Exodus International approves of schism in the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America this week.
Spokesman Randy Thomas said:
I’ve said it a million times, homosexuality is just the manifestation of much deeper theological and moral disagreements. While separation is viewed as a last resort and only approached slowly and with wisdom …sometimes separation is inevitable and must be done.
Separation is not inevitable. It is engineered:
Engineered by well-funded Christian Rightist outsiders and by political groups such as the Institute on Religion and Democracy, which since the 1980s has purposely disrupted mainline Christianity. While posing as a voice for renewal and reform, IRD became infamous for supporting far-right terrorism against liberal churches in Latin America. Most notably, IRD sought to foment U.S. government disruption and contra violence against the Nicaraguan Council of Protestant Churches (Consejo de Iglesias Pro-Alianza Denominacional, or CEPAD). Back in the United States, IRD simultaneously fomented miscommunication and ultraconservative heresy in order to disable mainstream Christian churches, disrupt their efforts on behalf of human rights, and enrich then-nascent Christian Rightist megachurches — and the social-conservative wing of the Republican Party, which sought to subsidize the growth of the Christian Right.
Like Exodus International, the new Lutheran spinoff will exist not as a champion of Biblical values, butrather as a monument to antigay bigotry and spiritual egotism.
