St. Mark’s to hold second vote on whether to leave ELCA

MARION - In a second and final vote Sunday, the congregation at St. Mark's Faith and Life Center, 8300 C Ave., will decide whether to leave the nation's largest Lutheran denomination.

The congregation voted 309 to 151 in October to leave the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America due in large part to the ELCA's 2009 Churchwide Assembly decision to allow non-celibate gay and lesbian clergy to serve as pastors.

According to ELCA policy, any church wishing to leave the denomination must hold two congregational votes, no less than 90 days apart. The decision to leave must have a 67 percent vote or it is considered to have failed. October's vote at St. Mark's was 67.2 percent to leave the denomination.

If the congregation had not voted to leave the denomination, there would not have been a second vote.

Sunday's vote is at 1:30 p.m. at the church.

St. Mark's is not the first congregation to vote to leave the denomination; churches around the country have already approved the move and have broken off from the ELCA.

The Rev. Michael Burk, Bishop of the Southeastern Iowa Synod of the ELCA, which oversees many churches in Eastern Iowa, said he believes the driving force is really the Assembly's vote on gay and lesbian clergy.

“What the pastor said (during the General Assembly) was that we believe marriage is between one man and one woman, that's what the ELCA teaches,” Burk said in an interview with The Gazette in December. “But, and here's where the interpretation machine started, we also made a decision that when, for the sake of mission, it makes sense to allow into ministry those people who are otherwise qualified, those in lifelong same-gendered relationships, we're going to be open to that possibility.”