HERE THEY COME AGAIN

I’m conducting a survey. Please list the top three concerns of members of your congregation. What did you put down? Spreading the Good News of Jesus Christ? Helping people in the current economic crisis? Teaching the faith to children? Making sure children have food, clothes, shelter, and health care?  Anybody put down genetics? What! No one?

Or how about this. Suppose you had $140,000 to spend at a time when money was hard to come by. People are losing jobs. Their pensions are being taken away from them. Funding to church missions has fallen precipitously. What would you do with the money? Anybody put down a six year study for a statement on genetics?
What! No one?
Or how about this. It is Holy Week, the most solemn time of the Christian year. What would you send to the congregations? A devotional guide to the Passion of Jesus? A message of hope in the Resurrection? Anybody put down a 50 page “Draft Social Statement on Genetics”? What! No one?

From now until October 15 you are going to lead a study in your church. What will you choose as a topic? The Augsburg Confession? Paul’s Letter to the Romans? How to pray? What! Anybody put down the “Draft Social Statement on Genetics”? What! No one?

Boy, are you folks ever out of touch with the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America leadership. (Or maybe it’s the other way around.) This Holy Week saw the arrival of the “Draft Statement of Genetics” prepared by the ELCA Task Force on Genetics, Church in Society, © 2010, Evangelical Lutheran Church in America. And, yes, indeed, the final cost of this study is only $140,000 - $150,000, much less than most people think, I am told. That cost is about what my congregation has sent to the wider church in the last 20 years. Somehow, this is not what I imagined was the top priority for our benevolence dollars.

This is one of the most outrageous boondoggles I have seen from the ELCA in at least the last six-months. I think people stay up late at headquarters thinking of foolishness to get the church involved with. First, I am suspicious of any official church document with a glossary to explain the terms nucleotide, oncogenes, and single nucleotide polymorphism. What does the Church know about these things? Second, even after reading the document I have no idea what this church thinks about genetics. In side bars various issues are raised that are related to genetics. They are interesting problems sometimes posing moral dilemma. I would like to see how this Statement on Genetics helps a person decide the issues raised. As far as I can tell, it doesn’t. In fact, it warns that the side bars are for illustration only. That sounds like a lot of what I get from the powers-that-be, no clear guidance on issues.

There is this pomposity: “The Word became flesh, took on a human genome, and lived within the abundance and sorrow of the earth and human culture” (8).  I liked it better the way St. John wrote it: “And the Word became flesh and lived among us, and we have seen his glory, the glory as of a father's only son, full of grace and truth.” (I don’t think we’re allowed to say that anymore because it implies God is a Father.)

One of the few useful gems in this verbosity is this: “This church rejects the ‘technological imperative,’ that is, it rejects the prevalent practice of belief that we are free to use any knowledge that becomes available to create any technological application if the market will support it” (21).  Well, I’m glad to hear that. It is the type of issue that you discuss in a beginning ethics class.  In practice this means that this church rejects human cloning, although if we do it successfully, we will, of course, baptize the cloned individual like any child of God.

What I’d like to see is a few succinct statements of what the church teaches or proposes to teach and not 50 pages of impenetrable prose. I have no idea what we would be endorsing if we adopted this statement. Of course, that doesn’t matter because we always adopt Social Statements, usually by huge margins–and then they fall still-born to the ground. The exception was the statement on Human Sexuality which has created a division in the church that may not be healed for generations.

Oh, a warning. There is already ANOTHER Social statement in the works to follow this one.

From ghoulies and ghosties and church Social Statements, good Lord deliver us.

May the Lord bless you on your journey and greet you on your arrival.

Wayne







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