The third sphere of activity is that of lifting this church's voice in witness to social concerns through the development and enactment of social policy. Here this church's moral deliberation aims at corporate conclusions. This sphere of activity engages our theology with broad social concerns as well as specific issues through documents that set forth this church's normative understandings and policy on individual and corporate Christian responsibility in the world. Such documents are social statements and social policy resolutions, that is, actions of the Churchwide Assembly or Church Council on matters of social concern.
Social statements are major documents addressing significant social issues.
Typically, they provide an analysis and interpretation of an issue, set forth basic theological and ethical perspectives related to it, and offer guidance for the corporate Evangelical Lutheran Church in America and its individual members. Social statements are documents of the highest quality. They vary in scope, length, frequency, and forms of moral discourse, according to the needs of their subject matter. In all cases, social statements are the product of extensive and inclusive deliberation within this church, a process that is an integral part of their educational purpose. Because of the considerable resources and care that this church invests in them, and because of the participatory process used in their development, social statements are the most authoritative form of social policy and are adopted only by the Churchwide Assembly.