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An Exemption?
Abstract: How does ELCA policy get reported in secular media?
Eyebrows will surely be raised at the interpretation of ELCA policy offered by Jeff Strickler in a Minneapolis Star Tribune article about the ordination extra ordinem of Jen Nagel at Salem Lutheran Church on January 19:
You only have a few more hours to call Jen Nagel Jen. After her ordination at 2 p.m. today, you have to start calling her the Rev. Nagel -- unless you're a member of the national board of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA), in which case you probably don't want to call her at all.
Nagel is being ordained despite being committed to a same-sex relationship. The national ELCA doesn't approve of the ordination of gay ministers. But an exemption in the bylaws was passed at the national convention in August allowing local synods to not object to such ordinations, which is what is happening -- or not happening, depending on how you interpret all of this -- with Nagel.
We have to wonder if encouraging bishops and synods to refrain from discipline is really the same thing as an "exemption".
