US Evangelical Lutherans publish handbook on gender identity to welcome the LGBTQIA+ community to church life
by Karen Faulkner, Worthy News Correspondent
(Worthy News) – The Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA) has published a handbook on sexual orientation, gender identity, and gender expression to “affirm God’s love for people of all sexual orientations and gender identities,” the Christian Post reports. The publication is part of an ELCA effort to welcome and include members of the LGBTQIA+ community to all aspects of church life.
Written by Lutheran Ministry ReconcilingWorks, the handbook asserts: “Many LGBTQIA+ people have learned by experience that they are not truly welcome in church, even in churches that state: ‘All are welcome here!’
The handbook offers advice to congregants on how to approach people from the LGBTQIA+ community and explains gender identity as “a person’s innate, deeply felt psychological identification as a man, woman or another gender, which may or may not correspond to the sex assigned to them at birth. Gender identity is different from the term ‘gender’, which is typically used with reference to social and cultural differences rather than biological ones.”
A number of church leaders and members have left the denomination because of its stance on this issue. Writing for the Christian Post recently, co-host of The Pastor’s Study radio program Tom Brock said: “Two summers ago, 31,000 ELCA teenagers attended the ELCA’s youth gathering. Popular ELCA pastor Nadia Bolz-Webber led the students to say after her ‘I renounce the lie that queerness is anything other than beauty.’ At the youth gathering an 11-year-old boy who thinks he is a girl was put on stage to promote transgenderism.”
ELCA has also been criticized for referring to God as “Mother.” On April 29, ELCA tweeted: “Mother God, you have fed us with the nourishment of your spiritual food. Raise us up into salvation and rid us of our bitterness, so that we may share the sweetness of your holy word with all the world.”
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