Mark Hanson coined that phrase, "This Church." Perhaps he wanted to emphasize the power of the office of the bishop, that by taking on the Historic Episcopate, unity of the ELCA was now through him.
It could be he wanted to distinguish the ELCA from any other denomination or group. This house, not that one. This car, not that one. This Church, not that one, as if to emphasize even though the ELCA in no way resembles the Christian Church through the ages, it is still somehow a church. I guess the salvation army is a "church", even though it has no sacraments or even crosses in its sanctuary. The Jehovah’s Witnesses and Mormons clamor for similar significance- like the red headed stepchild, bewildered about why the church universal does not accept them as Christians, but rather cultists.
Maybe when Hanson says "this church" he means to insist, like the Mormons and the Jehovah Witnesses, that his is the only truly faithful church- the chosen ones- and He the only bishop in the world with that secret knowledge- that Gnosis- that led him to fulfill the imperative he discovered in his "light within" to ordain practicing gay clergy and perform gay marriages at altars built by Lutheran fore-fathers as the winds of the Holy Spirit are blowing through with some secret change. Like those Gnostics, Hanson has led the ELCA to do this for reasons unknown to the rest of the world that doesn’t have such "secret knowledge"- the rest of Christianity that only has the Christ of the Scriptures. It’s the secret knowledge of magical mushrooms and cannabis- of peyote and valium- those who don’t know its indescribable origins or powers may never know because not even the scripture can illuminate Gnosis, quite the contrary- only the few with Gnosis have the ability to rightly interpret scripture. And they are but a very few.
Maybe when he says, "This Church," he means not his father’s church- his father the churchman and leader- his father the one he rebelled against all of his life- his father , the man who wrote the book, "The Dangerous Dance" to argue against allowing dancing at church functions, schools, and by Lutheran youth. Maybe "This Church" really stands for the utter and total hatred for Hanson’s own father’s faith- a faith he has worked not only to modernize, but to decimate- leaving the lutheran seminary for United Seminary in the red light district of New York.
For whatever reason the ELCA is now "this church", we know that like mormonism and jehovah witness and mysticism and gnosticism and pharisaism and donatism and pelagianism it is not, and for some time has not been, "The Church" – Holy, Apostolic, Universal, spake to by the prophets, born forth in the cross of Christ, and sealed by his word.
That holy seal has been broken, and God can’t be found in "This church." And it could be that as he lays down his head these nights after the ELCA convention, Bishop Hanson will wonder, now that he has destroyed his Father’s Church, after years of work to institute gay marriage and practicing gay clergy since his Saint Paul days with Anita Hill, now that there is nothing else to rage against, all "this bishop" has left is "this church". And in the long history of God’s Church, that is an utterly desolate place to be.
