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Lutheran Mission Australia has officially signed the Australian Creed for Sexual Integrity, reinforcing its commitment to biblical teachings on marriage, gender and sexuality in response to growing theological compromise. Learn why they signed and how they’re encouraging others to take a stand.

Lutheran Mission Australia (LM-A) has become the latest organisation to sign the Australian Creed for Sexual Integrity — the recently released faith statement that affirms the Bible’s teachings on marriage, gender, and sexuality.

Led by President Rev Matt Anker, LM-A announced its support of the Australian Creed as an expression of faithfulness to Christ in an era of compromise and conformity.

“This new creed was developed by people from churches and Christian entities around Australia and beyond,” LM-A explained in a press release. “They were concerned about how many churches, their leaders, institutions and members — in response to increasing pressures from society — have given up on confessing and teaching God’s clear directions on sex, gender and marriage.”

In making its announcement, LM-A struck a tone of optimism, noting that “there are many other Christian organisations and individuals who are seeking to be faithful to God’s word in areas vital for churches and society”.

What is Lutheran Mission Australia?

Lutheran Mission Australia is a movement of churches “established to support, encourage and strengthen confessional Lutherans in their faithfulness to God and his Word”. The group ultimately aims to become a distinct synod in Australia due to increasing compromise within the Lutheran Church of Australia.

Among LM-A’s concerns are that “the authority of the Word of God is being diminished in the church’s theology and life together” through “the preaching of a new gospel of inclusion that normalises sin”, particularly in the area of sexual ethics.

LM-A’s purpose is “to ensure Confessional Lutheranism has a home in Australia for generations to come”, and expresses its commitment to “contend for the faith that was once for all delivered to the saints” as affirmed in Jude 3.

LM-A noted that the Australian Creed for Sexual Integrity strongly aligns with its own Confessional Statement, which states:

We honour marriage as a gift of God, who has:

• created human beings as male and female,
• created marriage as the life-long union of one man and one woman,
• ordered marriage as the means through which he gives his blessing of children, and
• reserved his gifts of sexual intimacy and procreation for the context of marriage.

Lutheran Mission Australia’s Call to Action

Of additional interest to Lutheran Mission Australia is that the Australian Creed for Sexual Integrity was released on Reformation Day in 2024 — a date of particular significance on the Lutheran calendar.

Reformation Day, celebrated on the 31st of October each year, commemorates the start of the Protestant Reformation in 1517, when Martin Luther nailed his 95 Theses to the door of the Wittenberg Castle Church, sparking widespread religious reform throughout the continent of Europe.

Lutheran Mission Australia has encouraged its constituents to sign The Australian Creed for Sexual Integrity by visiting australiancreed.org. The group also suggested that congregations “may wish to endorse the creed and place copies where worshippers can see it”.

In full, The Australian Creed for Sexual Integrity reads as follows:

We believe in one God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, who designed sex as part of His loving plan for humanity, and whose will for sexual integrity is clearly revealed in Holy Scripture.

We believe God created each person in His image as male or female, and any person’s attempt to deny or change this distorts God’s good design.

We believe God blesses sexual intimacy solely between a man and a woman within the holy covenant of marriage, a life-giving mystery that reflects Christ’s love for His church.

We believe God calls a husband and wife to be fruitful and multiply, that every life is sacred, and that children are precious to God and must be protected from sexualisation.

We believe God calls all people to the joy of living a chaste life, by celibacy in singleness and faithfulness in marriage, and that His commands are given for the common good.

We believe sexual activities outside these bounds are sins which grieve God’s heart, injure others, and enslave people to idolatry.

We believe our bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit, that Christ calls and empowers us to repent from all sin, including sexual sin, that His mercy abounds to forgive and restore, and that by living with sexual integrity we glorify God and humbly embrace His wise and loving plan for human life.

Amen.

You can read and sign the creed here.

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Image courtesy of Lutheran Mission Australia.