ELCA passes Criminal Justice Social Statement

Voting members of the 2013 ELCA Churchwide Assembly adopted “The Church and Criminal Justice: Hearing the Cries” — a social statement on criminal justice — Aug. 16 with an 882 to 25 vote. The social statement was formally introduced to the 952 voting members Aug. 13.

The assembly made two amendments to the statement — the first was to substitue a paragraph that now begins: “Confession is one ‘mark of the church’”, and the second amendment was designed to provide an editorial comment.  

The call for a statement on criminal justice emerged from concern among ELCA members over the “massive levels of incarceration in the United States,” said Cynthia Osbourne, chair of the ELCA task force charged with leading this church in a study about criminal justice and the development of a proposed social statement. She introduced the social statement to the assembly earlier this week.

While commending positive aspects of the system, the statement conveys dissatisfaction with many areas about the criminal justice system that urgently need reform.

The statement affirms the fundamental principles of the U.S. criminal justice system, such as due process of law and the presumption of legal innocence, and it also recognizes serious deficiencies — overly harsh sentencing and persistent inequalities based on race and class. It calls ELCA members to ministry and compassion through some practices: hearing the cries of those affected, accompaniment, hospitality and advocacy. It asks members of this church to recommit themselves to visiting the prisoner; correct the flawed criminal justice system; participate in God’s work with hands and hearts and to hear the cries of people affected.

New Presiding Bishop

Today has been a whirlwind of a day.  When I awoke this morning and began my usual routine of taking the dogs out for their "constitutional" followed by a brisk five mile walk at the gym, I had no idea that by the end of the day Mark Hanson would not be re-elected as presiding bishop of our denomination.

Though I am thankful for the prayer and discernment that took place these past few days among 950 voting members at our Churchwide Assembly in Pittsburgh, and I believe that Elizabeth Eaton will serve God's people with faithfulness and passion for the gospel of Jesus Christ, and that she is who the Holy Spirit is calling at this time to lead us, I cannot help but wonder what Mark is doing this evening, on the back side of not being re-elected.

There were no scandals, no "black marks" on his ministry.  Mark Hanson was a faithful bishop with the heart of a pastor whose love and patience gently guided our denomination through turbulent yet courageous waters of breaking down the barriers of race, gender, socio-economic class and sexual orientation.

When following the 2009 Churchwide Assembly, hundreds of ELCA congregations left our denomination, Mark's voice could be heard reaching out to those who were leaving, assuring them that there is a place at the table for all of us and that our unity at the foot of the cross of Jesus Christ far surpasses the issues of human sexuality that divide us.   Mark Hanson's passion to include all at the table of God's grace has profoundly inspired my love for this church and for the people whose lives this church touches each and every day.

I am deeply thankful that twelve years ago, Mark answered God's call to step out in front and lead this denomination called the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America.

Twelve years ago when Mark was called to the office of presiding Bishop, my ministry was in a very different place than it is today.  My faith was  teetering.  I was directionless.  I was having a hard time seeing Jesus in the church.  Was I just a weekly dispenser of safe Jesus jargon?  Was I just an entertainer having to worry about losing people's attention if my sermons ran too long?  Was the church even relevant in the world anymore?

Then along came Mark Hanson, whose passion for justice and mercy in the world, opened my eyes to a different view of the church:  A public church.  In the style of the prophet Amos, Mark stood with other church leaders forming a "circle of protection" around the poor and the hungry, when those we elected to public office were trampling the needy and exploiting the poor.  Mark courageously reminded those in power that the God he served was the God whose son was born in poverty and who lived for a while as an illegal alien.

Over these past 12 years, I have seen the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America come alive even as we have grown smaller in number.  Though growth in the ELCA has not been wide, it has run deep.  Jesus didn't say go out and make numbers.  He said go out and make disciples.  Followers of the One whose love knows no boundaries.

Thank you Bishop Hanson for embodying that reality.  You have led this church to a good place.  On November 1, Bishop Elizabeth Eaton will pick up where you have left off, leading us in the same direction but in new ways of loving God and loving our neighbor.

Thanks be to God!

Pastor Doug's Lenten Reflection

Dear Friends in Christ,

As I write this letter at the beginning of our Lenten journey, my heart is filled with tremendous sadness and even some anger:  Not for anything I have experienced personally, but for what has happened to the Church which I have loved with all my heart for my entire life.  For in the course of the past few weeks I have seen those who would call themselves leaders of the Church behave in ways that not only give the church a “black eye” in the eyes of the world, but take Jesus’ prayer for unity and throw it out the window.

The first blow to Christ’s Church came when a Missouri Synod Lutheran pastor was forced by his ecclesiastical superiors to issue an apology to the entire Missouri Synod Church for participating in an ecumenical prayer service following the Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre.  Despite the fact that a six-year old child from his congregation was one of the shooting victims, this young pastor was reprimanded and threatened with expulsion from the Church for his role in a prayer service that included religious leaders from other faith traditions as well as the president of the United States.  His only crime?  He read from the Book of Revelation and spoke a benediction in the presence of non-Missouri Synod Lutherans.

I cannot even begin to imagine the pain I would feel if my own child had been brutally murdered, only to have bureaucratic leaders from my church chastise and bully my pastor for trying to offer the love and the hope of Jesus Christ, the Lamb of God, the resurrection and the life.  Apologize for offering my family hope in the resurrection of Jesus?  Really?

What must those outside of the Church think when they hear such a despicable story coming from those who supposedly represent Christ and him crucified to the world?  At best, they think that particular church body is out of touch.  At worst, they come to believe that all Lutherans and all Christians are close-minded bigots.

Let me say this loud and clear:  I am proud of our Evangelical Lutheran Church in America and for its embodiment of the radical love, grace and inclusivity modeled by Jesus when he invited those without sin to cast the first stone, or when he instructed us to remove the logs from our own eyes before we insist on having the specks removed from those of our neighbors.  I am proud to be a pastor in a church that says all have a place at the table.  I am proud to be raising two children in a church which confesses that love of God and love of neighbor are all that matter.

But this being said, as I write this letter to you, I have just learned that our church’s enfleshment of Micah’s call to justice and Jesus’ radical call to love has come at yet another price to the unity for which our Lord prayed so long ago.  Just today the Lutheran Church in Ethiopia (The Ethiopian Evangelical Church Mekane Yesus) severed all of its ties with our denomination for the actions of the 2009 ELCA Churchwide Assembly in which the ELCA courageously affirmed the blessings of same sex unions and the ordination of gay and lesbian pastors, while at the same time affirming that human sexuality is a gift from God.  No longer will the Ethiopian Lutheran Church allow any of its members to receive Holy Communion or any form of pastoral care from the ELCA.  Nor will it allow any ELCA member, pastor or bishop to receive Communion under any circumstances whatsoever from any of its communion tables.

Mark Hanson, our presiding bishop, has issued a statement about this in which he says the actions of the Ethiopian Lutheran Church are “deeply troubling”.  At the same time, he and other leaders of our denomination have been intentional about leaving the doors of dialogue and reconciliation open to all who feel that they must disavow our church credentials.  “We are not of one mind” writes Bishop Hanson, “but we are one in Christ, in faith and in baptism”.

These are the words of faithfulness to the gospel of Jesus Christ that I must play over and over again in my heart.  “We are not of one mind, but we are one in Christ.”

These are the words I am going to ponder in my heart in this Lenten season of introspection and renewal.  And I invite you to do the same.  Over the course of the next 40 days as I hear the narrative of Jesus journeying toward a cross at Golgotha where he will suffer and be rejected, I am going to look into my own heart in an earnest attempt to unearth my own prejudices and unjust ways.  I am going to seek out and name my own collusion with the powers of division and injustice.   And hopefully after I have discovered the ways in which I have sought to divide the body of Christ, I will lay those ways down at the foot of the cross upon which Jesus died: The cross upon which he died, not only for me, but for my sisters and brothers of the Missouri Synod Church and the Lutheran Church in Ethiopia.  Then perhaps I will find the healing of which I stand in such desperate need.

Peace and Love in the healing arms of Christ,

Pastor Doug

Excellence and Justice

Excellence at an impasse

Posted: 06 Feb 2013 02:01 PM PST

Sarah Dreier

By Sarah Dreier, Legislative Representative of International Policy for the ELCA and The Episcopal Church 

The discipline of yoga has taught me to realize that I am whole in God, regardless of what goes on around me — that no experiences I encounter in my worldly life will adulterate that godly wholeness. Drawing on this notion of spiritual wholeness, I have developed and redefined what it means to be excellent in my work as the legislative representative of international policy for the ELCA and the Episcopal Church, even as I tackle worldly injustices that seem utterly impassable.

Every day, I work with Congress and the Administration to challenge them to address and abate global injustices, including hunger, malnutrition, lack of development, violence and other human rights violations. I advocate for U.S. policies that will help eradicate extreme poverty, increase child and maternal nutrition, combat HIV and AIDS, address the atrocities of human trafficking, and hold multinational corporations accountable to the taxes they are so adept at evading. I urge Congress to pass an annual federal budget that is consistent with our church’s commitments to address poverty and support those who are most vulnerable in the United States and around the world.

And I am not alone. I work with a network of professionals in Washington, D.C., and New York — and with engaged Lutherans and Episcopalians all over the country — who are committed to speaking reason to partisanship, justice to power, generosity to profane greed; to confronting poverty, racism, sexism, violence, climate change and all other forces that subjugate rather than emancipate God’s people.

Even working together, these enormous objectives seem insurmountable, impassable.

But this should not intimidate us to respond to worldly impasses by surrendering or lowering our standards of success. Instead, through, with and for God, we may be driven by a different kind of excellence — a spiritual excellence that enables us to overcome even the most challenging worldly impasses.

What does it mean to be excellent servants of God as we face and try to overcome these worldly impasses? Surely, we must not misinterpret Jesus’ warning that the poor will always be among us (John 12:8) as permission to surrender to these impasses of injustice. We are instead commanded to open our hands to the poor and needy in our land (Deuteronomy 15:11).

Two principles have guided my own understanding of excellence, within these worldly constraints:

First, take a leap of faith, and trust that God is working through us to overcome the impassable.

Last week, I heard a representative from the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief ruminate on the global fight against AIDS in the last few decades — how unbeatable the pandemic seemed at so many critical junctures, and yet the unthinkable progress that our world has seen in the fight against HIV and AIDS. Today, scientists and politicians agree that if countries and international actors maintain a strong commitment to treating and preventing HIV and AIDS, the end of the pandemic is within our reach. Talk about surmounting impasses!

This is just one example, and we have seen, time and again — around the world — that through God, nothing is insurmountable.

Second, redefine excellence, oriented not only toward large accomplishments or measurable changes, but focused instead on the “least of these” — the poor, vulnerable, excluded and weary among us.

When we redefine our own excellence in terms of our service to “the least of these” (Matthew 25:40) — the poor and weary among us — we begin to recognize the unseen vulnerable whose lives are better because we engage them and work with them to lighten their burden (even when we do not overcome the big-picture obstacles), or the contributions that our diverse body of Christ are making to a public dialogue and an evolving public ethic.

We in the church are counter-cultural, tasked to uplift an ethic that prioritizes and exults the “least of these” in a Wall Street, partisan, radically individualistic world. When we remember that we are made in the image of God, this spiritual wholeness frees us from being restricted to worldly impasses. We are freed to reorient our notion of ethics toward those whom society has cast aside. And this leap of faith and redefining of excellence — I believe this is what makes us truly excellent in the eyes of God.

ELCA members in the new congress 

As the new Congress was sworn into office this past month, we welcome and pray for all Senators and Representatives, including the 14 ELCA members in the 113th Congress (District Number follows state):

Senator Sherrod Brown, Ohio
Congresswoman Lois Capps, California 24
Congressman Dennis Heck, Washington 10
Senator Martin Heinrich, New Mexico
Senator Tim Johnson, South Dakota
Congressman Tom Latham, Iowa 3
Congresswoman Zoe Lofgren, California 19
Senator Jeff Merkley, Oregon
Congressman Scott Peters, California 52
Congressman Collin Peterson, Minnesota 7
Congressman Thomas Petri, Wisconsin 6
Congresswoman Chellie Pingree, Maine 1
Congressman Bill Shuster, Pennsylvania 9
Congressman Tim Walz, Minnesota 1

Summary of Proposed Criminal Justice Statement

Draft Social Statement on Criminal Justice

Evangelical Lutheran Church in America

Summary

 

 

The ELCA Task Force on Criminal Justice has written this draft as one of the steps toward the development of a social statement that may be considered by the 2013 ELCA Churchwide Assembly. Draft social statements have no official standing as statements of the ELCA. They are a means to invite participation by all in the process toward the creation of a statement.

 

ELCA social statements are theological and teaching documents. They assist the ELCA and its members to reach informed judgments on social issues from a perspective of faith. They are intended to cultivate individual and community deliberation as well as to guide moral formation.  They govern this church’s institutional policy in terms of its social witness and guide its work as a public church. Social statements are developed through an extensive process of deliberation involving the whole church and are adopted by a two-thirds majority of an ELCA Churchwide Assembly.

 

In a nutshell the statement says:

 

The ELCA affirms the fundamental principles of the U.S. criminal justice system but also hears the cries that reflect the system’s serious deficiencies. Drawing from the biblical witness to God’s wondrously rich forms of love and justice, the ELCA is compelled by a “holy yearning” to address the need for change and improvement. The ELCA through its members and various expressions are called to strengthen or take up responsive ministries. In addition, drawing on evidence and data, the ELCA is compelled to speak publically to commend positive efforts and to identify areas in the criminal justice system that require reform.

 

The following summarize key ideas from each section:

 

I Prologue

 

It is deeply alarming that the United States of America ranks among the top two or three countries in the world in percentage of individuals under the control of the criminal justice system. (1 out of 31 of all adults, and, for people of color, as high as 1 out of 11.)

• Christians are called to confess that the church, as individuals and through its various organizations, has fallen short in responding to crime — both in terms of its harms and the problems in the justice system. We ask God’s aid in opening our hearts to the cries of our neighbors, and pray for guidance to speak and work more prophetically and actively toward earthly justice.

 

II Justice  

• God seeks wholeness for humankind — biblical shalom — but God’s strategy of governing human life is expressed in Scripture and experienced as a twofold work. On the one hand, human beings experience God’s deep care through receiving grace-filled righteousness, shared in the gospel about Jesus Christ, received in faith and partially seen in the lived reality of the church as a gospel community. At the same time, human beings experience God’s deep care through the gifts of law and civil forms of justice. This care is expressed through institutions and systems that, when properly operating, provide for protection, order and the flourishing of society.

 

• The ELCA affirms the fundamental principles of the U.S. criminal justice system, such as due process of law and the presumption of legal innocence. We honor those in the system who through their service help it to operate with fairness and a measure of human care.

• In assessing the current system, this church also recognizes serious deficiencies. Budgetary constraints and persistent inequalities based on race and class frequently challenge its basic principles and impose significant costs on all involved in the system, and on society as a whole.

• This church gives thanks for and yet also recognizes serious flaws in the exercise of law enforcement, the judicial system, and the correctional system. It commends work being done in responding to systemic racial disparities, the rights of victims and other problems, though it continues to believe that a great deal more must be done.

 

III Yearning for ever-fuller justice 

• Sin and crime are different but related categories. Although both often characterize acts that cause great injury to others and even the self, sin represents an offense against God, while crime represents an offense against the state. Nonetheless, Christians yearn for the day when both will be fully overcome in God’s great love.

• In the meantime, drawing from the biblical witness to God’s wondrously rich forms of justice the ELCA is compelled by a “holy yearning.” That yearning leads toward recommitting itself to wise responses of love as a denomination and speaking publically about paths to greater justice.
 

IV Wise responses of love  

• This section in the Draft primarily addresses people of faith and specifically members of the ELCA, and asks them to respond in ministry creatively and wisely in ways that promote human flourishing.

• God’s “yes” to us just as we are is without condition. The Bible imagines at least three ways of responding in faith with a grateful “yes” to the world’s needs by: seeking wisdom, welcoming the stranger, and bearing the burdens of others.

• The ministry and compassion of members of this church to those in the criminal justice system should be expressed concretely by four practices: hearing the cries of those affected; accompaniment, hospitality, and advocacy.

 

V Paths to greater justice  

• This section in the Draft addresses all people, seeking to join with other people of good will to affirm positive trends and recommend means of reform in the criminal justice system, as guided by evidence and data.

• Positive trends to affirm include efforts at sentencing reform, reentry programming, restorative justice and victim’s rights.

• The most pressing need for reform concerns the very high levels of incarceration in the U.S. Incarceration should be reserved for serious and violent offenders who pose a danger to society. The system should make greater use of alternative forms of sentencing that have been demonstrated to be successful.

• Research shows that race frequently influences decision-making at numerous points in the criminal justice system in ways that disadvantage people of color and cumulatively contribute to racial disparity in incarceration. Significant actions must be taken to address this continuing problem.

• Any comprehensive assessment of the criminal justice system must attend to national drug policy because that policy has a marked effect on all aspects of the system. The ELCA calls for careful attention to the full costs and consequences of the current policy, and openness to changes where they would enhance the welfare of the community.

• On theological grounds regarding the proper role of government, as well as for humanitarian reasons and questions about true cost effectiveness, the ELCA opposes current trends that would increase privatization of the criminal justice system.

• Other areas for reform include practices regarding juvenile offenders, collateral sanctions, rehabilitation, and encouragement for alternative strategies to enhance public safety and lower crime rates.

 

VI Conclusion: a new paradigm  

• It must be remembered that those involved in the criminal justice system are human beings, created in the image of God and worthy of compassionate response and better alternatives. A transformation of perspective is needed in this society that will challenge a logic that equates more punitive responses to crime with more just ones.

• In God the ELCA places our hope for the fullness of justice promised only by the gospel. And to God we owe our thanks for human reason and its abilities to discern — with prudence and creativity — how our communities might reflect in this time the justice of the law. The ELCA therefore recommits itself to ministry with, for, to and among the many, many people whose voices cry out for justice in our criminal justice system. “For what does the LORD require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?” (Micah 6:8).

In these final days of 2012, Congress faces important fiscal decisions. The actions our leaders take — or don’t take — will critically impact people who struggle with hunger and live in poverty.

As members of the ELCA, we serve our vulnerable neighbors in our communities and around the world every day, and out of this experience, we encourage our public officials to advance the common good by protecting programs that help our neighbors rise out of poverty.

Your action is needed now: the House of Representatives is slated to vote tonight on two bills that would undermine crucial supports for people living in poverty. 

Tell your representative, as he or she votes this evening, to prioritize the needs of families and children living in poverty, and remind your senators that you care deeply about how decisions made in the current fiscal debate impact vulnerable people.

Click here to call your members of Congress now.  Look for the talking points to help guide your conversation.  (This information can be found on the ELCA Advocacy website by clicking elca.org/Advocacy.

In the days, weeks and months ahead, our nation should work to reduce our federal deficits in ways that do not increase poverty or inequality. Tell your senators and representative to work together, devising a balanced approach that defends programs and policies that aid low-income people and help hurting families attain economic security.

Members of Congress need to hear from people of faith — click here to call to your senators and representative now.   This information can be found on the ELCA Advocacy website by clicking elca.org/advocacy.

 

As the debate over deficit reduction, tax policy and federal spending continues, ELCA members and other people of faith are forming a “Circle of Protection” around programs that aid hungry and poor people.

Peace,
Pastor Doug