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Let the Sun Shine In!
Abstract: Memorials Committee recommends defeat for disclosure memorial.
The Report of ELCA Memorials Committee also recommends that the churchwide assembly "decline to adopt" the "sunshine resolution" to which we are partial because it originated here. The sunshine resolution asks for disclosure of the cost of disciplinary actions against clergy in same-sex partnerships. How much of the ELCA's money would you spend to defrock a gay pastor?
The report maintains that the cost to churchwide is "minimal" (indeed? and how did the Memorials Committee come by that information?), that there's a "shared risk" fund (so discipine hearings are paid for with free money?), and that there haven't been many actual trials (three, and the most recent one probably cost the ELCA $200,000). Oh, by the way, "Disclosure of individual line items in unit budgets, as the memorial requests, would set an unfortunate precedent of micro-management of the churchwide organization budget."
Well, we couldn't agree more, but the cost of individual trials is not a budget line item, and the proposed memorial simply asks that these costs be made public so members of this church can decide just how dear to them this policy might be.
