MainlineTruths

What about the North Asians?

Just thought this was an odd headline:

Church rolls out welcome mat to South Asians

If only fighting poverty were really this easy

From the ELCA:

More than 1,500 members of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA) were among the 110,332 U.S. citizens and 23.5 million people worldwide who stood up during worship Oct. 15 to fight global poverty. The "STAND UP" event set a national and global record in the Guinness World Records for the largest number of people to stand up for a cause.

I'd like to meet the genius that came up this idea. Of course, not a single person was lifted out of poverty from this stunt. We Protestants have this habit of creating clever stunts that help us pretend that we are really doing something. If only we invested this much energy into doing something that mattered... 

UCC and ELCA sued in alleged sex assault cases

The New Hampshire Conference of the United Church of Christ and the New Jersey Synod of Evangelical Lutheran Churches (and the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America) are being sued in seperate cases of alleged sex assaults.

First, the United Church of Christ suit from the Nashua Telegraph:

NASHUA – A Nashua-area man claims a United Church of Christ camp counselor sexually assaulted him repeatedly when he was a teenager.

The man, now 25, filed suit against the counselor, John Tanguay of North Conway, and the New Hampshire Conference United Church of Christ on Sept. 28 in Hillsborough County Superior Court.

Then, the ELCA suit from the Asbury Park Press:

TOMS RIVER — Five more plaintiffs have come forward to accuse a onetime pastor of St. Thomas Lutheran Church in Brick of molesting them when they were boys during the 1970s and 1980s.

That brings to 11 the number of men who are suing the church on Salmon Street and its officials over alleged sexual abuse.

Meanwhile, the clergyman at the center of the multimillion-dollar lawsuit, the Rev. Robert L. Slegel, who resigned as pastor of the church amid scandal in 1993, died Sept. 1 at age 77. He had been living in Southern Shores, N.C., near Kitty Hawk, according to an obituary prepared by Twiford Colony Chapel in Manteo, N.C.

Dover Township attorney Robert R. Fuggi Jr. filed the $30 million lawsuit against the church last year on behalf of six men who said they were molested by Slegel when they were boys in the 1970s. The suit named as defendants the church; two of its former pastors, identified in court papers only by their initials; the New Jersey Synod of Evangelical Lutheran Churches and the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America.

Let's hope, if true, these are only isolated cases.

Christian anti-Semitism

There's a great new blog from ELCA minister Kathleen J. Rusnak which dives right into Christian anti-Semitism. From her blog:

I teach the Holocaust. When my audiences are Christian, many are deeply offended when I say that the Holocaust, which took place in Christian Europe, would not have been possible without the help of Christians and Christian theology, particularly Lutheran and Catholic. John Roth says it like this. “…while Christianity was not a sufficient condition for the Holocaust, nevertheless, it was a necessary condition for that disaster.” It’s a hard bullet to swallow for sure. It is for me too. A common reaction is to defend Christianity with the rationalization that a Christian, by definition, cannot murder. Therefore, they say, they weren’t real Christians. But they were, just like those who espoused to be Christian during the Crusades, the Inquisition, and the Pogroms were real Christian. And their actions were backed by Christian theology. The Crusades are part of Christianity’s history. The Holocaust is part of Christian history too, not just Jewish history. Saying they aren’t real Christians doesn’t make it so.

Only 692 days until the next election?

While leaders of Mainline churches continue to lament their lack of recognition in the political arena, they are usually their own worst enemies. FaithfulDemocracy.org is part of a flood of groups and web sites that pop up every two years just in time for elections (remember the Clergy Leadership Network?) that seem to fade away just as quickly as they show up. The Faithful Democracy site, which is registered and hosted by the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, is a partnership among most of the Mainline churches, the National Council of Churches and other religious groups. The web site could use a refresh though... according to a banner on the site, there is 692 days until the next election.