The Sacrament of Confirmation Bias

The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel report of the ELCA vote to permit non-celibate homosexual clergy included this explanation.

Tim Mumm, a gay man and an assembly delegate from Whitewater, said the Scripture that guides opponents of the more liberal policy was written by mortals, at a much earlier time, and doesn't reflect what many Christians now believe.

Mr. Mumm's So-what Scriptura certainly doesn't reflect what many thought Lutherans believe. Eric Gorski's report for the Associated Press (via JSOnline) gets pretty much the same explanation as Mr. Mumm's from Barbara Wheeler, director of the Center for the Study of Theological Education at Auburn Theological Seminary in New York, who participated in similar discussions in the Presbyterian Church (USA).

The society is in the process of changing its collective mind about the moral status of same-sex relationships, and there's a parallel theological movement.

Sounds like the theologians are as redundant as The Bible is irrelevant.


Update: Jacqueline L. Salmon's Washington Post report (via MCJ) quotes Mr. Mumm verbatim on the point.

"We live today with an understanding of homosexuality that did not exist in Jesus' time and culture," Tim Mumm, a lay delegate from Wisconsin and supporter of Lutherans Concerned, an gay-rights organization, said during the debate. "We are responding to something that the writers of Scripture could not have understood."

Presumably meaning Martin Luther likewise could not, raising the question how this is "Lutherans" Concerned and why there was and is any Lutheran Church.

"As Luther taught us, Scripture does not have a wax nose," said the Rev. Ryan Mills, a delegate representing Texas and Louisana. "It cannot be twisted into anything we want it to say. But that's just what we're doing with these following recommendations."

Looks more like an abandonment than reinterpretation of Scripture. Hard to see why a religious denomination is needed to do nothing more than affirm prevailing contemporary understandings. Couldn't people do that at least as well on their own, or at least well enough considering the savings in overhead?