Sexuality Report Goes Back for Refining

Concerned that a draft version of a report on human sexuality seemed to endorse historic Lutheran prohibitions against extramarital sex, an agency of the Evangelical Lutheran Church has ordered the paper back to the drawing board, hoping to achieve more of a middle course.

“There are a large number of people in the Lutheran church who haven’t married and probably won’t marry,” said Ingrid Christensen, board chairman of the denomination’s Division for Church and Society.

Yet those persons remain sexual beings, she noted, and should not be made to feel excluded from the church’s discussion of sexuality.

The same can be said about homosexuals, Christensen noted.

According to Christensen, members of the church and society board want the study paper to stick to its original intent, which is to spur discussion on human sexuality, as opposed to setting guidelines for sexual conduct.

The study paper, written by a special task force, is intended as a first step in a long process intended to culminate in the presentation of a church position statement of sexuality at the denomination’s 1993 Churchwide Assembly.

Christensen said the board, which is meeting in Chicago this week, had decided it wanted the study paper to be “as accessible and useful to people as possible.” To that end, the board aims to hold open for discussion options that historically have been regarded as taboos, such as sex outside marriage.

Staff of the Division for Church and Society will rework some of the language in the report and then send it back to the executive committee of the division’s board for a final review.

The Rev. Karen Bloomquist, director of studies for the division, cautioned that not everything is “up for grabs” in the paper, which she said will continue to uphold some “affirmations” about sexuality.

But she acknowledged that “some critical issues . . . force us to ask some questions that were not asked in biblical times” or even 20 years ago.

In its various drafts, the paper has been closely guarded, and church officials do not expect to make it public until the final version is ready for distribution in early December.

Christensen said some of the other issues that the paper raises include sexual abuse, homosexuality, the role of Scripture in setting sexual norms and Lutheran perspectives on sexuality.

The Evangelical Lutheran Church in America’s discussion on sexuality comes in the wake of several highly charged debates on sexuality that have occurred within the church and other mainline Protestant denominations.