Lutheran Confessions and ELCA social statements

I have a lot of homework to do this week. Oddly enough, I am finding that other than reading Constituions, Bylaws and Continuing Resolutions of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in america, most of the stuff is things that I am actually wanting to do.

For my Lutheran Confessions class, I am working on a case study in which a teenage girl gets pregnant and doesnt want to tell her father who thinks that people who have sex outside of marriage are condemned by God. I am thinking of taking a look at the use of law and gospel in this case.

But I am doing some outside research, per usual, and found a paper that I wrote on teen pregnancy for a college social work class to be helpful. I also am looking at some of the social statements from the ELCA and found myself in absolute agreement with the ELCA's statement on abortion. http/www.elca.org/socialstatements/abortion which I find amusing because I always thought my stance on that was never articulated approprietely until I read that statement today. Why cant lutherans make their thoughtfulness and sense of paradox better known? It was refreshing to find that statement and yet it is a breath of fresh air from all the literature that seems to indicate that you need to choose between being pro-life and prochoice.

I also looked over the draft for the new sexuality statement, which I think that I appreciate as well as it provides a critical thinking moral voice to our changing world. It was longer and some parts didnt pertain as much so I found myself not meditating over it as much. I dont know how well it addresses poverty and homosexuality in a compassionate light so I cant give a definite stance on the statement. But what I did read struck me as very morally sound.

I think its refreshing to know that I am in agreement with the teachings of my church on things that can be deemed controversial in this day and age. But I also cant help but question if it would have been just as easy for me to be in line with these statements in college and high school as those tend to be times when one is more hormonally charged in addition to wanting to understand and explore other worldviews than what parents may hold.