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| ELCA Bishop Guy Erwin and partner Rob Flynn. |
The ELCA ordination of Guy Erwin has taken an immediate lead in page-views for the day (#1) and week (#3), so I am simply adding verbatim information to that post. I have found that four or five news stories provide more perspective than one or two.
Watch WELS get all holier-than-thou about this, without mentioning their district president and vicar who went to state prison for misconduct with minor girls, their pastor and teacher who murdered their wives, their Director of Communications who got WELS headquarters raided by the FBI. Likewise, Missouri will get all macho and forget their convicted sex criminal who was put into their insta-pastor program and given a call where he could molest another church member. With age comes forgetfulness, but these lessons will be remembered with advantages...
Someone on the ALPB Forum made this point about Guy Erwin - all the long-standing rules were broken to ordain him in a hurry (MDiv, CPE requirement, etc) - but he was approved by the ELCA bishops unanimously. However, the same ELCA bishops condemn/eject a pastor or congregation or both for violating a newly invented rule, being affiliated with the LCMC or NALC, the odious dual-rostered crime. One of these is covered in Romans 1 (and other Scriptures) - the other is not.
WELS and Missouri do the same thing. Their Pharisaical inventions are absolute law while the Scriptures are adiaphora.
In all these cases, the influence of Pietistic UOJ is expressed. UOJ teaches that everyone is forgiven and saved. When the true Gospel is missing, salvation by law is taught - in every pagan religion and every false form of Christianity.
The UOJ fanatics grasp justification by faith enough to hate it and teach against it at all times. If someone is properly and carefully taught UOJ, Law and Gospel are both obliterated - as the Unitarian-Universalists wish. ELCA is displaying that approach for everyone to admire and emulate. They are legalistic enough to take their own congregations to court to steal their property, but they are Antinomian about normal societal standards, such as marriage, family, and protection of the unborn.
The WELS district presidents - The Twelve Apostates - are degenerate, false teachers by their own admission. They even have an elegantly printed book called This We Believe where their blasphemies are recorded in detail. Do not confuse it with We Still Believe, which Engelbrecht has copied on his parish websty.
The Twelve Apostates overlook or approve every kind of evil, but when they spot justification by faith, their response is a lusty - "Burn it with fire! Anathema sit! Anathema sit! Anathema sit!"
Historians of dogma will note my ironic reference. When the Council of Trent responded to the Lutheran teaching of justification by faith, they stomped their bishops' crooks and shouted - Anathema sit! Anathema sit! Anathema sit! - Let him be damned to Hell!
Chemnitz recorded that moment with amusement and sadness in his Examination of the Council of Trent, which is boring and irrelevant for WELS leaders.
