Messages and Statements - Evangelical Lutheran Church in America
Report and Reflections from the Bishops' Academy Visit to the Holy Land [1]
January 2009
After two years of planning, bishops, their spouses, and staff members of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA) and the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Canada (ELCIC) traveled to the Holy Land for the Bishops’ Academy, an annual gathering for study and worship. The trip was planned as a witness to God’s will for a just peace for all people and as an expression of accompaniment with the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Jordan and the Holy Land (ELCJHL) and ministries of the Lutheran World Federation (LWF).
From what I heard from my contacts in Palestine during and after the Bishops' Academy, I judge this to be a watered-down, pasty, and all together unsatisfactory reflection of what the majority of the bishops actually saw and learned. This is most assuredly not what they were saying there, I must tell you.
ReplyDeleteIt is because of such mealy-mouthed "balance" (utterly devoid of the kind of proportionality analysis that ethics should commend, I'd think) that makes the Presiding Bishop so danged easy a target whenever he speaks.
-DwightP