ELCA task force recommends changes on gay clergy

A task force for the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ECLA) could not reach a consensus on the role of gay clergy but has offered recommendations to the church’s current policy. The report focuses on changing the current policy that allows gays and lesbians to be ordained only if they promise to be celibate.

According to the Minneapolis Star Tribune, the Rev. Peter Strommen, the chairman of the task force and pastor at Shepherd of the Lake Lutheran Church in Prior Lake, MN said, "We feel it is very important that we ask homosexual ministers to be publicly accountable for their relationships the same way we ask heterosexual ministers to be publicly accountable.”

The task force will present to the Churchwide Assembly in August a 4-step process to implement. The final step “makes a specific recommendation for flexibility within existing structures and practices of this church to allow for people in publicly accountable, lifelong, monogamous, same-gender relationships to be approved for professional service in the ELCA,” according to the report.