YTitle: ELCA Lutheran Stress Study Over Statements
ELCA NEWS SERVICE

August 9, 1996

LUTHERANS STRESS STUDY OVER STATEMENTS (75 lines)
96-19-057-FI

     CHICAGO (ELCA) -- It may be more important for members of
the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America to study the Bible and
discuss social issues than it is for them to agree on a position
statement for the church. The ELCA's Social Statement Review
Committee worked that emphasis into a proposal it's drafting for
the church, when it met here July 27-28.
     "We are trying to change emphasis," said Per Anderson,
assistant professor of religion, Concordia College, Moorhead,
Minn., who chairs the committee. "This is a new emphasis on
deliberation apart from or in addition to social statement
deliberation, which has high visibility."
     Until now the church has conducted studies with the goal of
producing social statements, he said. The committee is
recommending that the first purpose of a study should be to help
Lutherans deal with social concerns. A decision to begin work on
a social statement could evolve from the study.
     "We will always have a study phase in advance of decisions
about social statement topics," said Anderson. "We want to make
decisions after we have had some history of deliberation about
the topic."
     In its eight-year history the ELCA has defined its positions
on social issues through the statements of its three predecessor
church bodies or through a churchwide study and drafting process.

The church has adopted new social statements on abortion, racism,
the death penalty, the environment, peace and moral deliberation.

The ELCA Division for Church in Society (DCS) is currently
drafting a social statement on economic life.
     The committee is recommending that social statements retain
their important status in the church, said the Rev. Karen L.
Bloomquist, ELCA director for studies. "It's not in any way de-
emphasizing their importance, but it is expanding the repertoire
of ways in which the church's social witness can be nurtured and
developed in addition to the vehicle of social statements," she
said.
     The proposal is that DCS develop two-year study plans in
consultation with the ELCA Church Council and with the church's
theologians and bishops. The division would also be getting
ideas of which topics to study from assemblies of the ELCA's 65
synods and other hearings, said Anderson. Study plans would be
presented to the biennial churchwide assembly, the ELCA's chief
legislative authority.
     The ELCA Church Council and churchwide assembly will decide
which study topics warrant statements. "If we're serious about
deliberation in congregations and in other expressions of the
church," said Anderson, "the whole church will decide which are
the issues for social statements."
     "We are proposing a plan -- a holistic approach -- to the
church's social witness that we believe will produce fewer social
statements than we have in the first decade of the life of the
ELCA," he said.
     "The church will decide how frequently it will have social
statements, but given the resources of time, human energy, of
financial resources of the church, we expect a decrease in the
number of social statements in the next decade," said Anderson.
     "In the first eight years of the church we were preparing
the ground on several matters," said Bloomquist. "That's the
historical time frame we just passed through that is also
reflected in this."
     Anderson said the committee heard from several sources,
including focus groups and surveys, that "different parts of this
church seem to have different needs for moral deliberation and
moral witness at this time." Some Lutherans "will welcome the
opportunity to deliberate around issues without feeling that they
are under pressure to reach consensus and to take a position as
we do in a social statement."
     "We are trying to acknowledge a variety of needs at this
point for the social witness and the social formation of people
in our churches," he added.
     The committee will present it's final report to the DCS
board when it meets here Sept. 26-28.

For information contact: Ann Hafften, Dir., ELCA News Service,
(312) 380-2958; Frank Imhoff, Assoc. Dir., (312) 380-2955