Evangelical Covenant Church Elects First Woman President


The Evangelical Covenant Church, its origin is Swedish, elected its first female President this past weekend. It admitted women to the status of clergy about 20 years ago. 

I grew up going to a church in this denomination. It was started in a rural Iowa area about 15 miles from my parent's farm in the mid 1800's. The original version in rural Sweden stressed piety and that carried over with enthusiasm to areas settled by Swedes in the U.S. Near my community was a cobbler who had a gift of oratory and organized the first church in the U.S. Today it claims to be rapidly growing. I gather its strategy is a bit different than other denominations. They elbow for land in rapidly growing suburban areas of cities. The Covenant denomination appears to aim at multicultural central urban areas.

When I was a youth, the denomination's piety was all about alcohol, movies, ballroom dancing, card playing and such pleasures. Having been in one of its churches less than 10 times in the last 50 years, I was surprised to see on its website piety know means racial tolerance and sin is not being accepting and tolerant of other races.

What is entertaining for me now as an outsider is to watch the Evangelical Covenant Church's reaction to society's changing norms for LGBT people. A couple of years ago the denomination removed its credentials from few clergy and one or two of its legacy churches for hosting gay weddings. Watching replays of its proceedings on this matter it was clear there are staff and members who want to drop condemnation of LGBT people and certify embracing churches and make the denomination welcoming. 

I'm guessing it will change its opposition to LGBT within a few years. This is because the denomination allows some dissention and debate. On its webpage the word "discernment" and "discerning" in used constantly. The words are popular in all of Christianity these days. But when a denomination allows some movement or dissent in what is meant by various Bible passages the condemnation of LGBT is headed for the scrapheap. Arguments to discriminate are weak, to not discriminate strong.

One of the comments following the article about the first woman President was, "There goes the neighborhood." Indeed, that may be the case.  

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