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CCM Verax Information Service Title: ELCA MITERGATE SCANDAL - JUSTIFICATION BY HISTORIC EPISCOPACY The ecumenical scandal in the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA), known as "Mitergate," is turning the denomination's central doctrine on its head. Traditionally, Lutherans have centred their theological existence on the Doctrine of Justification by Faith. However, since the passage of Called to Common Mission (CCM), the full communion agreement between the ELCA and the Episcopal Church in the USA, this teaching has been cast aside. ("Mitergate" is a play on the term for a pointy bishop's hat, a miter, and the Watergate Affair which caused the resignation of US President Nixon in 1974). Lutherans hold that the Doctrine of Justification by Faith is the doctrine by which the church stands or falls. When the German monk and theologian, Martin Luther, "rediscovered" the Doctrine of Justification by Faith in the sixteenth-century, the Reformation began. Through his study of the Bible, Luther came to understand that sinners are made right or just (thus justification) by God's grace through faith alone. For Lutherans, justification happens apart from human attempts to fulfil the demands of religious laws. Thus, salvation is a gift freely given in faith and is not something earned by human efforts (works righteousness). Nevertheless, in order to become "right" for full communion with the Episcopal Church, CCM dictates that the ELCA must adopt Anglican-style bishops in tactile succession, also called "historic episcopacy." The Anglican "historic episcopate" is anchored in seventeenth-century laws of religious intolerance which were enforced through all manner of brutality, causing much suffering and death. The US Pilgrim Fathers came to America to escape this oppression. In order to get the ELCA 1999 Churchwide Assembly to adopt this tradition, ELCA leaders deceived voters by telling them that the Lutheran Reformers "deeply desired" an "historic episcopate" based on the laws of the Episcopal Church. Research published in January 2002 shows this claim to be false and known to be false at the time. CCM Verax is working to expose this "grand deception" used to secure the passage of CCM in the ELCA. On 26 March 2003, CCM Verax Administrator, Dr. Mark Menacher, challenged the ELCA Presiding Bishop to debate the "grand deception" in CCM at the 10th Assembly of the Lutheran World Federation (LWF) to be held in July 2003 in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada. In reaction to Hanson's repeated failure to respond, Dr. Menacher comments,
Pastor Mark D. Menacher,
PhD
Editor:
Pastor
Mark D. Menacher, PhD, CCM Verax, PO Box 26 , Au Gres, MI 48703-0026 (USA) |