Closson echoed Mohler, saying, “God did not create androgynous beings; He created two complementary, biologically, and genetically sexed individuals. God built the complementarity of the sexes into the very fabric of creation. Encouraging, promoting, and celebrating transgenderism through the promotion of a transgender clergy represents just the latest step away from biblical orthodoxy for a denomination that long ago stopped caring what the Bible teaches on moral and ethical matters.”
Related article: Gender Transitioning Is Immoral, Say the Majority of U.S. Protestant Pastors
Mark Tooley is the president of the Institute on Religion and Democracy and blasted the ELCA for its stance on transgenderism. “The idea that gender can be manipulated so flippantly clearly contravenes biblical teaching that male and female are divine gifts and physical realities, not emotions, desires, or transitional identities that are self-willed,” Tooley said. “Transgender ideology makes humans the architects and superintendents of existence rather than God.”
Congregations Leaving the ELCA
Since the ELCA announced it would allow openly gay individuals to be ordained within the denomination, some congregations have left North America’s largest Lutheran denomination citing progressive stances on theology.
Last month the progressive Rocky Mountain Synod of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America installed controversial Lutheran pastor Nadia Bolz-Weber to the role of pastor of public witness. Bolz-Weber is the founder of the House for all Sinners and Saints, a “progressive, queer-inclusive Lutheran congregation. The pastor once issued a call on Twitter asking women who grew up during the Christian church’s purity culture of the 90’s and early 2000’s to send in their purity rings (which were symbols given to young women who pledged sexual abstinence until marriage) so she could melt them down into a “golden vagina.” In exchange, Bolz-Weber sent those who offered their rings a silicone “impurity” ring and a “Certificate of Impurity.”
