GfS, these two people are not friends of mine, they were merely acquaintances for a brief time. I met them when our church was discussing the issue of adopting the Affirmation of Welcome (and scroll down) some years back.

The main sticking point for a few people in the congregation was whether or not to include all of the inclusivity clause in the statement: ". . . . regardless of our race, age, gender, marital status, physical and mental abilities, sexual/affectional orientation, national origin, or economic status." A couple of people objected to the "sexual/affectional orientation" part, quoting a few Bible verses. So before we put the matter to a vote of the entire congregation, we had a couple of general meetings of the congregation to discuss the matter in depth.

Several people who were not members of the congregation and whom we had never seen in church before came to the meeting, including the two people in question. Out of approximately 250 people, there were about a half-dozen—including these two people, who I emphasize were not members of the church—spoke out against including that phrase, citing a number of Bible verses, and talking about "perversion" and "it's against God's laws."

The church's two pastors, the synod bishop, and the church council (which I was on at the time) had discussed these verses at length in terms of the history of the times, what modern theology has to say about them, and whether or not those prohibitions were relevant today, especially in terms of outreach to as many people as possible. Among other things, the matter is not mentioned in the Ten Commandments, nor does Jesus say anything about it.

The two people in question spoke at length and quite passionately, talking about how they had led a "life of sin and degradation" until they had been "saved," at which point they renounced their homosexuality. I talked to them a fair amount, as did others, and learned that they had "accepted Christ" at one of the regular revival meetings held by a local Pentecostal church. Very fundamentalist. This church was focused totally on personal salvation and matters of stopping people from "sinning," whereas Central Lutheran is geared toward community service, taking what Jesus said in Matthew 25:35-40 as its primary mode of operating, feeling that, if this is rightly seen to, personal salvation will take care of itself. In short, Central "evangelizes," not by buttonholing you on street corners and demanding to know if you've "been Saved," but by showing by the example of what the church does.

GfS, for various reasons, which would be too long to go into here, but with sound theological roots, I think the phenomenon of "being Saved" is modern misunderstanding of the teachings of Jesus. "Being Saved" is less theological and more emotional. Hell-roaring preachers often scare the stuffings out of the naïve by their vivid descriptions of hell-fire and damnation. I don't think Jesus wanted his followers to love their neighbors and take care of them when they needed care in order for the followers to avoid going to Hell, he wanted them to do it because it was the right thing to do.

Many people have given up a lot of bad habits by "being Saved." Alcoholics have quit drinking, smokers have stopped smoking, philanderers have given up messing around, and criminals have gone straight because they've been convinced that they were going to burn in Hell for eternity if they didn't "accept Jesus as their Savior" and renounce their sinful ways.

And convince a naïve homosexual that he or she will go to Hell if they don't give up their "sinful perversion," and he or she will probably do it.

Fear. Is that a valid "cure?" I think not.

I am not a fundamentalist. I am, indeed, Bible literate, but I do not believe that the Bible is literal history. It is myth, metaphor, and allegory. This is not to say that what Bible says is untrue, it's that, say, the Book of Genesis is a creation myth, in much the same vein as the Native American myth about the world being creating variously by Raven or Mother Turtle. When Jesus spoke of the Good Samaritan, I don't think he was talking about a real incident. He was responding to a question, and it's as if He'd said, "Well, let me put it this way: suppose this traveler had fallen among thieves, and. . . ."

Let me put it this way:   in talking to these two people and asking questions about them from people who knew them, I learned that whether they were "cured" of their homosexuality or not had not been established. They have given up sex entirely. Does that mean that they had been cured of their homosexuality? I think that remains to be demonstrated.

In a meeting of the entire congregation (this took place in the early 1990s, by the way), we overwhelmingly voted to accept the Affirmation of Welcome in its entirety. Out of a congregation of about 250 people, I believe there were about a half-dozen dissenting votes. We did lose three of the older members who couldn't accept it. They went to other churches. But within a very few months, we added several dozen new members to the congregation. And no, they were not all gay. Some were, but most of them were young people, including young (heterosexual) married couples, many with young children, who wanted to got to a progressive, open-minded church. One that practiced what it preached.

By they way, I'm no longer on the church council. I served a full six years. My wife, Barbara, is currently on it, though.

Does that adequately answer your questions? If not, ask further.

Don Firth