Marion church vote on leaving ELCA fails

MARION - A Marion church failed Sunday to attain a two-thirds majority in a vote that would have meant the nearly 1,800-member congregation would leave the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America.

The congregation at St. Mark's Faith and Life Center, 8300 C Ave. in Marion, took its second of two votes Sunday to leave the ELCA, the largest Lutheran denomination in the United States. The first vote, on Oct. 3, passed with a 67.1 percent majority.

Of the 633 rostered voters who cast ballots Sunday afternoon, 381 voted in favor of leaving the denomination while 252 voted to stay, the church's pastor said.

“It's 60 percent (who voted to leave), so the vote to leave the ELCA failed,” said the Rev. Perry Fruhling.

According to the ELCA, leaving the denomination requires two separate approvals. If the October vote to leave had failed, there would not have been a second vote.

However, the proposal could still come up for another set of votes in the future.

The issue at the core of the movement to leave the denomination is an August 2009 decision by the ELCA's Churchwide Assembly to allow non-celibate gay and lesbian clergy to serve as pastors.

The Marion congregation started a series of discussions and forums after that decision. During a church meeting in January 2010, the St. Mark's congregation passed a resolution declaring marriage was between “one man and one woman.”

Fruhling and other church leaders had expressed their desire to leave the ELCA throughout the discussion process. He declined to say whether he was disappointed with the vote Sunday.

“St. Mark's continues to be open and to invite every member to consider the aspects of all the issues. Our process was committed to giving everyone in the community of faith a voice,” he said.

The Rev. Michael Burk, bishop of the Southeastern Iowa Synod of the ELCA, of which St. Mark's is a member, said he hopes to work with Fruhling to bring unity back to the congregation.

“There will be a lot of work to do, but it needs work that I will be doing with Pastor Fruhling,” he said.

In an open letter to the congregation Sunday, Fruhling said that should the vote to leave fail, there would a movement by the ELCA and its bishops to change the leadership of the church.

“There is precedent in other synods for removing pastors from the clergy roster when the vote to leave the ELCA did not pass,” he wrote.

Burk said Sunday there would be no such movement, and that it is up to Fruhling and the congregation to decide the leadership of the church. According to ELCA policy, congregations name and hire their pastors, not the denomination.