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an ontological change which, like infant baptism, doesn’t depend on personal belief.
The ELCA may change incrementally to bishops-for-life by dropping term limits for bishops as the Eastern Washington-Idaho Synod did in 2010.
You don’t have to believe it; you just have to do it – was the infamous advice of Martin Marty to Lutherans about taking on the historic episcopate as a permanent future structure. To be sure, Episcopalians want Lutherans to do it and believe it, but they also know that having hooked the ELCA into changing its constitution so that the historic episcopate is permanently required, it’s only a matter of time, a generation at most, before Lutherans will do it and believe it.[17]
[17] “I believe that once the Episcopate is gotten right, then everything eventually will fall into place,” Episcopal Bishop Harry Shipps, July 7, 2000, EC General Convention, quote from page 7 of the transcript (emphasis added). Read it here.