During the 3rd week of August 2009 the ELCA, Evangelical Lutheran Church of America, held one of their biannual  conferences here in Minneapolis.  The convention was tasked to deal with dealing with issues of sexuality, specifically issues related to homosexuality.  Homosexuality has been a big issue in a number of Christian denominations.  Now the ELCA is one of the more “more liberal” mainstream denominations.  They have been discussing sexuality for a number of years.  This year the decision needed to be made about allowing what the religious like to call clergy who are “practicing homosexuals”.  This curious term is what they call gay couples who have sex.  Now from a Humanist point of view, this is not a big deal for adults who are gay in a relationship.  However we Humanists are not homophobic religious believers.  Now I know that there are a great many religious people who are not discriminatory.  What makes this interesting is that the ELCA did decide to allow gay clergy, but leaves the actual calls to parishes up to individual congregations.

Now this is a step forward, but what really makes it interesting is the weather.  Yes, the weather.  Just a the time the conference was getting ready to take a vote a tornado went through downtown Minneapolis, damaging the Minneapolis Convention Center, as well as Central Lutheran Church.  Now Humanists would not consider this anything but severe weather.  Well not to the religious right types.  This tornado was not sever weather but, wait for it, a message from God.  John Piper of Bethlehem Baptist Church in Minneapolis, wrote on his blog at “Desiring God”:  “Conclusion: The tornado in Minneapolis was a gentle but firm warning to the ELCA and all of us: Turn from the approval of sin. Turn from the promotion of behaviors that lead to destruction. Reaffirm the great Lutheran heritage of allegiance to the truth and authority of Scripture. Turn back from distorting the grace of God into sensuality. Rejoice in the pardon of the cross of Christ and its power to transform left and right wing sinners.”  http://www.desiringgod.org/Blog/1965_the_tornado_the_lutherans_and_homosexuality/

Piper is not the only one.  The whole KKMS Saturday line up and a number of callers also said the same thing.  So weather apparently can be changed by God because of “the gays”.  If we pursue the apparent logic of this, it seems that we can cause severe weather with gay people gathering.  Now how God missed the Pride celebration at the end of June, I’m not sure.

Our work is cut out for us.  It seems that people have made it to the 21st century still believing that invisible beings control the weather.  It seems that the best approach here is to point out that this really quite stupid to think that a God is going to use a tornado to send a message.  Why God couldn’t use the big screens and Powerpoint to send his message, I don’t know.  Apparently manipulating the weather is much easier. It’s too bad that magical thinking is so tough to get rid off.

-Scott Lohman