Lutheran leader urges delay of vote on gays
MINNEAPOLIS » A local leader in the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America is trying to convince denominational leaders to delay a divisive final vote on homosexuality next year.Bishop Peter Rogness of the St. Paul Area Synod sent an e-mail to his 425 pastors asking if it would be better to pray about the issue than vote on it. The St. Paul synod is the third-largest in the 5 million-member church.
"Can we agree that living with these differing perspectives for a time might be less harmful for the church?" Rogness wrote. "Can we agree that it is more important for us to be a church that prays about these matters than a church that votes about them?"
The ELCA is scheduled to vote at its August 2005 assembly on whether to ordain sexually active gays and authorize an official rite to bless same-sex unions. Members are bracing for a major confrontation.
The debate over homosexuality has fractured several mainline Protestant denominations, including the Episcopal Church, the United Methodist Church and the Presbyterian Church.
West African church joins Methodists
PITTSBURGH » A Christian denomination in West Africa that has about 1 million members has joined the United Methodist Church.The Protestant Methodist Church of Ivory Coast joined the U.S.-based denomination last week following a vote at the Methodists' national policy meeting in Pittsburgh.
The decision increases the American denomination's worldwide membership to about 11 million. About 8.3 million Methodists live in the United States, making their church the third-largest church in the nation.
The Ivory Coast church was formed in 1924 and left the British Methodist Church in 1985 to become autonomous. However, the West African denomination sought a new affiliation because it "wanted to be part of a more global environment, which is the United Methodist Church," said the Rev. Benjamin Boni, head of the Ivory Coast denomination.
School board to drop Christian prayers
SARASOTA, Fla. » The Manatee County School Board has settled a federal lawsuit against its practice of saying Christian prayers before meetings.The agreement allows the board to open meetings with a nonsectarian invocation. A court must approve the settlement.
Steven and Carol Rosenauer, who are Jewish, sued the School Board in federal court in February over what they described as the persistent use of Christian prayers at board meetings, in violation of the district's own policy and the U.S. Constitution. The couple has spent nearly a year fighting to stop a decades-old practice of opening meetings with the Lord's Prayer.
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