No for me.
My background is extremely mixed. My dad is a life-long Hindu (originally from India), while my mom was raised Lutheran here in the Upper Midwest. She is now very flexible religiously, and her beliefs combine aspects from many traditions. She likes Unitarianism, and holds some beliefs from the eastern religions.
I was never really raised to belong to a certain tradition, but my personal beliefs fit in most with liberal Protestantism. The Evangelical Lutheran Church in America seems to be a good fit for me, and I plan to join after getting certain church positions clarified to me by a pastor.
My mom would be fine with that. While she no longer holds the traditional beliefs, she doesn't have a problem with liberal Christianity, and certainly not with the Lutheran denomination she was raised in. My maternal grandmother did want me to get baptized, so I was baptized at the Episcopal church in my neighborhood during my young childhood. I was never confirmed though, and I've hardly ever been to church. Being Episcopalian would certainly be a possibility if it turns out that the Lutherans are just too conservative to me, but at least some ELCA congregations seem to be what I'm looking for.
I have little experience with the ELCA and ECUSA (though I have been to one of the services of both, the latter having been a joint worship with my UCC), but I don't think I would consider one more inherently conservative than the other. If I had to choose which was the more liberal of the two, however, I'd pick the ELCA if only because there is still a decent number of conservative Anglicans in the US and all of the conservative Lutherans are in the LCMS now.
How is the ELCA for liberalism? I've never heard of them doing anything outlandish, like I hear with the Episcopalians from time to time.
I'm not entirely sure what you mean by "outlandish." The ELCA ordains women, gays and lesbians, has a flexible approach to scripture, supports sex education and has a more middle-line approach to abortion than its counterparts, and its congregants are more progressive as a whole. It's not the most liberal of the mainline Protestant sects by any means, though it's certainly more progressive than the UMC, which I've noticed is a favorite denomination among liberal Christians.
Hmm, you may be confusing denominational policy with congregants. In the North, the UMC
is a liberal denomination, sometimes quite stridently so. Its popularity among liberal Christians stems in part from this and its historic prominence in the social justice movement (see also,
John Wesley being a total bamf). Of course, demographics have buffeted it quite strongly; it was also the only left-of-center denomination with significant Southern representation, so now its Southern wing is much more numerically powerful and thus has shifted the denomination to the right.
I'm now happily attending an Episcopal church, which also has some stark regional divides... but, luckily for me, I'm in one of the most liberal dioceses and am quite happy (though I miss the Methodist focus on service). Episcopalians have definitely done outlandishly liberal things, like nominate openly gay bishops even after Westminster has chastised them/us, and these sorts of things make me happy
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