Congregations should not allow the issue of human sexuality to split the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America church, the denomination's head bishop says.
Mark Hanson told a pastors' conference that the church's 5.1 million members face a challenge to "talk openly with one another, to disagree with one another about human sexuality and, more particularly, the place of gay and lesbian people in our congregations and ministry."
He noted that work has begun on a study document on homosexual policy, authorized by the churchwide assembly two years ago and due to be finished in time for the 2005 assembly.
If the Lutherans simply await the 2005 assembly's decision and then react, "we will have a divided church," he said.
Meanwhile, Hanson's predecessor as presiding bishop, Herbert Chilstrom, and the retired bishop of the St. Paul area, Lowell Erdahl, told a conference at St. Olaf College in Minnesota that the denomination should welcome gays and lesbians without reservation.
The Rev. James M. Childs Jr. of Trinity Lutheran Seminary in Columbus, Ohio, who directs the sexuality study, told the meeting his committee has received 1,000 letters and e-mails.