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| The ELCA Bishops in America and Canada are female. Susan Johnson is single. |
ELCA Bishop Liz Eaton, Thrivent Partner with Matt Harrison and Mark Schroeder:
From time to time I am invited to celebrate congregational anniversaries. It’s wonderful to see the church in action and to meet members from all across the country...
Very often, however, the membership of these congregations has shrunk. A sanctuary built to seat 400 now only sees 50 on a Sunday. Sunday school rooms and gymnasiums that rang with the sound of children are now empty or, in more enterprising congregations, are rented out to community groups and social service organizations.
In these congregations the anniversary celebration is bittersweet — for one glorious Sunday the sanctuary is filled with current and former members and their children and grandchildren, stories of the congregation’s heyday are shared, there is energy and enthusiasm and then everyone goes home. Next Sunday the 50 hearty souls who are the remnant will gather in a now more obviously empty sanctuary.
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| Two new ELCA seminary presidents are ill-equipped females, with almost no parish experience, or no education, or neither one - like Louise Johnson at Wartburg Seminary, founded by Loehe. |
GJ - Liz Eaton accelerated the decline of ELCA. When the 2009 ELCA convention voted for gay ordination and marriage, she told her anxious members and pastors in her local diocese (Ohio) that nothing was changing. Everyone should relax. The winnowing began in earnest. Anyone opposing this move was ousted and congregations were sued in earnest for deciding to leave ELCA, which they had a right to do. Some packed up and left the property to escape ELCA, leaving many of those great old buildings almost empty.
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| "Brett, I know what you're thinking - I had it coming. We are still bigger than the Church of the Augsburg Confession." |
Liz ran against Mark Hanson, who shepherded - or wolved - the 2009 decision, and she replaced him as bishop of ELCA.
Mark's right-hand man, Stan Olson, had his job removed from the ELCA budget, so he preceded his retirement with a stint at Wartburg Seminary, as president.
I spoke to a man in this area. He was very nervous in talking about being Lutheran, because he and others chose to leave the ELCA congregation and start a new one. Once he knew it was safe, he spoke about the change in guarded tones. He was clearly relieved to be out of ELCA.
The rapid escape of members, congregations, and properties from ELCA after 2009 surprised me, because they took the gay quotas and agitation for so long. The ELCA conservatives did nothing while their partners in the Episcopal Church were raising holy hell about the same departures from historic Christianity, always coming down from above, from the bishops and presiding bishop.
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| Was Louise Johnson a bridge too far? Wartburg Seminary earlier had a financial crisis and fired professors. Note the lop-sided smile below - Robin Steinke, new Luther Semianry President.  |