{"id":1613,"date":"2009-08-18T17:26:54","date_gmt":"2009-08-18T17:26:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/news\/2009\/08\/lutheran-gay-clergy-proposal-p.php"},"modified":"2009-08-18T17:26:54","modified_gmt":"2009-08-18T17:26:54","slug":"lutheran-gay-clergy-proposal-p","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2009\/08\/lutheran-gay-clergy-proposal-p","title":{"rendered":"Lutheran Gay Clergy Proposal Passes 1st Hurdle"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><em>Associated Press &#8211; August 18, 2009<\/em><br \/>\nMINNEAPOLIS &#8211; Leaders of the largest U.S. Lutheran denomination prayed for unity as they waded into a weeklong debate over homosexuality and the clergy, while a rule change that would allow people in same-sex relationships to serve as ministers cleared its first hurdle.<br \/>\nThe Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, which is meeting this week in Minneapolis, is debating a proposal to allow individual congregations to hire gays and lesbians in committed relationships as clergy. A final vote is not expected until Friday.<br \/>\nBut delegates on Monday rejected a move by critics of the proposal to require approval from a two-thirds supermajority instead of a simple majority when the measure comes to the final vote.<br \/>\nSupporters of the supermajority said a higher hurdle was needed to signal wide support for what they called a major change in the church&#8217;s approach to homosexuality. But the move received support from just 43 percent of the 1,045 voting delegates.<br \/>\nELCA Presiding Bishop Mark Hanson said earlier in the day that the outcome of the majority versus supermajority vote shouldn&#8217;t be seen as strongly indicating the ultimate outcome of the debate.<br \/>\nThe ELCA delegates gathered at the Minneapolis Convention Center also will consider a broader statement on human sexuality, a 34-page document that tries to establish a theological framework for differing views on homosexuality. Critics say it would simply liberalize the ELCA&#8217;s attitudes. A vote on that document is scheduled for Wednesday.<br \/>\nAt 4.7 million members and about 10,000 congregations in the United States, the ELCA would be one of the largest U.S. Christian denominations yet to take a more gay-friendly stance on clergy.<br \/>\nIn 2003, the 2 million-member Episcopal Church consecrated its first openly gay bishop, deepening a long-running rift over homosexuality in the worldwide Anglican Communion and leading to the formation of the more conservative Anglican Church in North America, which claims 100,000 members.<br \/>\n<em><a href=\"http:\/\/www.elca.org\">Evangelical Lutheran Church in America<\/a><br \/>\nCopyright 2009 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Associated Press &#8211; August 18, 2009 MINNEAPOLIS &#8211; Leaders of the largest U.S. Lutheran denomination prayed for unity as they waded into a weeklong debate over homosexuality and the clergy, while a rule change that would allow people in same-sex relationships to serve as ministers cleared its first hurdle. The Evangelical Lutheran Church in America,&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":11,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fbia_status":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1613","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v23.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Lutheran Gay Clergy Proposal Passes 1st Hurdle<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2009\/08\/lutheran-gay-clergy-proposal-p\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Lutheran Gay Clergy Proposal Passes 1st Hurdle\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Associated Press &#8211; August 18, 2009 MINNEAPOLIS &#8211; Leaders of the largest U.S. Lutheran denomination prayed for unity as they waded into a weeklong debate over homosexuality and the clergy, while a rule change that would allow people in same-sex relationships to serve as ministers cleared its first hurdle. The Evangelical Lutheran Church in America,&hellip;\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2009\/08\/lutheran-gay-clergy-proposal-p\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Beliefnet News\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2009-08-18T17:26:54+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"mconsoli\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"Lutheran Gay Clergy Proposal Passes 1st Hurdle","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2009\/08\/lutheran-gay-clergy-proposal-p","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"Lutheran Gay Clergy Proposal Passes 1st Hurdle","og_description":"Associated Press &#8211; August 18, 2009 MINNEAPOLIS &#8211; Leaders of the largest U.S. Lutheran denomination prayed for unity as they waded into a weeklong debate over homosexuality and the clergy, while a rule change that would allow people in same-sex relationships to serve as ministers cleared its first hurdle. The Evangelical Lutheran Church in America,&hellip;","og_url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2009\/08\/lutheran-gay-clergy-proposal-p","og_site_name":"Beliefnet News","article_published_time":"2009-08-18T17:26:54+00:00","author":"mconsoli","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2009\/08\/lutheran-gay-clergy-proposal-p","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2009\/08\/lutheran-gay-clergy-proposal-p","name":"Lutheran Gay Clergy Proposal Passes 1st Hurdle","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/#website"},"datePublished":"2009-08-18T17:26:54+00:00","dateModified":"2009-08-18T17:26:54+00:00","author":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/#\/schema\/person\/9cadc277e135f295b85f71137e2447a6"},"breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2009\/08\/lutheran-gay-clergy-proposal-p#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2009\/08\/lutheran-gay-clergy-proposal-p"]}]},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2009\/08\/lutheran-gay-clergy-proposal-p#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"Lutheran Gay Clergy Proposal Passes 1st Hurdle"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/#website","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/","name":"Beliefnet News","description":"Top Religious News From Around the World","potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":{"@type":"PropertyValueSpecification","valueRequired":true,"valueName":"search_term_string"}}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/#\/schema\/person\/9cadc277e135f295b85f71137e2447a6","name":"mconsoli","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/2ad\/2ad44a0d65de6022a5c619dffa5e7fddx96.jpg","contentUrl":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/2ad\/2ad44a0d65de6022a5c619dffa5e7fddx96.jpg","caption":"mconsoli"},"description":"\"Moderation is the center wherein all philosophies, both human and divine, meet.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d -Benjamin Disraeli","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/author\/mconsoli"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1613","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/11"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1613"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1613\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1613"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1613"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1613"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}