Over the last reporting decade the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA) has lost more than 1 million members or 25% of membership, now down to 3.5 million, from 4.7 million ten years ago. At this rate of decline the denomination won’t exist in 30 years or so.
Newly elected ELCA bishops might be expected to address this existential crisis with fresh eyes and energy. But a recent Religion Service News interview, capably conducted by Emily McFarlan Miller, with six new women bishops shows no such interest. Instead, they seem determined to double down on the heterodox theology and political activism that have been so destructive for the ELCA and other Mainline Protestant denominations.
There’s almost no reference to the ELCA’s decline in the bishops’ interview. Perhaps the closest came from Bishop Patricia Davenport of Southeastern Pennsylvania Synod who asked without really answering the question: “How do we move from the mentality of “the church is declining, the church is declining,” to building up the kingdom of God?”
Bishop Laurie Skow-Anderson of the Northwest Synod of Wisconsin noted that many churches are effectively museums, theaters or “political action committees,” which are not the church’s purpose. “The real problem is that they think they are a social club, and they get together to be with their friends on Sunday morning and to drink coffee. They don’t know how to be the church in the world on Monday.” But she didn’t really explain here what being real church entails.