wfn.org | ELCA Assembly Supports South Carolina Boycott

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ELCA NEWS SERVICE

August 22, 1999

ELCA ASSEMBLY SUPPORTS SOUTH CAROLINA BOYCOTT
99-CWA-64-DM

     DENVER (ELCA)   The 1999 Churchwide Assembly of the Evangelical
Lutheran Church in America (ELCA) voted Aug. 21 to support a decision of
the church's bishops not to meet next spring in Charleston, S.C.,
because the battle flag of the Confederacy continues to fly over the
state's capitol in Columbia, S.C.  The vote was 849 to 23.
     ELCA Presiding Bishop H. George Anderson was asked to write a
letter to the South Carolina legislature to inform state lawmakers of
the assembly's action.
     The churchwide assembly, the chief legislative authority of the
ELCA, met Aug. 16-22 here at the Colorado Convention Center.  There were
more than 2,500 people participating, including 1,038 ELCA voting
members.  The theme for the biennial assembly was "Making Christ Known:
Hope for a New Century."
     The Rev. David Donges, bishop of the ELCA South Carolina Synod,
urged voting members to support the church's Conference of Bishops,
which decided shortly before the assembly convened that they would
support a boycott called by the National Association for the Advancement
of Colored People (NAACP).  Although Charleston was under consideration
for the bishops' spring 2000 meeting, they dropped that idea after
discussing the NAACP boycott.
     The Confederate battle flag, which has been flown over the state
capitol for the past 37 years, is viewed by many as a continuing symbol
of slavery.  The ELCA South Carolina Synod, on two occasions, adopted
resolutions that the flag be removed.
     "Members of the legislature have determined only they have the
right to remove it," Donges told the assembly.
     After the vote of support was taken, Anderson quipped, "As a 23-year resident of the state of South Carolina, I will try to write in
language the legislature understands."
     Anderson formerly was a faculty member and president of Lutheran
Theological Southern Seminary in Columbia.
     The motion of support for the bishops was submitted to the
assembly by voting member, the Rev. Kris Ann Zierke of the ELCA
LaCrosse Area Synod.
     In other action, the assembly voted 786 to 42 that the ELCA convey
concerns, about mountain-top removal and valley-fill strip mining of
coal, to the U.S. Department of Energy, the Environmental Protection
Agency and appropriate congressional committees.
     Such strip mining, says the resolution, "wounds the physical,
emotional and spiritual well-being of people in nearby communities" and
"harms the economic and social livelihood of Appalachian peoples."  The
resolution urges deep mining rather than strip mining, development of
alternative energy resources that do not require cheap coal, and land
reclamation that restores ecological balance.
     The assembly also asked the ELCA Division for Church in Society to
prepare a report on the mining issues for the 2001 assembly of the
Evangelical Lutheran Coalition for Mission in Appalachia.
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