the next day, Bishop Hanson mentioned that the CORE room had been vandalized, admonishing those responsible.

The CORE representative I spoke with was Pr. Dick Mathisen, who is on the Steering Committee. On the basis of that conversation, it seemed as though CORE most wanted to make clear at this Assembly that it was not a separatist organization among Lutherans ("People think that because we started our own denomination last year"): Pr. Mathisen is at an ELCA church and intends to remain, and whenever he mentioned someone else in Lutheran CORE by name, he was quick to emphasize that that person was in the ELCA. Regarding the new denomination (NALC), he did acknowlege that there was some friction within CORE on that point, and that the new denomination was begun at the insistence of the minority of ELCA CORE members who found remaining in the denomination intolerable, and some will challenge anyone who claims to subscribe to their traditionalist view while remaining in the ELCA. But the general advice given by CORE to people in congregations contemplating a vote for disaffiliation is to not take that vote, unless you're certain of an overwhelming majority (90% was the figure he gave) in favor of disaffiliation. The newsletter I took from the CORE room has what seems to be a very pastoral and reasonable "Frequently Asked Questions" (pages 6-7) warning against "stirring the pot" and how "never-ending discernment and dialogue can permanently cripple your congregation‘s overall ministry."

Pr. Mathison said that CORE's presence at the assembly was the result of four decisions they had recently taken:

• To have a presence at the Assembly
  
• To present (if only on their website), a response to proposed constitutional provisions related to disaffiliation which clearly explains CORE's position on disaffiliation (he made clear that there was no organizational push to effect legislation this assembly, and they had no one on the floor counting votes, which they did do in 2009).
  
• To present alternative prayers (written by Pr. Steve Shipman) to those found in Sundays and Seasons*, and
  
• To open a line of communication to every ELCA congregation.

All in all, Lutheran CORE had what could fairly be called a token presence at the assembly, but the symbolism was important: they wanted to be clear that although they disagreed with recent actions of the denominations, they weren't "writing off" the ELCA, and would continue to try to engage traditionalists within the denomination.

*I scoured the website pretty well for these, but am not finding anything. If anyone finds something, let me know and I'll update this post with a link.

Goodsoil (LC/NA)

OK, CWA has now been over for nearly a week, and it's time for me to wrap up. There will be a bit of narrative in the posts I have planned, but also some posts addressing broader themes of the week. This is one of the latter.

Goodsoil is "A collaboration of allies working for the full inclusion of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender people and their families in the full ministerial and sacramental life of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA). Goodsoil is comprised entirely of lay and clergy members of the ELCA. Lutherans Concerned/North America is the fiscal agent for Goodsoil."

Though there was less on the agenda this Assembly in Goodsoil's wheelhouse than, say, the 2009 assembly, they seemed omnipresent at the Assembly, demonstrating their skills at fundraising and organization.

As to fundraising, people were handing out professionally printed 2-color 20-page letter size booklets* with full color covers, and seemed to have ample copies for everyone (that's the source of the thumbnail description of Goodsoil at the top of the post). They also had a suite on the 17th floor in the hotel open all day which served as a meeting place and anchor for all the other activities they'd been planning, where you could also buy several pins or buttons to identify yourself with them (a fun side note: I also heard the suite gave a distant, dim view of the EPCOT fireworks at night). Unfortunately, the one time I tried to go up to the suite was the worst possible time for the week, about an hour before the Goodsoil worship service that was happening in one of the ballrooms. I didn't make it to that service (because I was writing to you, dear reader).

As to organization, that was clear at the Assembly by the number of events advertised on monitors throughout the common areas of the hotel, sometimes (usually?) dwarfing the number attributed to "Evangelical Lutheran Church in America". These included planning meetings for their own events and legislative actions, the aforementioned church service they put on (with attendant choir rehearsals, etc.), and general open hours for their suite. Even overlooking the amount of time and effort undoubtedly necessary to put on this kind of program parallel to the assembly, their main legislative priority (an anti-bullying statement) was probably the biggest feature of the Memorials portion of the Assembly. 38 synods passed anti-bullying memorials to the Assembly, which is no small feat of coordination no matter how uncontroversial the stance is. Furthermore, when the initial recommendation of the Memorials committee wasn't specific enough for them (the original recommendation was just a couple of short paragraphs, directing the Assembly to refer the memorials to a list of churchwide offices, and to ask for a report to the 2012 meeting of the Church Council), they had a plan to fix it. Sometime between then and the vote, that recommendation was expanded by nearly a half-column of text, including references to forming partnerships with many non-churchwide organizations (including LC/NA specifically), as well as a bulleted list of specific points to be addressed by such partnerships. They certainly knew what they were doing, and weren't messing around.

By omnipresence generally, I'm mainly referring to the pins and buttons I mentioned earlier, which could be seen on a big portion of the Voting Members and other attendees. Any time there were a few of us badged Lutherans anywhere in the hotel, there were invariably some with rainbow buttons on. With that and the placards and event notices advertising various Goodsoil events, it often seemed as though there were two conventions going on.

*Yes, I found it curious that the booklet was not available on the sparse goodsoil.org site; at first glance it seems that Goodsoil is merely the face that LC/NA presents to the ELCA Churchwide Assembly, and if I find out anything interesting about why that might be, I'll post it, but I assume it's something to do with tax/nonprofit rules. But otherwise, if you're looking for any content related to Goodsoil, you'd probably be better served searching on lcna.org.

Genetics

This will be my only post of the night; I need to sleep. I probably won't post tomorrow as I'll be travelling home and then have to rejoin my family at my parents' house because apparently my house has been occupied by a bat. Hopefully starting with Saturday I'll be able to piece together some other reports of what happened here.

Of course the big news for the day was the passage of the Genetics statement, and I spoke briefly against it. Here's a rough transcription of my notes for the speech:

---

Michael Cumings, Southwestern Minnesota Synod; I brought notes this time.

I'm on the fence with this statement, leaning against, and hopefully in explaining myself I can give you an example and illuminate for you what my Bishop, Jon Anderson, was talking about in our discussion of Social Statements, and how people were being too glib in declaring how wonderful they are.

I had two problems with the statement originally, one dealing with the immediate relevance of the document, which was swept away after having seen the excellent introduction to the statement on Tuesday--I want to thank Per Anderson, Linden Olson from my synod, and everyone else who participated; it convinced me that there is a wider benefit to speaking as a church about these issues.

My other problem is this. In the debate about inserting the word "evolution" into this document, there was an instructive comment: we as a church don't endorse scientific paradigms because scientific paradigms are perishable. Well at least in our Western context, ethical paradigms are even more perishable: the Roman Catholic Magisterium has had a pretty good run with Natural Law, but that's the exception. This report represents a tremendous amount of work, and the references reveal deep roots throughout our other Social Statements; the values represented are truly ELCA Lutheran values.

But ours is an evolving position, with evolving principles, and the science is evolving even more rapidly. Again, I'm convinced this document speaks to the current context. But what about 10 years into the future?

I'm afraid this document will be well obsolete by then, and since with rare exceptions, social statements tend to be overwhelmingly approved and then go through a one-way trap door to the cellar, to be ignored long afterward by everyone except by those crafting future statements. Even if we were inclined to review social statements, I question whether the possibility of a legislative review once in three years could provide the flexibility we'd need to speak in a relevant way about this topic.

If I vote in favor, it will be in the hope that our review of the way we do social statements will address the problem of making sure that our social statements are read and remain relevant over time.

---

I had problems with content too, but there was enough good in it to be valuable in the current context, so eventually I did vote for it (along with 90+% of the assembly). I figured that if it develops fatal flaws of obsolescence over time, that that's probably not today's problem, since there was a promise of review included with the document (which I was skeptical of, but I decided to believe those responsible for implementation this time. LIFT has made me more charitable toward the organization that way).

More LIFT--Heroes of the Day

There are some other things I want to cover (which I hope I'll get to later), but before I turn in for the night, there's one more story I wanted to highlight, concerning the heroes for the day. One of the LIFT provisions considered for amendments was the one where hard demographic and regional quotas were removed with respect to candidates for the Church Council. As I mentioned, each of the amendments so far were grouped by the relevant committee (here the Reference and Counsel Committee), the committee invariably has some recommendation short of adopting any part of it, and depending on how motivated the source of the original amendment was, he/she would try to defeat the motion of the committee's recommendation.

There were three amendments grouped together speaking to this constitutional change, and two were primarily directed at youth representation (the amendments were stated more broadly than that, but the intent became clear once debate started). They pointed out (as has been pointed out several times since the Assembly started, that a goal of having 10% youth members of the Church Council is in the constitution, and that that had not happened. The previous removal of advisory members of the Council by LIFT had stripped the council of all (even non-voting) membership by youth (there are only 2 "young adult" members currently, which I think means age 20-30). One of the amendments tried to make that 10% a hard quota, and the other added into the resolution the kind of demographics to be taken into consideration in choosing members (age, ethnic background, and varying abilities). Since the Reference and Counsel Committee did not recommend these amendments, I expected a fight, but something different happened.

The first person speaking in favor of accepting the Reference and Counsel Committee's recommendation was the one who proposed the second amendment: Dianha Ortega-Ehreth, a youth Voting Member. She said she was satisfied with the committee's assurances that a process would be developed to meet the church's stated commitments to inclusivity. I read the Reference and Counsel committee's recommendation more closely, and it was very thorough, listing every constitutional provision relating to "inclusivity and representation" in both the constitution and the LIFT report. It also made some specific promises about finding a way to make good on those promises.

When the next speaker spoke in favor of the recommendation, it started to become clear how that recommendation got to be so thorough. He was the author of the other amendment, another youth VM by the name of Peter C Aldrich. He approached the microphone with his thin laptop open to read his speech, looking very serious and intentional, one of the few people in the room wearing a tie. He explained how he had checked with the relevant committees and had found out that if his amendment went through, it would count as a "first reading", meaning that the change could not be adopted until the 2013 CWA, and so would not take effect until the Council elections during the 2016 CWA. They did not want to wait that long for a change, and the Reference and Counsel Committee had made a serious recommendation, so he was speaking in favor of that recommendation. During the speech, someone in the row behind me at the assembly whispered "that's the future of the Church, right there."

I was really impressed at the dedication to their cause, their willingness to navigate the bureaucracy, and to build relationships with church leaders to achieve their goals. I'd leave it at that, an inspiring story, perhaps contained in my great LIFT narrative about people becoming willing to trust people rather than structures and legislation, if they'd left it at that.

Apparently the spot I chose to sit to compose my blog posts tonight was an LYO (Lutheran Youth Organization) nexus, because I met a few of them and have been talking for a while. One of those is my third hero of the day, Matt Wertman, president of the LYO and a Voting Member from my sister synod in Virginia, who explained to me at great length a motion he was proposing to boost youth representation on Church Council and protect the LYO (which he sees as threatened). Furthermore, if it's worded as he's so clearly explained it, I'll vote for it too.

No, I haven't given up the LIFT ethos, but you'll have to stay tuned before I regale you with the full details, as I don't want to tip his hand.

Also I want to go to bed.

LIFT--It's starting to sink in

One of the most high-profile changes in LIFT was the change in schedule to have Churchwide Assemblies every three years rather than every two years. There were some people saying that we needed to be able to react quickly (these didn't gain traction), but most of the negative reaction seemed to be based on the social aspect--if we don't meet every two years, we'll lose networking opportunities, we won't see everyone, we won't be able to talk about mission with all of these far-flung Lutherans, etc. Lots of people praising the non-legislative aspects of CWA, at least a couple self-proclaimed procedure nerds confessing that they didn't think a biannual legislative gathering was strictly necessary, and LIFT representatives saying that there are other whole church meetings going on regularly (Youth Gathering and WELCA), and part of the point is to create some room for people to come together in non-legislative gatherings without the denomination pushing them together.

There was doubt for a while whether the change would pass (it needed 2/3), but it did handily, 783-185. I think this new way of thinking about church really has a shot at taking hold. People who hadn't questioned their own assumptions substituting legislative language for reality are beginning to take a chance on the project. It's a definite risk, but I for one would rather put my trust in people rather than bureaucratic structures.

It figures...

It figures that my first (perhaps only) trip to the floor to speak at this assembly would be a counterproductive waste of time, broadcast worldwide. Here's what happened, hopefully you'll get some amusement out of it.

This was after a few votes on LIFT proposals, which (as I may have mentioned), I'm following pretty closely. I was upset at this point, because the first successful amendment to a LIFT Implementing Resolution had gone through. Someone had inserted some innocuous but superfluous language into one of the resolutions, and I was scared. The LIFT project as I saw it was based around breaking the notion that if something was not included in legislative language, or had a bureaucratic institution nominally protecting it, that it wasn't a priority. As my bishop put it, "a lot of people here think that if if anything is going to happen, there has to be someone behind a desk in Chicago to make it happen." This change was pretty inoffensive on its own, but I was afraid it would open the floodgates, and once one special interest had been name-checked in a resolution, that would invite charges of neglect for every interest not specifically mentioned, and we'd be back to the norm of Christmas-tree legislation, human sacrifice, dogs and cats living together, mass hysteria...you get the point.

Another proposed amendment was under consideration, reading (with proposed changes in bold) "To request congregations be invited to take up to two years to examine the changing religious environment of their communities in order that, in collaboration with synods to begin, develop, review or redefine their unique mission plans by the end of 2013 [changed from 2012], so that..." this was sold as an extension of time, as it takes a lot of time to get things going in some congregations, and LIFT itself had two years, etc. I was indifferent to the date change, but that bit about "the changing religious environment" got to me. Once you include one criterion, you're inviting every priority one might want to consider in a mission plan to be added to the recommendation! And why did he have to delete the bit about synods to screw it up further? The recommendation must be kept inviolate!

Anyhow, after a bit more debate about the extension of the mission plan deadline (the other side: the "end of 2012" is certainly a reasonable deadline for any congregation to "begin" their unique mission plan, and by the way, aren't they supposed to have a mission plan already?), one clever Voting Member decided to amend the amendment by cutting out "to examine the changing religious environment of their communities", since "we seem to be debating the time extension, and this way we can just vote on that." Everyone seemed to go along with it, and Bishop Hanson was ready to move on when I had got up from my seat to explain that no, that amendment wouldn't put it right, that bit about synods was still gone from the original recommendations! But he looked away and was setting up the vote, so I went back to my seat, but some people waved me on, trying to get the Bishop's attention and telling me to get to the microphone. I did eventually, and it's a good thing I probably made no sense to anyone at the microphone, because once I got back I saw that no, he hadn't taken out that bit about synods. It was right there in the text, as obvious for me as it is for you reading this post. So I'd gotten up to speak against an amendment to an inconsequential amendment (the full amendment was voted down) which would have helped my cause, about which I was obviously and provably wrong. As I said, at least I couldn't put together a sentence in English to let everyone know I was wrong.

It's probably a coincidence, but after that I noticed most everybody using notes/written speeches when they approached the microphones.

LIFT-Abolishing Program Committees

There were two blocks of time during the Plenary session this morning devoted to LIFT: one for the LIFT recommendations and one for proposed LIFT Constitutional changes. At a certain point while we were debating proposed amendments to the recommendations, it came time on the schedule to discuss constitutional changes, so we shifted to that. I was initially surprised to hear that no amendments were on offer to the sections related to Program committees (I did a thumbnail sketch of that issue in a previous post). In brief, Program committees were church structures provided for in legislation as a guarantee that concerns in certain areas would be heard, e.g. Multicultural Ministries. The surprise didn't last though; unless someone wanted to change the recommendation to abolishing only some of the committees, the issue was a pretty clear up-or-down vote.

Bishop Boerger of the Northwest Washington Synod spoke first, in favor of abolishing the committees. He explained that it might seem odd, as he's the first to tell you that the west coast of the church needs more of a voice, but that no elected west coast representatives have reported back from meetings, and that the special designation does not work to effect advocacy (I think here he was speaking about the quota slots on the Church Council).

There were some objections, making the point that this is a change in structure, and that the structure helps define our priorities. One person suggested deferring a decision on this till 2013; after being told that that was out of order under the rules, he seemed to say that he realized that the Program committees weren't working as intended, but wondered whether the church had a strong enough cord tethering it to the priorities embodied in the committees to hold to them without those structures.

Speaking on behalf of the LIFT committee (here, and in the Hearing I mentioned previously) was my hero for the day, Linda Bobbitt. In the previous discussions about additions to LIFT recommendations, she was able to explain where in the report clergy support (for example) was discussed, and she was able to clearly articulate the principles behind the recommendations: The intention is not to abandon the work now delegated to the Program committees, but to do the tasks in a different way, not "isolated, hidden under bushels". When I found her in worship and thanked her for her clear and persuasive explanations of the proposals, she said she was often called upon as the most "plain-spoken" of the committee. I'd just call it eloquence. She has a clear mastery of the proposal, and has a gift for making the issues understandable in a few words.

When the question was finally called, we voted 890-69 to abolish the Program committees. I was at that moment very very impressed with what had been accomplished. This 1025-member legislative body presiding over a sizable bureaucracy had affirmed that:

These bureaucratic structures created for advocacy were means created for certain ends, not ends in themselves.

These bureaucratic structures aren't successful in achieving those ends.

Therefore, we should get rid of those structures, AND

We're going to wait at least till 2013 for alternative means to develop organically before even considering new legislative means to work toward the intended ends.

This was an amazing place to arrive, overcoming the institutional biases of expanding the institution and considering only solutions using the tools immediately available to this institution (i.e., writing new laws and creating new offices/committees). The entire process, from the formation of the LIFT Task Force, to their report and the Assembly's vote in favor of abolishing the committees, makes this as heroic an act as could be attributed to a legislative body/bureaucracy, in that it betrays its very nature in service to higher values. Honestly assessing whether the solutions we, "the highest legislative body of the ELCA," can immediately provide are equal to protecting the values we hold, and then when we find that they are not, to delegate the protection of those interests to those best able to do so, without restrictive instructions, requires great amounts of foresight, restraint, wisdom, and will from so many people, especially the LIFT task force, the officers of the church, and those with a nominal interest in the Program committees (but a greater interest in protecting the interests those committees nominally represent). I'm proud of the small part I played in putting the stamp of approval on this part of it after LIFT did the heavy work in pulling off a small bureaucratic miracle.

I hope that the rest of the LIFT recommendations/constitutional changes are put through, and that organic, bottom-up growth does happen in the space these bureaucratic entities previously occupied.

I have other things to write about, but I really should sleep too; I think this night would have been my best shot at a decent night's sleep, and it looks like I've failed in that respect. I'll have to think about how to do the rest of this report while keeping it timely and not losing the essentials.

One funny note on the proceedings: the Executive Director at some point in the discussion was touting the "Glocal" events they put on. I had to make sure I'd heard properly, and as it turns out, that was what I heard. What I thought was a parody of management-speak invented in the movie "Up in the Air" to perfectly straddle the line between plausible and laughable is actually a real made-up word, that people (even in the ELCA) use. It still sounds a little silly though, right?

Third Plenary

First of all, one funny note I neglected from last night: after all the talk surrounding the malaria project and before the end of the session, Bishop Hanson asked us to sing "Thy Holy Wings", which drew some snickers from the Church Council. He wasn't making a joke, but he did think it was funny after he said it.

One feature of this assembly has been all the swag we're accumulating. Yesterday we got a collapsing water bottle, today we got an insulated coffee mug, an insulated lunch bag, and a few other things. These are reusable, which means that instead of throwing them away, you keep them forever, storing them away with all of your other mugs/cups (as someone who has just moved house, I'm sensitive to such things). I'll keep you posted, and am contemplating building a little altar to sustainability at my seat tomorrow with all of it.

Bishop Hanson started the session by giving some instructions related to the votes for the day and testing out the voting machines.

"And now I'll hand it over to Vice President Pena"
"Ladies and Gentlemen, it is my pleasure to introduce Presiding Bishop Mark Hanson" (backing away and applauding)

So we got a rousing speech by Bishop Hanson to start off the day. He's a fan of throwing out applause lines, and only half-jokingly asks why he isn't getting "amens" in certain places. I've been consciously trying not to applaud ever, as I'm trying to do my part not to draw things out (today that didn't apply, since they ended up stalling to make sure there were copies of proposed amendments to the proposed LIFT changes for everyone), and also I don't entirely trust myself to remember not to applaud once speeches start happening (when they care about restricting applause). So if I am applauding, it's because either 1) I forgot I decided not to (this has happened a few times), or 2) if everyone is rising for a standing ovation (I don't have the personal strength to refuse to join in at that point).

River of Hope, the new ELCA church that was formed in Hutchinson when every ELCA church there voted to disaffiliate from the denomination, and their new pastor Laura Aase were name-checked in Bishop Hanson's address, and we got to see a picture of their parade float "Hope Floats" on the big screen. It was a nice mention.

My favorite story from Bishop Hanson during this talk was this: he was walking through an airport, and someone shouted across the hallway (noticing his collar and purple shirt): "Who are you a bishop of?"
"Lutherans!"
(louder)"WE LOVE LUTHERANS!"
"Who's we?"
"FEMA"
They talked for a minute, and according to this FEMA agent, Lutherans had the reputation of showing up immediately when disaster strikes, and sticking around till the work is done. It was definitely said to make us feel proud, and it sure worked!

As I mentioned, they were drawing things out to get paper copies of the proposed LIFT changes distributed, and Bishop Hanson asked us not to leave the hall while we were waiting (this failed). A couple of minutes later, he managed to round up the heads of the Memorials Committee to give their summary introduction early. This assembly, there are 97 memorials (recommendations for the assembly to act, given by synods within the church). A lot of them are grouped together and edited by the committee, and some are already being removed from en bloc consideration (so for example, all of a group of immigration memorials were to be grouped under a single vote, but one of those will now be considered separately).

Then we started on the main business of the morning, the LIFT proposals. There were seventeen proposed amendments to the implementing resolutions of the LIFT report. The Parliamentary Procedure got a little thick here, and some were having trouble keeping track. The situation was that there were recommendations from the LIFT report that people had to offer amendments for by last night. The Reference and Counsel Committee reviewed each of these suggested amendments and offered their recommendation for each (their count was 15). So as each issue came up, the question under discussion was whether to accept the Reference and Counsel Committee's recommendation for each item. If you wanted to discuss the actual amendment, or amend the amendment, one would first have to defeat the question on accepting the Committee's recommendation, and immediately propose the original amendment from the floor (this has not happened yet: so far, all of the Committee's recommendations have been followed.

The first group of proposed amendments (10 of them) dealt with Social Statements. One of the LIFT recommendations was (excepting the Genetics statement), to not consider any more Social Statements until at least 2013, by which time a review of how Social Statements are formed will have been completed. There was to be business later in the week related to Social Statements, so the recommendation here was to defer discussion of this recommendation and proposed amendments until that time. That course of action was approved.

The rest of the action related to recommendations (that we dealt with: we ran out of time), was mainly concerned with emphasis. One person thought that the importance of Pastoral development should have explicit mention in the recommendations. Another thought that relationships with institutions should be explicitly considered in the recommendations, etc. For each of these, the Reference and Counsel Committee said either that the recommendations were broad on purpose to be more flexible, or that the proposed additional content was already included in the recommendations or the report as a whole, so the proposed action was "to receive the proposed amendment with thanks" and to forward it to the body within the church responsible for dealing with the issue in question (e.g., the Church Council). Some objected, saying that more specific language was necessary for accountability. One Voting Member explicitly asked what happens to amendments that get forwarded: does the Council, etc., have to pay any attention to those? Bishop Hanson assured us that they did pay attention. Each of the recommendations to forward a proposed amendment, leaving the original recommendation unchanged, was passed by close to 2/3 of the assembly. This was very encouraging to me, and in keeping with the spirit of the LIFT report as I understand it so far. It was a willingness to give the Council and other bodies within the church more freedom to operate, and the initial institutional trust to discharge their duties well, taking into account the concerns of the assembly without needing the force of explicit legislative language as a guarantee. Of course, part of the motivation behind LIFT was the notion that protecting specific interests by legislative language and bureaucratic structures was both ineffective at promoting the interests in question and indeed could stifle the proper workings of the Church. So while it is a risk to give church officers more freedom and trust them to act properly, it was a risk taken with some judgment that the alternative had been tried, and had been a failure so far.

This led into the Program Committee discussion, which I'll handle in a separate post.

Second Plenary

We have another trivia question to test our voting machines again: What animal kills more humans annually than any other?
a. Sharks
b. Snakes
c. Mosquitoes
d. Humans

Those of us mindful of the upcoming business concerning the Malaria initiative knew the correct answer was Mosquitoes (though Bishop Hanson surprised us all by saying that #2 was Snakes).

We've at this point seen a few entries from various churches in a video contest around the theme of "Living Lutheran". The strongest so far, in my opinion, is from Shekinah Chapel.

The videos produced by the ELCA to accompany presentations are very strong. It seems odd, but the one accompanying presentation of the budget was my favorite. I hope those are available on the ELCA site somewhere (I will post a link if I find them).

We then get a non-flashy but very strong and informative introduction to the LIFT recommendations, and an even stronger one for the Genetics statement. There is a rallying speech in favor of the Malaria project (along with a very affecting video), along with someone in a mosquito costume roaming the floor and someone mentioning her church's clothes hanger mosquito video on YouTube (which I can't find at the moment). Someone makes a valid point about why the much cheaper and much more effective solution of pesticide spraying isn't being considered, and someone else raises the concern that separating out missional projects like this might detract from a sense of our total mission as a church, pitting charitable initiatives against each other in marketing wars. One misguided soul decided to make a backhanded swipe at the Genetics statement by asking if we were being consistent in fighting malaria and considering all of creation in "Do Unto Others..." as part of the Genetics statement ("I'm not saying we should vote against it...", he said, standing behind a microphone with a red sign saying "Oppose"). He may have inoculated the Assembly against what might have been a clever debating point in the context of discussion on the Genetics Social Statement. I see my bishop slowly inching up the comment line, and wonder what he has to say as time gets later (Bishop Hanson has already extended the time for ending the plenary session, and not for the last time). When he's finally recognized at the mic, he calls the question, and a chorus of "second!" erupts in the hall. My hero!

The approval of the malaria campaign sets the new benchmark for lopsided votes at 968-19.

That's it for the first night of posts, and on seeing how late it is, I'm not sure how much I'll do tomorrow night. I'll do my best to stay on top of it!

Starting Votes

At the Orientation for Voting Members, we are told that there are 1025 Voting Members signed up, most nominated by their Synods (I am here as a representative of the Crow River Conference in the SW MN Synod). As the first Plenary Session begins, our Secretary tells us that 964 of those have registered. We have a quorum!

Our Synod is seated at the very front of the Assembly, at the extreme right side. We get a good view of the journalist section and the rightmost of the huge screens.

To test the handheld electronic voting devices, Bishop Hanson asks some trivia questions. At first the highlighted answers are all the top vote getters, so I wonder if this isn't more of a Family Feud event (winning answers are the most popular) rather than Jeopardy (though one of my fellow Voting Members from our synod likes to sing a little variation on the Final Jeopardy music during votes). Then the last question has a highlighted (correct) answer that wasn't the top vote-getter. This made me wonder if later on there would be a vote on actual business that might be revealed that way: "The right answer was Yes, but you voted No."

We go on to discuss the rules of the Assembly. Someone from the Rocky Mountain Synod has a procedural question: he knows Social Statements need a 2/3 majority to be rescinded, but how about approved recommendations from Social Statements, is that just a simple majority? After a short conference, Bishop Hanson confirms that notion as accurate. Surely a portent of things to come, but I'm wondering how much chance of success he thinks he can expect, coming in cold and telegraphing his move so early. It seems like his opposition is pretty well-organized.

One light moment came after going through a summary of the rules of the Assembly: Secretary Swartling mentioned that in previous assemblies speeches from the floor had been limited to 3 or 4 minutes, but that by the end of the Assembly, this had invariably been reduced to 2 minutes. In the interest of keeping us on schedule and saving time, the allotment this time was 2 minutes from the beginning. One earnest VM thought 2 minutes wasn't enough time to express a complete thought, so we took that provision out to be considered separately, the voting member was asked to provide specific language, and our first vote was to approve the rest of the rules (958-29, I wonder sometimes about the rationale for the contrary 2-3%). We returned to the original VM, and he asked to change 2 minutes in the rules to 5 minutes. An instinctive, audible groan rippled through the assembly, prompting Bishop Hanson to say that rules against applause in response to floor speeches applied to saying Whuuuuh as well. Someone else spoke on behalf of the proposed change (it really is a short amount of time, it'll be hard if I have to do it), but it was voted down in the interests of running a timely Assembly.

Another proposed change was to delay consideration of LIFT proposals, scheduled for Tuesday morning, to happen Wednesday instead (to provide more time for outside deliberation, as the deadline for LIFT-related suggested changes was 9:30 and there was a lot to consider). That was voted down as well, in light of Bishop Hanson's point that the LIFT recommendations were scheduled early because they would influence consideration of other items.

During that session, we got an introductory presentation regarding LIFT that wasn't very informative at all, packed with relatively content-free high-flown rhetoric and inspiring slides. At one point they actually said their perspective rose "to the 35,000 foot level", a bit of management self-help jargon I did not expect to hear during these proceedings.

Morning-LIFT Hearing

If you talk to anyone who's at CWA, they'll be sure to impress upon you the full schedule. No side trips to Disney World for us; I doubt I'll leave the hotel for the 5 days of the Assembly. This day also starts pretty early for me: the travel agency booked me for a late arrival in Orlando, and in addition to that I spent a couple extra hours in Memphis when the connecting flight was delayed. By the time I got to my hotel room it was 2:00 this morning (I wanted to make sure I checked my email before barging in on my roommate, whom I'd never met, so late at night).

I an alarm for 7 so I could be sure to grab some breakfast and register in time for the hearings at 8:30. I was ready in time, but mistakenly went to the area for plenary sessions. Once I finally realized my mistake and organized my Asssembly stuff, it was almost time for the second round of hearings. I went to the LIFT hearing, as I'd heard some intriguing things about it, but was a bit overwhelmed by the scope of the project. I came away reassured about the direction of LIFT.

LIFT (Living Into the Future Together: Renewing the Ecology of the ELCA) is a project taken on in response to questions of how decisions are made in the church. It has really gotten legs; it's grown into quite a list of recommendations and constitutional changes, billed as a radical refocus on congregations as a denomination. Since the recommendations, if adopted, would change our consideration of other business so much, debate for the LIFT recommendations and proposed constitutional changes were front-loaded in the schedule for the assembly, and throughout the day we got many reminders that 9:30pm today was the latest they could take any proposed amendments relating to LIFT.

One interesting isolated concern relating LIFT was a question related to the schedule for future Churchwide Assemblies. One of the proposed changes is to have a CWA every 3 years instead of every two. The thinking behind this is that having big national church conflicts every couple of years is distracting from a focus on mission and local congregations. Also, it's expensive, and we don't need a national gathering that frequently (several other denominations meet every three years, or even less frequently). The question was: with a three-year schedule, does that mean we won't have to worry about doubling up on gatherings with WELCA or the Youth Gathering? Each of those are on a three-year schedule, and it was confirmed that if this provision goes through, the Youth Gathering will be in 2014, the Women's gathering will be in 2015, and CWA will be in 2016.

Most of the rest of questions focused on constitutional changes based on reorganization of the denomination. Under the recommendation, the Church Council will increase a bit in size, and will be given more latitude to select new members based on "demographics, experience, and expertise in Church Council responsibilities". As it is now, there are hard quotas in a few respects for several of the positions up for nominations: To pick out a couple of examples, there's a slate of candidates for a specific seat on the Church Council listed as "Clergy (Lower Susquehanna Synod, 8D)". Another seat on the council is listed as "Lay Female (PC/L)", meaning nominees for that seat would have to be female, not members of the clergy, and "people of color or whose primary language is other than English." Under the LIFT proposals, there would be more latitude in selecting members according to current needs of the Council. Some people were wary of this, one person flatly asserting that "experience and expertise" was code for excluding minorities and youth. However, under direct questioning, those on the council and those as a part of the LIFT Task Force made it quite clear that having all the groups represented was one of those needs they'd be attending to, and that one of the benefits for expanding the council would be to have all the demographic diversity they were looking for, and still have the flexibility to be able to recruit for specific skills as needs arise.

Other controversial proposed changes were the intention to reduce the group of paid advisory members to the Church Council, and to do away with Program committes. This, in combination with a proposed larger Church Council, was viewed by some as promoting a more top-down model of the Church, which is at variance with the stated intention of the LIFT report. In talking about the paid advisory members, there was some discussion of wanting to "increase participation", the subtext (I thought it was pretty clear, though I could be wrong) being that they weren't getting much in the way of information or advice from these members generally. This made intuitive sense to me, as I could see how if you wanted to make sure certain voices were heard, that hiring a designated paid advocate to represent that constituency probably wouldn't be the most effective option. Similarly, as far as the Program committees are concerned, a LIFT Task Force representative made the point that grassroots activists would be more effective organizing themselves and getting the attention of the Church Council as issues arise rather than forming their petitions around a semiannual meeting for the Program committee intended to represent the designated community.

Most of the challenges seemed to me to center around the idea that if these quotas/representatives/committees were not built into the constitutional language, that such groups would not have a voice. I was persuaded from those living under the current arrangement that having these was no guarantee of those groups having an effective voice, and that institutionalizing these concerns could actually stifle advocacy. One of the questioners worried that we wouldn't be leaving room for the Spirit to work by getting rid of these committees. This struck me as exactly wrong, as the system as it is now is very law-based. It is a law based on legitimate concerns, certainly, and the Spirit can work even with red tape. But imposing multiple demographic restrictions on certain seats and setting up official bureaucratically-approved channels for issue advocacy pretty obviously gives the Spirit less wiggle room to work with, right?

Hello?

It's been a long time!

As you know, I haven't updated in a while, fulfilling any of my ambitions to "think aloud" through the assembly documents publicly before the big event. After having looked for a while at the mocking weekly reminders on my Google Calendar to update the thing, I was ready to scrap this blog as a failed experiment, but since I arrived at CWA there has been enough noteworthy going on to convince me to make this into a report on the proceedings from a participant's perspective rather than primarily an analysis of the business being discussed. Hope you enjoy it!

I could provide a long list of excuses for you (chief among them: in the last 10 weeks we were notified by our landlord that they were selling the property, we found a new house, and moved), but it's still unfortunate. I do regret at least not putting up a more thorough, specific discussion of the Genetics document. To give you the short summary, I was leaning against, until the first part of the very impressive introduction to the statement at tonight's second plenary session (once reminded of specific content, I went back to leaning against). I might explain more fully depending on how late I'm staying up.

Stick around for some posts on the first day's business.

Voting Member meeting roundup

Last Tuesday there was another meeting for voting members in my synod (Southwest MN). My regular life has gotten much busier in the meantime, which accounts for the delay here. As I mentioned, I can't promise dates for future posts, but I can say with reasonable confidence that they will be irregular (in bunches, that is).

One of our voting members is Linden Olson, who served on the Task Force writing the Genetics statement. He gave us an abbreviated version of the presentation he has been using to introduce the statement in talks. He did take questions; he said that in the earliest drafts there was much more of a focus on human experimentation/genetics, but the agriculture experts helped refocus that, making the point that genetic adjustments in agriculture can affect many more people in a very short period of time. I asked whether there was much difference between the original public draft statement on Genetics and the current version, and Linden and the bishop agreed that it was much shorter in the current version and that the structure of the document was different, but Linden did not think that anything important was changed content-wise, just that it was a better, more concise statement after the editing process. Something I meant to ask, but couldn't because of time pressure, was who the specific recommendations are for in this statement (apart from the recommendations on funding). It seemed to me that in many places the statement was trying to contextualize practices (using our own ethical vocabulary) which had already been tested and vetted in the context of a very mature regulatory structure (a friend of mine who has drafted guidelines for working with animals has told me as much). He did provide part of an answer to that in another question however, saying that while we in the USA operate under a firm regulatory structure, this does not hold for experimentation in other countries or for the use of the the products of US genetic research in other countries, which is a fair point.

Another item discussed was the LIFT Task Force recommendations. I'd mentioned previously (about a month ago) that I was interested in it but I couldn't find anything about it, and that the part of the ELCA website devoted to actions of the upcoming assembly did not provide a link. Well, there is a link now with links to all the relevant documents, and it seems like they are (contrary to my original assumption) making every effort to advertise their work. They have a blog, a facebook page, and even a twitter account. I think after the Genetics statement, I'll go straight to the LIFT Task Force recommendations, as they seem to be potentially the most important for the future of the ELCA. Word at the meeting was that the recommendations represent a radical shift in the orientation of the ELCA toward the support of congregations, which our Bishop sees as encouraging: he sees a deep mutual distrust between many congregations and the national church, which at least here has often been able to distract from the church's mission in this part of the state.

Also mentioned briefly was the fact that there will be discussion of a motion to rescind the 2009 Sexuality statement and associated resolutions at the CWA. Southwest MN was considered a likely place for such a resolution to arise (our Synod Assembly has not yet taken place), but another synod has put it on the agenda.

Everyone else at the meeting was going to be at Synod Assembly this coming weekend (I will be unable to attend), so I hope they will keep me updated on any new information.

Social Statements: What are they good for? Part 2

Sorry to everyone anxiously awaiting my next post, I decided to let this notion bake a little more. I'll try to be less glib about post forecasting in future.

So the question on the table is, why don't the ELCA's Social Statements have more of an impact, at least for members of the ELCA? Since I was already in mind of Dr. Burtness, I started thinking of the question as framed by the introductory Ethics courses I'd taken. There are a few generally recognized approaches to ethical issues, so let's look at them and see how helpful ELCA-style Social Statements are in light of these approaches. I'll take them one at a time:

Virtue Ethics

Virtue (or Character) Ethics is an approach to ethical issues based on acquiring a habit of virtue. That is, one becomes virtuous by doing as well as you can until being virtuous becomes second nature and even more virtuous living is possible. Likewise one's ability to judge the right course of action is improved the more you do good. If you're confused about a proper course of action, you probably wouldn't have as much trouble if you were in better moral shape. There's a lot of esoteric discussion about this approach (Aristotle is recognized as its originator), but there is wide popular support as well (think of the WWJD phenomenon). Quite a lot of ELCA Lutheranism is constitutionally opposed to this kind of thinking about ethics however; try starting a conversation about the Third Use of the Law in the Luther Seminary cafeteria if you don't believe me. I think there is much to be said for this approach as long as it's recognized that being habitually virtuous doesn't make one righteous before God or justify the sinner, but many view any discussion along those lines by Christians as at least on a slippery slope to preaching works righteousness.

In any case, a Social Statement would have limited value from a virtue ethics perspective, as according to this view the expertise necessary to deal with the big ethical issues comes from living out an ethical life, or in a more limited way, from emulating those who are more virtuous. In the ELCA's case, the Social Statements we write are short on practical directives (I believe in part to avoid offending people by telling them what to do), and while it's common for statements to have sidebars detailing a situation someone might find him or herself in related to the issue in question, I can't recall one where the subject of the example was presented as someone to emulate. Neither can I recall an example where someone makes a decision or acts beyond the posing of the question.

Deontological Ethics

The root for the first part of this term is the Greek word deon, meaning duty. The main idea here is that there are certain rules for moral behavior that ought not be violated, and that these are more or less clear to everyone. For the Christian, these rules would be represented by, but not limited to, the Ten Commandments. On the other hand, what is neither prohibited nor commanded can be assumed to be permitted: that is, one doesn't need to worry about moral content in the mundane details of life outside of one's ethical duty.

As for how this ethical approach would receive the idea of hashing out social statements in assembly, I doubt it would be favorably: "So you guys read a report, and on that basis you take a vote on what's right or wrong this year? That's different.*" From a deontological perspective, a discussion of an ethical issue properly consists of what is commanded and what is prohibited, and people with this tendency can be roused to action if a Social Statement at odds with their principles is being considered. However, since ELCA Social Statements tend to avoid explicit commands and rules, they are mainly viewed as safe to ignore.

Situation Ethics

This ethical approach concerns itself primarily with the context of the decision to be made, usually in reference to an all-important principle. For example: Joseph Fletcher, the Episcopal priest who coined the term "Situation Ethics", declared "Love" to be the overriding principle, so for him the question to be asked for any ethical dilemma was how, in the given situation, love could best be served. Ethical rules can be employed and consulted, but in this view they take on the flavor of "guidelines" or "rules of thumb", since everything should be subordinated to the facts of the situation and the principle in question.

ELCA-style Social Statements would seem to be a poor fit from this perspective; contextual realities can be discussed (as in the previously mentioned sidebars), but at such a distance from any deciding subject, a Social Statement would be of limited help in assessing an actual extreme situation or setting it next to the principle in question (that is, if the Social Statement and the deciding subject were to agree on principles!).

Teleological Ethics

The Greek root for the first part of "Teleological" is telos, meaning end or goal. In this ethical perspective, we should act in a way that would produce the best end, and this is usually decided with some difficulty, as it requires some deliberate thought and a bit of predicting the future. There is also the matter of choosing proper ends to judge the results of your actions against. So in teleological reasoning, especially of the Christian variety, you will often find "natural law" discussions about what the proper end is of a given part of creation or institution. For example, Catholic teaching on sexuality relies heavily on natural law arguments: what is the purpose of our sexual organs? What is marriage and what is it for? After reasoning to a proper context and role of sexual expression, rules are then decided for those who are unable to achieve the ideal. Another feature of this form of ethical reasoning is its all-encompassing nature: mundane actions can have consequences with moral content, and just about any action could have been done better, with more forward thought involved, and producing better results. So we are in a position of constantly weighing relative goods, or at times choosing the lesser evil. Most of the time, we aren't afforded such a clear choice as what is "the right thing to do" or "the wrong thing."

This form of reasoning is perfectly suited to the the crafting of Social Statements as we have them in the ELCA: long discussions about what our values are and how we fulfill them, discussions about how the topic of the statement has far-reaching implications, and how Christians can best respond to those issues. I would go so far as to say that production of such statements are a natural outgrowth of this ethical perspective: this kind of analysis is hard work, and to do that work on behalf of others who don't have the resources and/or ability to put it together on their own would enable many others to make more ethical decisions, which would be an end worth achieving.

The problem is, most people don't think about ethics this way, and I doubt that the ELCA wishes to establish one ethical paradigm as normative (though reading through the Genetics document, there are claims along those lines; more on that later). If I had to guess, I'd say most people, even in the ELCA, look at ethical problems from a deontological perspective, and look at the specific directives/recommendations of any Statement in question, deciding whether to approve them on that basis: if the document doesn't have directives/prohibitions that that person agrees with, the document is inoffensive at best and unacceptable at worst. That audience of readers who are aware of the documents, share the teleological perspective of ethics and don't think they already have the issue figured out by themselves is a small one, and so the potential benefit from the work of those who write our Social Statements remains low.

For those in the Assembly who don't share that perspective, the institutional bias seems to be to vote in favor of adopting the document unless there is a flaw so egregious as to disqualify it from consideration. This has led, even with sizeable majorities voting for the documents, to many people feeling dissatisfied and unheard: these same people may approve documents they view as inoffensive enough, but which don't represent their perspective.

What's the solution to this? I really don't know. As I've said, the genre of the Social Statement naturally lends itself to a teleologically-minded treatment of the subject, and I'm not sure that there's a more intellectually inclusive way of doing it. Encouraging the statement of more concrete, generally-applicable commands and prohibitions would certainly garner more attention for the documents, but that doesn't look like a direction anyone wants to go. At the moment, I'm pinning my hopes on some people in the Communal Discernment Task Force having similar thoughts and coming up with some great new paradigm-shifting ideas, but I'm not counting on that. I just wanted to get this (now slightly more than) half-baked notion about what the current status of Social Statements is in the ELCA at large before I tackled the proposed Genetics statement.

And there is a lot to talk about in that document! In an effort to not embarrass myself further, I promise to start blogging about it "soon". If you want to be sure to catch these posts as they come, click the subscribe link below.

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*"That's Different" is the highest expression of disapprobation available in the native rural Minnesotan dialect; feel free to adjust for regional differences.

Social Statements: What are they good for? Part 1

I mentioned I had some half-baked notions about Social Statements in general before diving into the Bioethics statement on Friday; here they are.

I was lucky enough to have a couple of Ethics classes with the late Dr. James Burtness at Luther Seminary, and in his Intro courses he would tell the class about when he took a guiding role in the drafting of the ELCA Social Statement on Abortion. It had the flavor of an epic in his telling, which sounds odd but the facts bear him out: if you're exercising the office of an Ethics professor at a seminary, this is as close to Achilles as one could expect to be, unless you're Dietrich Bonhoeffer (coincidentally a special favorite of Dr. Burtness).

From the composition of the group, Dr. Burtness suspected that there was an intended outcome on one side of the issue (the initial viewpoints were diverse but lopsided in his account). As they were making attempts to start a discussion, Dr. Burtness got up and asked if there was anyone who thought an ectopic (tube) pregnancy had an absolute right to be born. When no one raised his or her hand, he made a mark at the edge of the board he was standing next to. He then asked if anyone thought a woman in labor after 9 months of pregnancy with no health risks due to pregnancy and a healthy fetus had an absolute right to an abortion. When again no hands were raised he made a mark at the other end of the board. He then declared the existence of common ground: all that was left was to hash out the middle portion, between those marks.

Thus began months of intense and often angry debate, and more than once people went home crying. After much effort, they drafted a measured and nuanced document presented with the unanimous approval of the committee. There were amendments offered at the Churchwide Assembly, but the amendments were voted down and the statement was adopted unaltered.

What happened next?

Well, since presumably most of you reading are ELCA, and since the Statement was in some sense for you, I could leave the question for you:

• Has the Statement changed the way you think about abortion?
• Does the Statement at least inform the way you think about abortion?
• If someone from a different church asked you what the ELCA teaches about abortion, how would the Social Statement inform that answer as you gave it?
• Have you read the Social Statement?
• Have you heard the Social Statement mentioned in preaching or discussions with fellow Lutherans since the year it was approved (1991)?
• and the last in a scary series of questions for those involved in drafting Statements like this one: Are you aware that the ELCA has a Social Statement on abortion?

You might think that last question is going too far, but I suspect that there's an ample number of relatively well-informed ELCA members who are not aware of that Social Statement. Speaking for myself, at the time I heard Dr. Burtness's story, I'd heard that we had such a statement but had not read it. The couple of people referencing the Statement that I remember (1 pastor, 1 professor) characterized it as permissive or "for" abortion, and while I wouldn't characterize the Statement that way I don't think their inferences were borne of bad faith or were without foundation. And this is on the ultimate national hot-button social issue of the day for the last 40 years. What about the rest of our 10(!) Social Statements? Feel free to brag in the comments if you can name the subject of 8 of them without peeking (I've given you a free one). I only just managed to myself, and I've visited that page several times today and over the past week.

I haven't yet read the "Policies and Procedures of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America for Addressing Social Concerns", which should provide some clarity on the intended role of Social Statements generally in the ELCA. Before I do that, in my next post I'll give my current impressions of why it is that social teaching in the ELCA seems to go unheard and unheeded. Evidence to the contrary would also be welcome, but I don't think it's just me!

Note about the delay

I had a preliminary post ready to go last night, and shortly before I tried to post it blogger went down. In the meantime I split off part of that post, and started a couple of other preliminary posts.

Since I think this will flow better if I hold to one post per day (also since I have quite a bit of home/church related stuff to prepare for this weekend), I'll post my initial teaser for the general Social Statement discussion, and after that one post per day until the main discussion of the Bioethics document.

A bit more focus

So if you were wondering what what was in that 5-inch binder filled a bit over its capacity with double-sided letter-size sheets, several examples of that kind of thing are available here. That's a list of highlights of what's going to be in the pre-assembly report for this year, and it's where I'm beginning my investigation.

For next Friday's regular post, I thought I'd dive right in to the statement on Bioethics, since it seems to be the highest profile bit of business before the Assembly to this observer (not saying I expect it to be the source of most contention). Before that I may post some half-baked notions I've been mulling over about social statements in general; I figure it would be better to compose them before looking at the material too deeply, that way if I'm repudiated by the facts it might be instructive to some readers.

After that, the Malaria statement looks superficially like a straightforward read, but in these next couple of weeks, I expect to be looking into the LIFT task force recommendations and especially the Communal Discernment Task Force recommendations if I can find them, as they could potentially be contentious and very difficult to assess. If anyone out there can provide me with some idea of what people are talking about with regard to these items, I'd be grateful.

I'm still a bit overwhelmed with the volume of material we're expected to evaluate. At the meeting of VMs for our synod, I asked if these items would be available electronically. The answer was a qualified yes: they would be available electronically, but at the last CWA (where the big sexuality statement decisions were made), laptops and other electronic devices were not permitted on the floor, in order to preempt any attempts at coordination by demonstrators. It remains to be seen whether they will be allowed this year; it would be nice, if we are to read and process that much information, that we at least wouldn't be required to carry it around in printed form all week.

Who I am, and why I'm here

My name is Michael Cumings, and I've been elected a Voting Member of the 2011 ELCA Churchwide Assembly from the Crow River Conference of the Southwest MN Synod. Up front I want to make clear that unless it's otherwise made clear, all the opinions expressed in the main posts are my own, and not necessarily those of any congregation, church body or organization.

Being "on my own" is in fact part of the job, and in fact part of why I've started this blog. A "Voting Member" is not a delegate or representative, and is not expected to reflect the interests of any constituency within the ELCA. Nevertheless, the CWA is the "highest legislative authority" in the ELCA, and there will be a lot of business to decide. At about the 1 minute mark of this orientation video, VMs are asked to "study carefully and reflect prayerfully" on agenda items and items in the Pre-Assembly report. I have seen one of those Reports from a previous assembly, and it was in a binder at least 5 inches thick, filled to above capacity. I imagine it would be pretty easy to give up and be a rubber stamp for the good people who'd spent time drafting these documents, or alternatively to dismiss their efforts based on how they are presented at assembly rather than the substance of the documents.

To make sure that I consider the substance of the issues in question, it struck me that the best way was to be publicly accountable for this preparation: to discuss these issues in a public way and ask for input. It bears repeating at this point that I'm not going to CWA to represent the consensus or majority on any of these issues, and I wish to add that I may not even disclose how I intend to vote in my discussions here. But I would like to know before going to the Assembly that 1) I've considered what I need to consider, and 2) I haven't completely missed the point in these considerations.

After a meeting with the other VMs in the Synod this week, I mentioned to my wife that I was intending to start this blog, framing it in a concern for not wanting to be manipulated at the assembly. Her response was "so you want to be manipulated beforehand?" It was a good comeback, and I had to admit that being manipulated per se is not my fear. Knowing that church gatherings can be heady times, my fear is that I will be unprepared, and led in the moment to an outcome which I wouldn't have come to had I fulfilled my charge to study and reflect.

I won't limit myself to discussions of documents at the assembly this year, but that will be the main focus. The plan is to have at least one update a week, and I'll set Friday as my arbitrary deadline there. To be notified of updates when they happen, subscribe! And of course, I'm eager to hear your comments on anything I put up here (I reserve the right to moderate, hopefully that won't be necessary apart from the inevitable blog spam).