Days after the Lutheran Church of Australia and New Zealand decided to have women pastors, their Brisbane Bishop has declared that preaching the churche’s doctrine of a week ago is banned. Pastors are permitted to hold a personal belief that only men should be pastors – the church doctrine up till this week -but not to preach or teach it.
Bishop Mark Vionikka, bishop of the Lutheran’s Queensland district reminds his “fellow servants” that when they became pastors they promised to uphold the church’s doctrine.
Describing the passage of the recent decison through the LCANZ church councils the bishop says that there is a new doctrine in place: “Following the advice of the General Pastors’ Conference, the Church in Convention, resolved to remove TA6:11 [a clause in the church’s ‘Theses of Agreement’ that prohibited women’s ordination] from its teaching the Bishop writes in a letter to his clergy.
“By doing this, it acknowledged that the gender of a pastor is a non-divisive doctrinal matter. TA1:4e then instructs that divergent views on such matters ‘are not to be propagated as the public doctrine of the Church’….
“Therefore, upholding the teaching of the Church is a commitment not to ‘propagate’ an alternative teaching as the teaching of the church.
“The Collins Dictionary explains: ‘If people propagate an idea or piece of information, they spread it and try to make people believe it or supportit.’ This differs from sharing one’s opinion on the matter, something that pastors are free to do.”
During the consultation process – known as the Way Forward – a convention or society for those who wished to maintain the male-pastors-only position was proposed, but dropped as the proposals were refined diring the lead-up to a General Pastors’ Conference and the general synod this year.
During the Way Forward process some conservative Lutherans have left the LCANZ to form alternative groups or synods of Lutherans.