Being Lutheran but not “ELCA”

September 29, 2009

Yes, I am staying Lutheran. The Minneapolis Meltdown of the ELCA, with the smooth passage of all the necessary provisions to make homosexuality a normal and “celebrated,” even God-blessed “lifestyle” in the ELCA, with gay marriage clearly on the horizon and unrestricted ordination as pastors of openly practicing homosexuals moved the ELCA up with the leaders of the progressive liberal Protestants, particularly The Episcopal Church here in the U.S., and the United Church of Christ. This “progress” and “liberty” (what “Liberal”/”Liberalism really mean) intends to make a major overhaul revision of Christianity from the roots up. This “re-visioning” of Christianity is not about homosexuality; the gay rights issues of church blessings of gay marriages and church indifference to ordaining openly gay and lesbian candidates to pastoral ministry are all symptoms of the real cancer eating away at Liberal Protestantism today, Lutheranism included.

The core issue is a conscious and intentional rejection of what the Nicene Creed defines as the four distinctive signs of the true Christian Church: One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic. To reject the Church as apostolic is to reject the norm of Holy Scripture, the Bible, as the revelation of Christ and the Word of God which works faith, hope and love among. To reject the Church as catholic is to open up any and every sort of idea, practice or eccentricity that any single individual, congregation, group of congregations or even whole synods might find to be “relevant,” “inclusive,” and “non-judgmental,” regardless of what the Church through history and around the world has believed, taught and practiced. To reject the Church as holy means to discard the very nature and existence of the Church as the body of Christ and the spiritual calling of all Christians to be conformed to Christ in the whole of their lives; now any human ideology, any human

“-ism,” can take the place of Christ. To reject the Church as one is to dissolved the whole reality of the Church as such, for the Church is the one, indivisible, universal body of Christ; with unity gone, there is no universal, ecumenical check and guard, and every person and every congregation is cut loose on its own to follow “religion” as they might feel it.

The ELCA has pursued this course from its very beginning, and in the last ten years or so has sped up the process. Today, the ELCA cannot be considered a “church” in any honest way except as a schismatic sect.

My first impulse often is to do something dramatic and drastic when faced with a crisis like the ELCA and its demise, which affects the heart and soul of my life as a Christian. And so my first impulse (and second . . . and third . . .) was to consign the ELCA and Lutheranism to its own ruin, and go off to join the Roman Catholic Church. Many things appeal to me in the Catholic Church, more than a few of which were part of my upbringing in the LCA.

But after much wrestling, praying and pondering, I choose to stay a Lutheran — a Christian from within the Lutheran Tradition, not a supporter or advocate of anything coming down from the ELCA. Here are some of my reasons why:

Going to Rome makes much sense from a theological and intellectual view; I am very attracted to the Catholic Church in terms of doctrine, ecclesiology, spirituality, and piety.
But that is the very issue: What attracts me to Rome is “Catholicism” — the idea and ideal of the Catholic Church. I enjoy and benefit from reading Catholic theology far more than Protestant – Lutheran included. I agree in principle with the Catholic Church much more so than I do with the ELCA, in doctrine, morals, and spirituality. I admire, respect, and agree with Pope Benedict XVI, and have no problem accepting him as the universal pastor of the whole Christian Church; and my sympathies were and are the same, maybe more so, for Pope John Paul II the Great.
The same problem exists as much in the Catholic Church here in the USA as it does in the ELCA: Where is there a parish church and congregation that actually embodies and lives in visible and vital ways either “Catholicism” or “Lutheranism“? Where do you go to join an actual, living parish church and congregation in which you find the theology and ecclesiology actually trying intentionally to be figured out and lived out as daily Christian life and regular Christian worship? Just because Catholicism or Lutheranism officially “believe, teach and confess” the Christian faith and its dogmas in certain “theo-logical” ways in their intellectual life — which is vitally necessary, to be sure; the theological exposition of the biblical dogmas of the Church is fundamental to the identity and existence of authentic Christianity — does not mean that there will be unity or uniformity among parish churches and congregations; even more, it does not guarantee that individual churches will live by the dogma and discipline of the Church, but rather will drift — or rush — counter to that dogma or discipline to “be prophetic” or “be inclusive” or in some other myriad ways conform to some favorite cultural or social “issues” and ideologies in place of Christ and the Gospel.
The key point is: this is true both in the Catholic Church and in the Lutheran church. For me to go to the Catholic Church would be no different in terms of my lived life as a faithful Christian: in either place, given the prevailing cultural captivity of all Christian denominations today (and as it functions in the USA, the Catholic Church is just a “mega-denomintion”) I must seek out and go “church shopping” among Catholic parishes just as much as among Lutheran congregations to find the one that closest approximates the Christian ideal of either Catholicism or Lutheranism.
That the Catholic Church has a strongly defined ecclesiastical hierarchy and a dogmatic and canonical definitive teaching authority is by and large a good thing and an ecclesiology from which I believe the Lutheran church could benefit greatly. But observe Catholic parish church life in the US and you will find it little different from Lutheran congregational life — some bishops, priests and parishioners choose to be faithful to the Catholic Church’s teaching authority from Rome, while others — maybe most in varying degrees — either pick-and-choose what they like from the Roman magisterium and ignore the rest, or shrug their shoulders at the Pope and the Curia and do their “culturally relevant” and “progressive, prophetic, Spirit-led” own thing. My search for a “traditional,” “orthodox,” “confessional,” “evangelical” parish in the Catholic Church would be no different from my search for the same thing in the Lutheran church.
As a member of Transfiguration Lutheran Chuch, I already belong to a Lutheran congregation that intends to be evangelical, confessional, catholic and orthodox. I see as my ministry as a lay member of my congregation with special gifts for teaching, the offering of those gifts and their use to be a help and support in this catholic-confessional Lutheran ministry carried on here.
There is no love lost between me and the denomination ELCA; but then, as a “radical ecumenist,” I would argue that denominationalism in itself as a phenomenon in the Christian Church is the worst, most corrosive, and most destructive heresy in the whole history of Christianity. (But that is a topic for another time.) I am a Lutheran, not an “ELCA-an.” I have no intention of supporting the ELCA or doing anything the ELCA proposes, and I feel confessionally bound as a Lutheran — a “catholic-confessional” Lutheran– to oppose any efforts of the ELCA to impose any doctrinal or ethical teachings or practices on Lutheran congregations.
On the other hand, the ELCA does not care about me in the least. I exist to the ELCA as merely a statistical datum, and an undesirable one at that, being a “WMHM”: white, middle-aged, heterosexual, male of conservative opinions. I do not want the ELCA; the ELCA does not care about or really want me; and that situation suits me just fine.
As a catholic-confessional Lutheran my sole concern is my congregation, Transfiguration Lutheran Church. I desire to move her along the path to fuller identity as catholic, orthodox, evangelical and traditional in the best sense of the Lutheran tradition. The Lutheran tradition stands in and lives from the long stream of the historic and dogmatic inheritance of the Church faithful to the apostolic and prophetic witness to Jesus Christ. Beyond this concern and commitment to this congregation, I see no reason to pay the least bit of concern to the denomination called ELCA except to resist it.
Finally — and above all, I think — I choose to be and remain a Lutheran because rational logic always must yield to “the reasons of the heart” when it comes to matters of faith. Reason must stand aside, and let faith be Word and Guide. For my whole adult life (counting from my college years), I have not merely been “interested” in the “study” of Luther, the Wittenberg Reforms, and the Lutheran Confessions; I have found the depths and riches and truth of my life in Christ given word and form and realization in the Lutheran tradition and the church of that tradition. I simply am a Lutheran; it gives me joy in my faith when I am despondent, certainty and courage when faced with conflict, a sense of real union with Christ that is based on love and not duty-bound obedience, and a confident assurance of hope and salvation that is given to me and for me in preached Word and celebrated Sacrament no matter what my mental or emotional state might be. I do a very good job all on my own of beating myself up with the Law and then inviting the Law to beat me up some more just in case I missed something. Being a Lutheran lets me invite the Gospel of Christ in to beat down the Law and heal the wounds the Law inflicts. I simply would be lost in a morass of depression, panic and anxiety if I did not have the grace in Christ that is faith, that lets me surrender myself to the Gospel of Christ (and I am still a child and a pupil in Christ’s school in learning the power of that faith). Being Lutheran is a life-support system for me, and I am not going to pull the plug.

As I listen and discuss and comisserate over the plight of the ELCA with a friend of mine who has already made up his mind that he is converting to the Catholic Church, who made a persuasive and convincing case for me to join him, I find myself having stepped back away from that bridge over the Tiber and choosing to remain Lutheran — not because I want a fight, but because that in truth is how I believe even while, at the same time, there are many good things in what the Catholic Church believes and teaches that I think, as a theologian, ought to fill out the content of the Lutheran faith and reform. Yes, I still think of Lutheran as “the reforming movement of the Western Catholic Church,” and a “church” of its own only by necessity and historical developments (which means the sort of “church” the Lutheran Reform should adopt ought to be the model of the Roman Catholic Church intended by the 16th c. reformers; Lutherans worship should be the Mass of the Roman Rite, Reformed– which actually would not be in significant diffeence from the current Roman Missal.

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