The Problems of Power in the ELCA constitution
There are some really clear reasons why the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA) should re-examine its constitution laid out in the memorials many synods sent to Churchwide Assembly. When the ELCA was formed, it had 2 million more members and expected growth, and the constitution is not built for the continual shrinkage of our membership or synodical and national bank accounts. We are also in a new era of being church, with new goals and new ways of working and living together. The constitution we have is not reflective of who we are nor where we want to go. These, I would think, are facts that don’t need much explanation. I want to get into an issue that might be less clear, at least to many lay people. One of the reasons the constitution needs to be re-examined is power — who has it, who doesn’t, and how that is decided.
Way back in the 1970’s, before even I was born, the many branches of Lutheran Christianity in the United States thought it would be a good thing to come together as one. Due to some hefty theological differences and a fissure in the Lutheran Church — Missouri Synod, this dream did not come to pass. However, in 1982, the Lutheran Church in America, American Lutheran Church, and Association of Lutheran Evangelical Churches decided they wanted to make a go of it together. The ALC was formed out of a merger of six Lutheran church bodies. The LCA was borne out of a merger of four Lutheran Church bodies (one of these four was a merger of three bodies). The ALEC was created out of a schism in the LCMS. So we have three church bodies, made up of at least 15 predecessor church bodies, each with their own polity, and at least 5 different ethnic heritages coming together to make one church.
What does this have to do with reconstituting the ELCA, you ask? The creation of this constitution was messy. One way in which this was messy is that different predecessor bodies had different church structures. Some had bishops, some rejected the concept of bishops outright. In a very Lutheran way, the constitution of the ELCA took a middle path on church structure in regards to bishops and how much power bishops would have. In his book on the merger, Edgar R. Trexler writes,
“By and large, the issues were avoided; where compromises were struck, the proposed constitution seemed to speak out of both sides of its literary mouth” (168).
The avoidance and compromise has echoed down the decades into a situation in which who has power to do what and who will listen if power is asserted ends up, in practice, as a lot of dangerous gray space.
Depending on the predecessor body of a congregation, they may trust in and listen to the bishop or they may ignore the bishop completely. Often this gets reflected in what kinds of bishops get elected in which region. So not only do we not have a clear, collective understanding of what a bishop has power to do, the actions of different bishops seem to show that not even the bishops have a collective understanding of what they do and do not have the power to do. Some bishops believe they have power and wield it, some shy away from it. And lemme tell ya, abuse happens on both ends of that spectrum.
The current constitution of the ELCA is an absolute mess when it comes to who has structural power, who has relational power, and who has positional power. It causes harm to church employees (including but not limited to rostered leaders), congregations, and individual members.
When a bishop or another person with systemic or positional authority abuses their power either by over-asserting or under-asserting it, there is nowhere for those who have experienced abuse to go. This isn’t just a relations with the bishop thing (especially because what power the bishop has is often either actually unclear or interpreted as such). This can be seen in the actions of candidacy committees, church councils, synod councils, seminaries, and in every area of the church where one person or group has power over the other. As always, the effect of these power imbalances has an outsized effect on Black, Indigenous, and other People of Color of the ELCA and their communities, as well as LGBTQIA+ folk. There is no appeal process outside of the office of the bishop if someone is kicked out of candidacy or is rejected from on-leave from call status for being Black, queer, or simply too justice oriented. There is no way to formally appeal if a congregation from a historically under-resourced community has funding removed — and speaking out in an informal way can often make the situation worse.
In addition, due to the “three expressions, one church” compromise, there is few avenues for one expression of the church to discipline another expression for acting against our stated values and purpose. For example, if the Office of the Presiding Bishop or the Council of Bishops to discipline synods for acting in ways that are not reflective of our proclaimed values. If, say, a Bishop is improperly disciplined by their synod council (which can look like a Bishop being removed without due process or nothing being done at all about a Bishop’s behavior), there is little the Presiding Bishop or Council of Bishops can do, particularly in the case of over-action. There are simply too many ways groups and individuals can go widely out of bounds of what the church calls us to be without ramifications from other parts of the church. While the constitution states that all parts of the church are interdependent, it doesn’t do a great job of spelling out what that interdependence looks like, creating a lot of power imbalances in the system. Instead of engaging these problems in generative conflict, we just keep on keepin’ on, causing harm upon harm in the process.
These power imbalances and this lack of clarity harms everyone. The compromises between very different structures in our predecessor bodies have created myriad situations for abuse to happen with little recourse. I want to emphasize again this does outsize harm on communities that are predominantly Black, Indigenous, or other People of Color and members of the LGBTQIA+ community the most. The constitution of the ELCA was written during a time when white women had only been ordained in predecessor bodies for 17 years, Latine & Black women for 7 years, Asian women for 5 years, and the first Indigenous woman had just been ordained. It would be 21 years until LGBTQIA+ people could openly serve as rostered leaders and get married in ELCA congregations. It was also a time when the dominant culture in society held that being “color blind” was the best way to handle racism. It was rare people in positions of power were knowledgeable about structural racism, much less considering it when writing documents. So although the people voting on this initial constitution may have been an equal portion men and women and ten percent of the voters were Black, Indigenous, and other People of Color, the document created systems that benefit straight, white men over and above everyone else because the environment in which it was created is one in which those people held the most power.
I know for many people this is a scary proposition. It’s hard work, it’s expensive work, and there is a possibility it will drive some to leave a church that is already shrinking. But we are not called to fear, we are called to hope. We are people who believe in things like death, resurrection, and new life. We are the inheritors of a church borne out of people who saw something was wrong with the church they loved and called home, called it out, and created something new. To look at our church as it is, to see there are things that are wrong, and to work to change those things is to live in alignment with our theological inheritance. To not be willing to make changes because we are afraid, or “this is the way things have always been” is to ignore the roots of our church. We can do hard things.
