FARGO, N.D.--Fargo's Atonement Lutheran Church is leaving the Evangelical Lutheran Church of America, according to The Forum.
Atonement's congregation voted 211 to 14 to secede from the 17-year-old Lutheran organization. It is the first and only church to secede from the synod.
According to the Rev. Dale Wolf, the 1,500-member congregation began removing itself from the ELCA several years ago. The increasingly hierarchical structure of the ELCA and dwindling traditional beliefs were contrary to the climate at Atonement.
The ELCA entered into "full communion" with the Episcopal Church USA, which emphasizes the authority of bishops, Wolf said.
The Episcopal Church has also been embroiled in a bitter debate about homosexuality over the past year after ordaining an openly gay bishop. But Wolf said that was not the "driving force" behind the split.
Secession will mean Atonement won't be involved in difficult upcoming debates in the ELCA about topics like ordaining non-celibate gay clergy, Wolf said.
The gay debate has split the African Anglican church further from the Episcopal Church USA. The Christian Science Monitor reports African Anglicans in Ghana have denied funding from their U.S. counterpart, the Episcopal Church, over the ordination of gay clergy.
Senior Anglican bishops in Africa announced they will no longer accept funding from branches of the church that support the ordination of gay clergy or the blessing of same-sex unions.
The blessing of same-sex partnerships by a diocese on Canada's west coast and the election of Gene Robinson, an openly gay man, as the Episcopalian bishop of New Hampshire during the past year were received with harsh criticism by the worldwide Anglican church.
"We do not want any money from the Episcopal Church of the United States," said Peter Akinola, Nigerian archbishop and chairman of the Council of Anglican Provinces in Africa (CAPA), which covers more than half the world's 77 million Anglicans.
"This is not rhetoric," Archbishop Akinola said during a news conference at the close of CAPA's two-day summit in Nairobi, Kenya. "We will not, on the altar of money, mortgage our conscience, mortgage our faith, mortgage our salvation."
CAPA reportedly receives 70 percent of its operating budget from the U.S. church funds. Hundreds of thousands of dollars from the church's humanitarian organization for healthcare and feeding projects in Tanzania, Uganda, Ethiopia and South Africa also may be affected.
"The vast bulk of the money that comes from the United States [Episcopal Church] and goes to Africa is for feeding the hungry, tending the sick - particularly people with HIV/AIDS, and malaria - and for sheltering the homeless," said Jim Naughton, spokesman for the Episcopal Diocese of Washington.
Several dissenting congregations in the U.S. have also removed themselves from the Episcopal communion and refused church funds.
