This is Ben and this is Keith.

And this is Main Street Lutherans. And today we're going to be looking at an interesting subject because people often want to know, you know, what do ELCA Lutherans believe about this and that? Or what is their stance on this particular topic? And so we're going to be talking about ELCA social statements and social messages.

And not that we're going to discuss what they actually are. We're going to talk about what. Well, we are going to talk about what they are. We're going to talk about how they come to be and that sort of thing and where to find them.

Yeah. Ben and I have been talking about this actual topic for some time, but it was precipitated in part because I was at a conference meeting this morning. I think we've mentioned that in the synods, which are the large geographical regions.

Of the ELCA, some larger than others.

Yeah, right. There are conferences. So I'm, for example, in the York conference of the Lower Susquehanna Synod, which means that in the York area there's about a dozen and a half or two dozen congregations, and once a month the roster leaders, the pastors and deacons from those congregations may or may not get together for a meeting. We met this morning and our topic of discussion was a draft of a documentary that is called a social statement on civic life and faith. And this is, as I said, a draft. It's a statement that the ELCA is currently working on and it will likely be voted on at our next church wide assembly, which is in, Ben? 2025, is that right?

2025, yeah.

And so the social statements and social messages are.

They're.

It's an interesting topic because they're both fascinating and they don't always do what people want them to do. Right. They're fascinating because they are very well researched and written. They are based on scripture, they are based on church teaching, they are based on science and real life experience from real people. They're on a really wide variety of topics. I know, Ben, you've got the list up. What are some of the topics of some of the.

Yeah, I mean, for social statements, you know that they put them in alphabetical order. So, you know, just starting with the top, it's abortion and caring for creation, church in society, the church in criminal justice, the death penalty, economic life, education, genetics, health and healthcare, human sexuality, peace, race, ethnicity and culture and sexism as far as social statements. And then that doesn't even include the social messages.

Yeah. So. And you can tell that there's. There's a number of, you know, what we might even consider hot topics, even.

If they're not hot topics now, when they were done, they most like, or at least when they started, they probably were hot topics.

Yeah. And some of them still are. And, you know, a lot of these statements are kind of dated. You know, some of them were written in the late eighties, early nineties, and, you know, all the way up to, I think the most recent one that I've seen is from 2020. And they're. Yeah, they're really well researched. They're fascinating. They're also long, you know, they're not pithy, they're not simple statements. They don't make good bumper stickers or memes. Yeah, yeah. And so when people say, you know, well, what do Lutherans think about abortion? For example, you know, they go to this document and you're like, whoa, I didn't know I was going to be reading a doctoral thesis. And by the time you're finished, you might be left scratching your head saying, so what do Lutherans think about abortion? Usually the answer is something like, well, we think it's a complex issue and needs to be addressed carefully and pastorally.

But it includes things like, these are the lenses that we look at this from, and these are the things that we value in the discussion.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

And those are helpful. And so they aren't policy, they aren't doctrine by any stretch. But there's something that our church, our denomination, has strived to hash this out amongst ourselves, to have a framework for discussion. And so along with that, each of the statements comes along with a sort of a selection of study guides and ways the congregation can use it to talk about it.

Those can be really helpful because they'll be broken down into a number of sessions. And so you can sit with a Bible study group or a Sunday school class or just a group that says, hey, we'd like to read, you know, the statement on the death penalty and see what the ELCA thinks about that and see what we think about it in the process. So there might be, you know, two, three, four, a half dozen sessions where you sit down and read scripture and read parts of the statement and read the study guide, and it'll guide you through a conversation about the topic.

And it's not expected that everyone will agree, right?

Because these statements, like most aspects of the evangelical wisdom church in America, will not tell you what to think, but they will expect you to think and to think critically and to think deeply and to think faithfully. And, yeah, that means that more likely to come to different conclusions sometimes. Yeah.

And I think these are great. These are great tools to help us center our discussion, you know, even as a family, you know, in a family unit, as a congregational unit, as, you know, as a body of Christ, as ELCA Lutherans. But then also when we, when we talk ecumenically, when we talk with other, other denominations, this is where we come from, and this is how we, as an, as a group approach this. And so this is where other denominations can take a look at how we're processing things, too. So I think that's nice. So we're going to look at this individual statements and messages in future episodes. We're not going to talk about any real specific in this episode, but please tell us if there are any particular ones you want to hear more about. When we address those, we're hoping that we can get some people that were involved if, if not in the developing of those, and people who've got experience using those in their congregations or teaching classes on those topics. Maybe at seminaries.

Yes, we can talk a little bit about how the social statements and social messages are written. How do they come about? They start often with one of the church wide assemblies calling for a group to gather around a particular topic. They sort of set some things like, you know, for example, there's one being worked on right now on gun violence. And so they'll, they'll sort of set some parameters of, you know, goals of what. What they would like the topic, what they would like the statement to address. And then, you know, they'll charge a group of people to find other people who are going to be experts in various fields that the statement might touch on. So you're going to be talking, in that case, you're probably talking with people in law enforcement, people in legislation in various states or in the federal government, certainly theologians and pastors, probably medical professionals, psychiatrists and psychologists, social workers. It's going to be a very broad group with very broad experience, and they're going to share out of their own experience what they know about that topic and how it affects people's lives and how it affects our society. They're going to meet, they're going to conduct surveys, they're going to do research, and eventually they're going to create either a draft or perhaps a series of drafts and put those out for anybody in the LCA to look at, respond to. There might be listening sessions. There might be online surveys. There might be, you know, drafts of the Bible studies put out with them that groups can walk through and say, you know, not only did we, you know, like, or not like the topic, but here's, here's where we thought the Bible studies were really helpful, and here's where we thought that they could be, you know, tweaked a little bit, and eventually, then the, the ELCA council votes on it. Now, the process is a little different for social messages and social statements. The messages basically are easier to come up. That come up with. They take anywhere from a year or two, and they get created and voted on by the ELCA church council, which meets several times a year and makes decisions in between the Senate assemblies. The social statements are a little longer, a little more involved, and they have to be voted on by the entire churchwide assembly, which only meets every three years. So it's not unlike, you know, the decisions that get made in your own congregation. You know, some of them can be made by, you know, just the church council. Some of them have to be made by the entire congregation, for sure. Yeah. So it's a complex process. Like I said, a lot goes into it, and it gives you then, you know, this, this very broad and rich means of reflecting in faith on what this subject has to do with our. With our world and what our faith has to say about it. And so then, yeah, it really leaves you. I think the goal of the topics, again, is not always to tell you what to think, frequently not, but to give you the tools and the resources and the information in order to come up with a faithful answer to the question, what do you think? Sure.

And looking at these, we'll have a link in the episode notes that will get you to the faith and society section of the ELCA website that has listings for all these and also the ones that are being worked on right now. But if you look through the social messages, they have those listed in chronological order, and it's interesting to look back through there what the church has dealt with. Right. And so the first one of the social messages is on AIDS, which is something that I haven't thought about for quite a while. Right. It's not something that's pressing on us.

These days, but in the late eighties and early nineties, it absolutely was. And so, yeah, it's kind of a reflection on what was going on in the world that the church was wrestling.

With at that time and normally outside the church, too. Right. It's the society pressing in on the church wanting to know where we stand.

Or the church observing something going on on society and feeling compelled to speak up and say, this is where we stand.

I find it interesting that in 1989. So the AIDS one was in 1980, 819 89. There was a message on the israeli palestinian conflict, which wouldn't surprise me if we don't address that again at this point. Very different, I'm sure.

Yeah. There's a statement on human sexuality that came out in 2009 that is in the process of being perhaps updated or revised, and I'm not sure what that process looks like. I don't think it'll be nearly as complex as creating a statement from scratch. But that's on the docket of things that are being worked on right now also. Yeah.

And it looks like the social message on gun related violence and trauma should have been voted on in March at the ELCA church council meeting. It looks like the social statement that you were talking about on civic life and faith. It's currently out for comments. You can read it and submit a survey with your opinions on it. So I encourage you to do that. Get involved in our church's deliberations on that, and I think you'll learn something a little bit about how the church in the last 500 some years has, how Lutherans have looked at civil engagement, civic engagement. And so I think that'd be neat. So, of course, we talked about how these come with study resources that you can use, and those sort of simplify it a little bit and break it into topics that we can talk about. How else do you think these could be used, or how could they be useful?

I think that people looking at the ELCA from the outside in, again, might want to know, what does the ELCA think about mental health and the mental health crisis in our world? And so there's an opportunity for there to be some public witness from our church, the ELCA. Also, we operate one of the largest networks of social service agencies in the United States, and a number of these topics are touched on by those agencies as well. So whether you're talking about racism or health and health care or education or gender based violence, a lot of these social service agencies are encountering these very topics. So they are also resources for them as they're engaging in their work in their own contexts. They're very real world communities, and I think for people that are a part of the ELCA. And again, just want to know, what does our church actually think about this topic? That's one place you can turn. Yeah.

And I think as historic documents, if someone is sort of tentative about actually being part of a church, we've been talking about the nuns or the deconstructed folks, sometimes what they're worried about is that the churches have promised one thing going in and then haven't backed that up. Of course, not all congregations are going to be up to date on the denominations views of this, and they may disagree in some ways, but this sort of gives us a historical look at where our denomination is on these topics, and we're not hiding from them.

Frustrating about these messages as a source of what the ELCA thinks about topic x, though, is that because they are so heavily researched and involved such a long time span in order to create and approve them and adopt them, there's not one on every topic that's in the news today that you would like to know about. And that can be disappointing and sort of frustrating. And so if you've got questions about that sort of thing, we'd love to hear that as well and maybe at least give you a direction to, to, to go for that information.

Absolutely. You know what direction? I want information to come from the catechism.

Mmm.

Yeah.

Time for our catechism question. So last week's question was in nailing his 95 theses to the door of Wittenberg's Castle church church on October 31, 1517, Luther was hoping to a start the Protestant Reformation, b create a debate on the college campus where he taught c create a name for himself in a fat publishing contract, or d create a new religion. And the answer is then create a.

Debate on the college campus where he taught.

That's right.

Absolutely. In Germany, not Wittenberg in Springfield, Ohio.

Right. Yeah.

So this week's question, and don't forget to send in your answers. The word gospel means a, God's spell in Latin b, good tale in old English c God's special lessons in Greek and d, none of the above. All right, so if any of those answers fit there for you, send it to us by email. And all the stuff that you're going to hear here in just a minute, don't forget, we're going to be at the festival of Homiletics in May in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. If anybody can make it there, we'd love to see you, and we'll figure out how to, how to meet up with you. Just let us know by email or, or on social media. Main Street Lutherans is hosted by Keith Fair and Ben Fot. You can reach us by [email protected]. Our website, which has episodes of the podcast, and soon some links that you may want to reference, is mainstreetlutherans.com. We're on the socials as Ainstreet Lutherans. Right now that's Facebook, Instagram threads, and YouTube. The show is produced by Fot media production. Until next time, go in peace. Serve the Lord.

Thanks be to God.