This needs to be forwarded to the Catholic Synod

This is what apostasy looks like

The Diocese of Västerås, a division of the Church of Sweden, is now giving away an LGBTQ guide for "Christian queer kids." Bible-believing Christians may be stunned to hear that this extreme guide describes Jesus as "queer" and Joseph as transvestite.

Read the rest here.
HT: Dr. Tighe

Lutheran Minister: Porn is OK if "ethically sourced"

From the "you can't make this up" file.

HT: Blog reader Tim

Is the Pope Catholic?

Apparently Catholics are not the only ones opining on that question...

Catholics and Lutherans pledge to work for inter-communion

At the conclusion of a historic ecumenical celebration in Lund, Sweden, Pope Francis and the general-secretary of the world's Lutheran churches agreed to work together for a shared Eucharist.

Pope Francis and the global Lutheran leader have jointly pledged to remove the obstacles to full unity between their Churches, leading eventually to shared Eucharist.

They made the commitment in a joint statement signed before a congregation of Catholic and Lutheran leaders at the conclusion of a joint service in Lund, Sweden, to commemorate the 500th anniversary of the start of the Reformation.

The statement was signed by Pope Francis and Bishop Munib Younan, who is president of the Lutheran World Federation (LWF), which was founded in Lund in 1947. After they finished signing, the congregation stood for a long round of applause as the two leaders hugged each other.

The two leaders appeared to single out married couples where one partner is Catholic and the other Lutheran. “Many members of our communities yearn to receive the Eucharist at one table, as the concrete expression of full unity,” they noted.

“We experience the pain of those who share their whole lives, but cannot share God’s redeeming presence at the Eucharistic table,” they said, adding: “We acknowledge our joint pastoral responsibility to respond to the spiritual thirst and hunger of our people to be one in Christ.”

“We long for this wound in the Body of Christ to be healed,” they continued. “This is the goal of our ecumenical endeavors, which we wish to advance, also by renewing our commitment to theological dialogue.”

Read the rest here.

Pope in Sweden could break ground on inter-communion, bishop says

The English bishop William Kenney is a key figure in the official Catholic-Lutheran dialogue, and will be with Pope Francis in Sweden at the end of the month. He believes unity is a matter of decades away, and it's possible that Francis may use the trip to make a gesture on inter-communion.

To describe English bishop William Kenney as an “auxiliary of Birmingham” doesn’t capture the depth and range of his longstanding roles in pan-European church bodies - for two terms, for example, he was president of Caritas Europe, and he played a key role in organizing relief efforts for former Soviet countries following the collapse of the Berlin Wall.

Next week he will be part of a small, inner core at the joint Catholic-Lutheran commemoration of the five-hundredth anniversary of the Reformation for which Francis will be going to Sweden. It’s the first visit by any pope to Scandinavia since John Paul II’s 1989 visit, which Kenney, incidentally, coordinated.

A fluent Swedish-speaker who spent 37 years in Sweden, Kenney  - who also speaks good German -  has long been involved with ecumenical dialogues at the inter-Nordic level, especially in the formal dialogue between Catholics and Lutherans. In 2013 he was appointed by the Holy See as co-chair of the international dialogue between the Lutheran World Federation and the Vatican’s Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity.

Recently he sat down with Crux in London to talk through the background to the event, the dialogue that’s expected to take place, and what Pope Francis might do or say to take it to a new level...

Read the rest here.

Swedish church leaders oppose support for persecuted Christians

Liberal Church leaders in Sweden have opposed an initiative aimed at showing support for persecuted Christians. After the murder of French priest Father Jacques Hamel by jihadists in July three Swedish priests started an initiative called Mitt kors (“My cross”) in which Swedish Christians took “selfies” with a cross to show solidarity with persecuted Christians. However, the initiative has been attacked by liberal church leaders apparently concerned that it might offend Muslims! The head of communications for the Church of Sweden even called it “seditious and un-Christian”. The Church of Sweden's attacks on the "My cross" initiative continued until one of the priests who had started it publicly left the Church of Sweden. In a newspaper article, Johanna Andersson, the priest who has resigned wrote:

"Church leadership has for several weeks been running a campaign against us who started the group 'My cross.' In this campaign, I have been discredited, called 'questionable', 'unclean', 'agitator', 'un-Christian' and attributed xenophobic hidden agendas."

Read the rest here.
HT: Dr. Tighe

You just can't make this up.

ELCA approves Lutheran-Catholic ecumenical document

​NEW ORLEANS (Aug.10, 2016) – The 2016 Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA) Churchwide Assembly took several significant steps Wednesday moving forward the mission of this church as a church for the sake of the world.

By a vote of 931 to 9, the assembly overwhelmingly accepted the "Declaration on the Way," a unique ecumenical document that marks a path toward greater unity between Catholics and Lutherans. Following the vote, an emotional assembly stood to applaud the momentous decision.

At the heart of the document are 32 "Statements of Agreement" that state where Lutherans and Catholics do not have church-dividing differences on topics about church, ministry and the Eucharist. More tentatively, the document also explores differences that remain.

Read the rest here.

World's First Lesbian Bishop Calls for Church to Remove Crosses, to Install Muslim Prayer Space

The Bishop of Stockholm has proposed a church in her diocese remove all signs of the cross and put down markings showing the direction to Mecca for the benefit of Muslim worshippers.

Eva Brunne, who was made the world’s first openly lesbian bishop by the church of Sweden in 2009, and has a young son with her wife and fellow lesbian priest Gunilla Linden, made the suggestion to make those of other faiths more welcome.

The church targeted is the Seamen’s mission church in Stockholm’s eastern dockyards. The Bishop held a meeting there this year and challenged the priest to explain what he’d do if a ship’s crew came into port who weren’t Christian but wanted to pray.

Calling Muslim guests to the church “angels“, the Bishop later took to her official blog to explain that removing Christian symbols from the church and preparing the building for Muslim prayer doesn’t make a priest any less a defender of the faith. Rather, to do any less would make one “stingy towards people of other faiths”.

Read the rest here.

The LCMS Calls a Post a Post

If the role of religion in America today is to teach the faithful to bend over and kiss the ring of postmodernity and beg for forgiveness for actually believing something, the Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod just failed spectacularly, flubbed its lines, and fell off the stage. I, for one, am elated. 

Tuesday’s St. Louis Post-Dispatch revealed the grand faux pas with this somewhat ironic lede: “The Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod recently carried out what various members consider the equivalent of a modern-day heresy trial.” 

My enthusiasm is, of course, mixed with sadness. The Rev. Dr. Matthew Becker (the hero/victim of the breathlessly Hawthornean Post-Dispatch piece) has agitated against the church’s plainly worded doctrinal statements, to which he was bound, for many years, and should have been removed from the LCMS’s clergy roster a long time ago. Though he teaches at Valparaiso University, which is not affiliated with the LCMS, he has managed to maintain his status on the clergy roster, despite several previously unsuccessful attempts to remove him. Tuesday’s news is therefore a victory for orthodoxy. Nonetheless it is tragic to witness a man persisting in promoting false and harmful doctrine, and tragic to see him face the consequences. And yes, the rich etymology of tragic traces back to the Greek tragos, which means “goat,” and yes, the sheep needed to be separated from this one.

Read the rest here.
HT: Dr. Tighe

Some welcome news from our Reformed Protestant brothers and sisters and a break from the almost unending stream of bad news from the mainline denominations.

Another Scandal in the Finnish Orthodox Church

Helsinki: Orthodox Metropolitan Ambrosius of Helsinki of the Finnish Orthodox Church invited Female Evangelical Lutheran bishop Irja Askola to Altar with him during Clergy ordination at the Sunday Divine Liturgy. This has sparked much controversy. He also ordered the Deacons to pray for the Lutheran woman bishop during litany. This has angered several Orthodox faithful. Archbishop Leo- Primate of the Finnish Orthodox Church has condemned the incident and has asked Metropolitan to clarify the issue before considering any measures against him. Major Finnish newspapers have reported the incident. Archbishop Leo have released an official statement on the controversial incident which is available at the official website of the Finnish Church.

From here.
More links can be found at the referring website.

Anaxios!

Open letter from ELCA Bishop to LGBT Community

Dear friends,
You are welcome in congregations of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA).

We are a church that believes it is wrong to discriminate against anyone based on sexual orientation. All are welcome. We celebrate diversity.

While Lutherans in the U.S. are not of one mind about sexual orientation, the ELCA, the largest Lutheran denomination in North America, has taken a stand as an open, affirming church where all are welcome.

Read the rest here if you must.

It seems like all of the mainline Protestant churches have jumped off of a tall building, and are racing each other to the sidewalk below. See also this related piece.

Gay Marriage Acceptance by Finnish Lutheran Archbishop Prompts Mass Resignations

I am not sure about the term "mass resignations," but some 8,000 people did resign from the state church over the weekend. At least that's something.

Read the story here.

First Things: How Sex is Derailing Lutheran-Orthodox Dialogue

...A year earlier, the election of a woman as head bishop of the Evangelical Church in Germany (EKD) brought a quick rebuke from the Russian Orthodox Church. “We planned to celebrate the 50th anniversary of our dialogue with the Lutheran Church in Germany in late November or early December,” Metropolitan Hilarion of Volokolamsk noted at the time. “The 50th anniversary of the dialogue will become the end of it.” The EKD eventually canceled celebrations altogether when Metropolitan Hilarion decided not to attend.

Not long after that declaration, Metropolitan Hilarion summarized the problems at play in Orthodox-Lutheran dialogue in an interview with Der Spiegel. “Many Protestant churches have liberalized their notions of ethics, giving a theological justification to homosexuality and blessing same-sex couples,” he said. “Some refuse to consider abortion to be a sin. We do not share the understanding of the Church and church order, especially as the Protestants, unlike the Orthodox and Catholic Churches, ordain women.”

Likewise, a 2011 Inter-Orthodox evaluation of dialogue between the Orthodox and the LWF on the global level noted similar issues straining relations. “The ordination of women on all levels of clerical orders,” it wrote, “is a clear deviation from Christian practice,” as is “the emergence of a new moral-code concerning human sexuality and especially homosexual relations.” “In the eyes of most Orthodox,” the report continued, “these new ecclesiological and controversial anthropological innovations in the Lutheran world constitute radical challenges and serious obstacles to the Orthodox-Lutheran theological dialogue and to its original aim, namely, the promotion of mutual ecclesial rapprochement and, eventually, of Church unity.” While the report recognized much good had come from discussion with the LWF, it nevertheless concluded that issues like women’s ordination and innovative teachings on human sexuality “call into question the value of much that we have achieved in our dialogue.” “Lutherans should understand,” the report continues, “that these issues are major difficulties in our dialogue and may jeopardize its continuation and success.”

Read the rest here.

Of course it is not "sex" that is derailing the dialogue, but rather the obstinate and determined embrace of heresy.

New Swedish Archbishop Prefers Allah

From here.
HT: MCJ

The Dhimmi Church of Sweden

...a controversy has arisen in Sweden over the inability of candidates for the office archbishop in the Swedish Church to affirm that Jesus Christ presented a truer picture of God than Mohammed.

One of the illustrious clerics who seemed all too willing to blur the distinctions between Christianity and Islam was the front-runner Antje Jackelén, who has since been elected to become the new archbishop. Our Swedish correspondent LN has translated several articles about the controversy, beginning with an overview of the theologian Eva Hamberg, who left the church rather than be a party to the encroachment of “Chrislam”.

Unfortunately, like so many other Scandinavian institutions — political parties, media outlets, and most private charitable organizations — the Swedish church is state-funded. This means that most non-state alternatives are competitively hobbled, and remain largely vestigial. Ms. Hamberg may thus find it hard to obtain a new, paying position in any non-PC Christian church in Sweden.

Read the rest here.

Gay Lutheran Bishop Presides at Revisionist Worship Service

The Evangelical Lutheran Church in America’s (ELCA) first openly gay bishop, Guy Erwin, presided over a highly heterodox worship service on August 14, 2013, during ELCA’s 2013 Churchwide Assembly in Pittsburgh.  Erwin’s subsequent dismissal of the service’s doctrinal significance notwithstanding, the bishop’s presence amidst such liturgical revisionism raises disturbing questions about proper theological formation in the ELCA.

This Festival Worship took place in the Omni William Penn Hotel’s Grand Ballroom after the ELCA assembly’s events had concluded that day in the David L. Lawrence Convention Center blocks away.  For the unsuspecting churchgoer, the service’s liturgical program printed by the gay Lutheran groups hosting the worship,ReconcilingWorks and Extraordinary Lutheran Ministries, was jarring.  The service’s “Thanksgiving for Baptism,” for example, invokes the “triune God” not under the formulation given by Jesus in the Gospels of “Father, Son, and Holy Ghost/Spirit,” but rather “Creator, Christ, and Holy Spirit.”

Any adherent of orthodoxy like me, accustomed to the Anglican 1928 Book of Common Prayer (BCP), would be flabbergasted by the program’s “Affirmation of Faith.”  This apparent reworking of Christianity’s basic statement of faith, the Nicene Creed invokes again a non-gendered “God” as opposed to the creed’s “Father Almighty” in the 1928 BCP translation.  Likewise, the God who “came to us in human form—Jesus” receives no gender designation as the “only-begotten Son of God.”

Read the rest here.

Another Mainline Protestant denomination circles the drain...

I didn't know...

...that the Lutherans (ELCA) were marrying homosexuals too. I must have missed that doctrinal revision. But there have been so many it's really hard to keep up.

Church of Sweden Members Unlikely to "Believe in Jesus"

Only 15 percent of members of the Church of Sweden say they believe in Jesus, and an equal number claim to be atheists according to the results of a recent survey.

"It's not very high," Jonas Bromander, an analyst with the Church of Sweden who was responsible for the study, told The Local in reference to the figure.

"It's not really a problem; rather, it’s a byproduct of the secularisation in Swedish society which has taken place over many years."

More than 10,000 members of the Swedish Church participated in a comprehensive membership survey carried out over the past year and dubbed "Member 2010" (Medlem 2010).

According to the survey, 15 percent of church members they are atheists, while a quarter of Swedish Church members identify themselves as agnostic.

Read the rest here.

Lutherans trying to keep up with the Episcopalians

A production of the Ebenezer Lutheran (ELCA).

The Christian-Lutheran Feminist/Womanist/Mujerista Movements exist to celebrate the feminine persona of God/dess and dimensions of the sacred as expressed in faith, worship, learning, mutual care, and acts of justice.

From their website.