I first got to know the name James Nestingen through what I still believe is the best confirmation text ever produced — the first edition of Free to Be co-written with Gerhard Førde. (Jim was unhappy with the later revision of it by AugsburgFortress.)

But while I heard him speak from time to time, the first occasion I spent at length with him was the Lutheran CORE Conference at Lindenhurst, Illinois, on September 28, 2007. Many of Jim’s friends and students describe him with the word “prophet,” and he was certainly in full prophetic mode at that event regarding the directions the ELCA was taking. The event gathered those of us who would lead the response to the sexuality decisions that would be made a few years later, leading to the change in strategy of Lutheran CORE and the formation of the North American Lutheran Church.

Jim represented a somewhat different version of Lutheranism than I had grown up with in my eastern LCA context, and I found it enlightening and refreshing, not to replace but to supplement the ways I had come to understand the faith. I learned from him to say with regularity, “we sinners,” as I would preach and teach. Jim would tell us that we should always listen for a confession in conversations with people. He understood the brokenness of our fallen world, and exulted in the Word of absolution that we dare to speak on the authority of the Son of God Himself.

Not that Jim ever claimed to be anything other than one of “us sinners.” And he could sin boldly from time to time. For him, theology was not an abstract intellectual enterprise, but God’s life-saving intervention in the world with the Word of Life we are empowered to speak through Jesus. He stood on “grace alone,” knowing that even our repentance is God’s gift through the Holy Spirit, channeled through the Word and the Sacraments.

Jim was not given to moderation, because his life was a huge love affair with Jesus. He and I had one difficult time when he demanded that Lutheran CORE rescind our invitation to a speaker with whom he had personal and theological conflicts. When we refused, our relationship was tense for a while, but we both moved beyond it. Lovers sometimes over-react, and Jim threw his whole being into the service of the Lord he loved. He was indeed a jealous lover of the Lord who he knew loved him with the same intensity.

As a speaker, nobody could hold the attention of an audience, lay or clergy, as well as Jim could. His repertoire of Sven, Ole, and Lena jokes along with often-scatological humor (which prevented most preachers from stealing his material) interfaced well with his profound theological insights, always centering on the Word of forgiveness Jesus proclaims through us. His North Dakota Scandinavian farmer persona helped humanize his brilliant teaching, and he could share personal stories of his encounters with real people and how the Word of forgiveness encountered them. Often he and all his hearers were in tears as he recounted these stories, even stoic Germans like me.

I still remember his story of visiting a dying friend, whispering in his ears as he was leaving this life, “The next voice you hear will be Jesus.” That is how real and concrete Jim’s faith was, and I know I became a better pastor because of my contacts with him.

Jim has been bothered these last years by painful ailments, and while he limited his travel he still managed to make it to NALC conferences and events, and to serve on our Commission on Theology and Doctrine (CTD). He arrived early in Dallas for the CTD meeting in November as my deans’ meeting was ending, so we got to spend a little time conversing together. While he was in obvious pain, somehow he found a way to fly there and continue to offer his guidance to the church body he helped bring into existence. I remember with thanksgiving these last conversations I had with him until we two redeemed sinners meet again around the Throne.

His death was sudden, and there was evidently nobody to whisper in his ear, “The next voice you hear will be Jesus.” But Jim already knew the voice of the Good Shepherd whom he loved and served so faithfully, and he surely knew Who was welcoming him into his heavenly home.

Note from CORE’s Executive Director: Many thanks to a seminarian, who wishes to remain anonymous, for writing about what it was like to attend an ELCA seminary.  Students considering enrolling in an ELCA seminary, as well as members of orthodox congregations still in the ELCA, need to know what is being taught and what they can expect from their future pastor.  Will this kind of woke educational experience train someone who will provide good pastoral care and leadership for your congregation?  Those who believe that theologically solid pastors are and will continue to be available within the ELCA should know that there are some (Thanks be to God!) but the number is decreasingly rapidly.   

I attended United Lutheran Seminary (United), in Gettysburg, for 3 semesters. My time there led me to realize that there was no place for a confessional Lutheran faith within the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA). Growing up in central Pennsylvania, I knew nothing of the other Lutheran denominations. Every Lutheran church within an hour of my house was ELCA and that was all I knew. Upon entering seminary, I was assured by my synod’s bishop that there was a place for a confessional Lutheran in the “big-tent,” that is the ELCA.

United did not share this view and I realized this in my first semester, when I began questioning the “sacred doctrines” of the ELCA that were invented in the last 10 years. My first semester I took the class Systematic Theology 1: Creation, Sin, and New Creation, which I thought would provide me with a greater understanding of the ELCA’s newly held positions as well as a basic overview of theological concepts and systematics. I hoped that it would answer some of my questions and strengthen my ability to conduct ministry faithfully. I was disappointed to find that much of the class was heavily focused on womanist, feminist, and other niche and modern theological interpretation rather than core or confessional concepts. This was the only theology class that I was required to take. This lack of true theological instruction allows seminarians to believe they understood yet have made strawmen of a Biblical Christianity. Much of what the Church held for the last 2000 years could be dismissed as “privileged,” “racist,” or “sexist.”

My first (and only) sermon I gave at United was for my homiletics class. I was assigned to preach on the first week of Lent, which includes the Gospel reading of Christ being tempted in the wilderness. In my sermon I mentioned, not as the message of the sermon but to highlight the goodness of Christ, that hell was real. I felt relatively proud of my sermon while giving it. Given that it was my first sermon, it could have been better, but I stand by my message today. It shocked me when my homiletics professor opened my sermon up for critique and she implied that I shared a heretical message. I did not realize that the acknowledgement of hell was such a faux pas. After my professor shared that I was a heretic, much of my peers’ remarks echoed her idea. I called my parents as well as a mentor that evening and shared that I wanted to leave seminary because apparently, I did not understand anything about the faith.

Getting raked over the coals for believing that Christ was not lying when He spoke of hell was the straw that broke me. I realized that I could not stay at United, and I would not be welcome in the ELCA, if this is where the publicly acceptable discourse is.

Some of the common talking points that the professors would push in a variety of their classes include: using non-masculine pronouns for God, the merits of a variety of sexual relationships, how the church has been a force for bad in the world, and leftist political talking points.  It is a shame that there could not be serious theological discussions concerning these topics as to disagree with any point carried with it accusations of being “not-loving,” among other unflattering titles, and being shut down by the professor.

When I told my synod’s bishop about leaving the ELCA, I told her how I felt betrayed by a church that I grew up in and how I was lied to when I was told that there was a place for me. She was sorry and could not defend the actions of the ELCA from polygamy to the disbelief in hell. There is no Biblical defense, and she couldn’t spin one. When I went to my home congregation to tell my pastor, whom I grew up with, he was not nearly as cordial. He tried to challenge me as misinformed when I pointed to the ELCA’s radical direction. He accused me of being political for not agreeing with the ELCA.

Although the gospel is not preached there anymore, it is sad to know I am no longer welcome in my home congregation.

Since coming to the North American Lutheran Church (NALC), I have appreciated the professionalism of the professors in the North American Lutheran Seminary (NALS), the comradery among clergy, and general support from congregations. It is refreshing to be able to read the Bible and confessions in a seminary setting and have genuine discussions about the application and use of the concepts. There is a fellowship among the students as members of Christ’s Church, here for Christ, unlike what I have known within the ELCA.

I write this because this is my story. I could have shared more anecdotes about the inability of United to form its students, the unprofessionalism of the professors and ignorance of those who followed the party line, but these examples make my point. I do not want to slander the ELCA or any pastors or congregations in it. I only want to bring light to what is going on in the once great Lutheran seminary of Gettysburg, PA, United Lutheran Seminary.

It breaks my heart to have had to leave but I have found a home in the NALC.

It is always a joy when you go to a Pastors’ conference and leave with a sense of energy and enthusiasm for ministry.  Over my twenty-eight years of ministry, I have been to my share of such events.   They have been a mixed bag.  To quote Forrest Gump, they “are like a box of chocolates.  You never know what you’ll get.”  Some are definitely worth your time.  Others are mediocre, but since you have the chance to see old friends, you don’t mind.  Others leave you positively frustrated.  Of all the conferences I have attended, good, bad and indifferent, I must say that the NALC Pastors’ Conference held in Orlando, Florida, from February 15 to 18, was one of the best. 

Although I am not a pastor in the NALC, I was able to attend as a representative of Lutheran CORE.  The theme of the conference was: “Always Be Ready: Apologetics in Real Life,” based on 1 Peter 3:15.  The keynote address was given by the Rev. Dr. Mark Mattes, with plenary addresses by Rev. Dr. Maurice Lee, Rev. Dr. Dennis DiMauro, and Rev. Dr. Thomas Jacobson.  Each speaker addressed the topic of apologetics from a different perspective.  Rather than giving a full synopsis of every presentation, I will mention what were the highlights for me.

Mark Mattes identified one of the major mistakes that Christians made in the second half of the 20^th Century.  This was to adopt the world view of unbelievers and skeptics, in an attempt to show that the Christian faith can be made to fit into those worldviews.  Instead of arguing against people from the point of view of modernity or post-modernity, we should argue with them from the point of view of the Christian faith.  Our goal should be to help people see what difference it would make if the Christian worldview were true.

Maurice Lee reminded us of the approach taken by Justin Martyr.  As his name indicates, Justin Martyr was not only an apologist, but died as a martyr.  Justin sought to refute false rumors about Christianity and engaged with pagan philosophers like Socrates and Plato.  However, he had a third strategy.  This was to describe what happens in the liturgy of the Eucharist.  In addition to saying what Christianity is not, we need a picture of what it is.  There is no better place to find this than weekly Sunday worship.  The same is true in 2022.

Dennis DiMauro recounted an experience he had while doing door to door evangelism.  A young man whom he met shocked him.  He wasn’t interested in general information about Christ, or the Church.  What he wanted to know was what had happened in Pastor DiMauro’s own life to make him believe in the Gospel of Jesus Christ.  He reminded us that while there are intellectual arguments and rhetorical strategies that can be helpful, what is most important is being able “to give an account for the faith that is in us.”  Lutherans tend to shy away from the term testimony.  Nevertheless, we need to be able to testify to what God has done for us.

Thomas Jacobson reminded us of the class differences that need to be taken into account in reaching the unchurched.  Lutherans have tended to follow Schleiermacher by focusing on the “cultured despisers” of Christianity.  The problem is that the largest group of un-churched people in America today are not the cultured people of the upper middle-class.  They are the blue collar and the poor.  In recent decades, church attendance remained fairly stable among the successful and well to do.  Meanwhile, among the poorer classes, the bottom has fallen out.   We need to find a way to speak to them too. 

While at the NALC Pastors’ Conference, I was also able to attend two break-out sessions.  The first was led by Rev. Doctor Russell Lackey of Grand View University in Des Moines, Iowa.   He spoke about the NEXUS Institute, a summer theological institute for high school youth, which is held each summer at Grand View.  (This summer it will be held on June 12-18.)  Pastor Lackey shared information about research that has been done on such summer theological institutes.  This research was cross-denominational, cross-cultural, and multi-faith.  It indicated that summer theological institutes are very effective.  As many as 25% of young people who attend these summer theological institutes end up entering the ministry in their respective religious communities.  With the growing shortage of ministers in the Lutheran Church today, institutes like NEXUS are extremely valuable.

In the summer of 2022, there are twenty-five spots for young people at NEXUS.  Bishop Dan Selbo challenged the pastors at the conference to make sure that there will be fifty attending NEXUS in 2023.  I was so impressed that I rushed home and nominated a young person from my congregation for this year’s institute.

The second break-out session that I attended featured Pastor Dave Keener.  It was an introduction to the newest phase of the Life-to-Life Discipleship.  I was excited to hear that the NALC is developing its own resources for Discipleship ministry.  These resources will be tailored specifically for Lutheran congregations. The first will be a 24 week-long introductory curriculum on discipleship.  Those resources are meant to be available on the NALC website in the near future.

Of course, like most conferences, there was good fellowship.  I was able to reconnect with old friends and make new friends.  I also enjoyed visiting my hometown of Orlando, where I was born in 1964.  As I returned home, I was grateful for the six insights that I shared above.  They either confirmed what I am already doing or gave me new areas of ministry to explore.  If you have never been to the NALC Pastors’ Conference before, I encourage you to attend next year.  I also encourage you to get in touch with the speakers above if you want to learn more about what they shared.

Rev. David Charlton

Vice-President, Lutheran CORE

The Great Commission Society of the North American Lutheran Church is to be commended for the three-day, online missions conference which they held in early November under the theme, “Unveiled: Shining Light in the Darkness.”   The comment was made at the beginning of the event that the only person that the conference organizers wanted to lift up is Jesus – not the structures of the church, not our own resourcefulness or efforts, but Jesus.  I need a faith that focuses on Jesus.  That is the kind of faith that I found nourished and sustained at the Unveiled Conference from the NALC’s Great Commission Society.  I also give thanks for the gift of today’s technology, which made it possible for us to be blessed by such an event, even during the time of a pandemic. 

Later in the day of the third session of the “Unveiled” conference I watched a webinar with Dr Thom Rainer of Church Answers.  You can learn more about his ministry at https://churchanswers.com.  His webinar was entitled, “Preparing for Revitalization in a Post-COVID World.”  One of the points that he made that I thought was most insightful was his comment about how much COVID has accelerated change.  Whatever dynamics and trends a congregation was experiencing prior to COVID have been accelerated by about four years.  If a congregation was in decline, its decline has been accelerated by four years.  But he also gave hope.  He gave strategies for revitalization, and he is working to train coaches who will work with congregations in the process of revitalization.

Both of those webinars were life and hope giving.  But what do I receive from the ELCA?  A word that tells me that I need to repent of systemic racism and white supremacy. 

The law is not life and hope giving.  The law rightly applied shows me my sins and drives me to Christ.  But the law wrongly applied only crushes, demoralizes, and discourages.  If the main message the ELCA has to give is all of the ways in which I need to repent because I have acted contrary to all of their chosen priorities, then how can I ever expect that the ELCA knows how to renew congregations and help them recover from COVID? 

 

Editor’s Note: The Rev. Dr. Steven K. Gjerde is a former VP of Lutheran CORE.

“The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak.”  So says our Lord Jesus Christ, and who knows spirit and flesh better than He does?   Through Him and for Him all things were made, and in these last days He has become all that He made us to be: flesh, soul, and spirit, and heart and mind, too — even now He lives and rules in our flesh, His Spirit testifying with ours that we are children of God.  So when this Lord and God says, “The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak,” we stop to listen.

 His Special Concern

If the flesh is weak, then our flesh is the object of Christ’s special concern.   “It is not the healthy who seek a doctor,” He reminds us, “it is the sick,” and even so our Good Physician came for the sinful and not the righteous.  Our flesh rests in the perpetual care of Dr. Jesus.   Ages ago He fitted Himself to our embodied life, matching His Word to our speech by means of a mouth and our disease to His health by the touch of His hand.  That same, gracious work continues today as He fits His salvation to our dying flesh, making His grace speakable and edible, hearable and felt.  “Gospel is touch,” a friend of mine likes to say, making even the least gnostic of us a bit uncomfortable and exposing just exactly why quarantines hurt.

But if our flesh rests in the care of Christ, then so do other things that pertain to the flesh, such as the whole tactile life of the church, with all of its dreaded institution, nearly a byword among the diaspora.  Like it or not, you cannot escape it.  Sure, you can have the Holy Supper in the open air, but you’ll still be standing on ground, ground that can be taxed or untaxed, mowed or unmowed, shoveled or drifted, beautiful or ugly; someone will have to agree to buy the stuff (and you know how it works: once people have skin in the game, it gets serious); and finally, you’ll have to arrange it at a time and a place where all of us little hobbits and earthlings can make our way without too much trouble.   You get the point: if you want Christ, then sooner or later you’ll want that dreaded institution, too, in one form or another, because with Christ the Virgin’s son comes all of human flesh, His special concern, the thing He loves to raise from the dead, and with human flesh comes all of the creation made for it. 

With the Church come buildings that shelter and fellowships that organize and papers that say things in ink to make it all clear and bank accounts, because soon you’ll have real people with real bodies and individual minds and arthritis and hormones and a longing for beauty and health, and most of all, backpacks full of sin and history and grief.  Associations and coalitions follow hot upon their (our) heels, and some of those organizations will become big enough or deluded enough to start calling themselves The Church, this Church, or herchurch, and the pious will start wondering if it’s all just the anti-Church, and maybe life as a spirit would be better?  Some say the angels are bodiless spirits, and they don’t seem to complain (at least not the ones who kept their club privileges).  But no, it’s not better.  There’s a reason why the angels envy you, and the devils hate you, and it’s not your spirit —

–and all this I say by way of introduction as to why my congregation and I stayed in the ELCA, and why we have now left it.

On Being Dust, Soil, and Free

“Why are you still ELCA?”  I think I got Christmas cards with those words embossed in gold.  On the one hand, the only possible answer is that I am a sinner, a rotten sinner lousy with sin, who did it all wrong; and on the other hand the answer is that I’m a saint with the courage of King David (the Early Years).  But really, it’s not even about me, it’s about Jesus and His special concern for the flesh. 

He gave me a call, voted, inked, and delivered, and those votes and ink (that earthiness!) make it no less but all the more the call of God.  I served and still serve a real people with a real zip code, different from yours, and therefore with different longings and gifts and histories and griefs.  Diversity isn’t our strength (saith the Lord), but it is a thing, a flesh thing, and if you’re a pastor who is also a believer, then you’re a priest in the best sense of the word, and pretty soon that diversity of your people is part of you like a country’s soil is part of its wine and cheese.  Within the very real diversity of the church, far transcending the fiefdoms of identity politics, the Lord fits His time to different calendars and lengths of patience.  “The Lord is coming soon!” — it’s true.  But just as soon as a man’s ready to fit that clarion call to his own schedule and jump in the car, he remembers he’s married, and there’s a five year old who has to pee, and the man must wait.  Along with the Church in every time and place, he discovers, after all, that he is but dust.

 I’m not getting into specifics, is the point.  The specifics would only bore you and tempt you to sit in the seat of scoffers, which is very bad.  But you get the drift: there were reasons good enough that they don’t need defending anymore, because it’s all done with, anyway.  We simply pursued our Lord’s path of fitting grace to the flesh, with its drooping hands and weak knees.  We looked on our institution as a gift, not a burden—I mean, what else is it, unless you’re a Manichean? — and by pursuing that God-given mission, we pressed ourselves more and more deeply into the local soil and the call of the neighbors and the catholic stink of evangelical ministry, until pretty soon we became something the ELCA simply didn’t want anymore (“inclusive”), and we said, “Ah!  There it is.  Well, okay, then.”

The Transfigured Flesh Part

You’d have done and said it differently if you’re from Georgia or Albuquerque, but you’d have done it somehow — I know you would have, because you’re all brothers and sisters, believers and sinners and courageous saints.  But here’s the last part, and one of the best parts, the transfigured flesh part: when I first stayed ELCA, it was just my single congregation and me.  We spoke our objections loudly, got picky about the pocketbook, and fenced the altar—and still it was just my congregation and me.  But as the Lord squeezed His time into our time and thus turned our time into His time, and as He led us down deeper into the flesh and the soil over the objections of so many, He changed all that. 

He turned this congregation into this congregation plus another one to serve and love, and a third one who wants to know more; and He turned me into me and another pastor, and then an intern who’s now a pastor, and still another pastor, three good brothers in the ministry who joined me at this address and walked its path, the path right into the ELCA and now out of it, even though they weren’t originally on that path, and they’re pure gold; and He turned all of us into us with all of you, Lutheran CORE and the NALC and the LCMC, and Missouri Synod folk, too, you who are a consolation and strength in all of this.  A seed fell to the earth, died a thousand deaths, and bore a thousand-fold harvest.      

So now we’re LCMC, and probably will be other things, too, and that usually makes lots of folks happy except when they feel we didn’t do it fast enough — but land’s sake, people: the kid had to pee, the car needed fuel, she forgot the casserole.  There were reasons.  Cut us some slack, take our coats, and put on the kettle.  You’re Lutherans.  You know how to be gracious with the flesh, and how to be people of skin and bones, with all the history and grief and institution that comes with it, because you know, as so many other Christians do not know, just what it is for the spirit to be willing, and the flesh weak.  It means showing greater honor and more consideration to the weaker member, because that weaker member is Christ, crucified for the sins of the world.

Where Love Is Known

The flesh is where love makes itself known, see, and that’s why the devil hates our flesh: Christ has shown it such great honor by becoming it and redeeming it.  And that’s why everything, absolutely everything that we face these days, is all about the flesh.  Not only church but also the culture wars and politics, with Trump and Biden and all the rage and spite — it’s all about the flesh, in the end, a heavenly conflict stoked by the bitter disappointment of the devil, that angry, ravenous wisp, howling for the flesh that he is not, frantic to devour it all so that it will no longer be, and (he hopes) the hobbits and earthlings won’t even be bones anymore but pure smoke, having cast themselves into the flames, confusing smoke with spirit.    

Against all that, we devour the flesh of Christ, which only increases the more it’s eaten.  Yes, that’s how it goes: wherever the Supper is, there you find the Words of Institution; and where the Words of Institution, other institution follows, all the flesh and land and shelter and ink that a Supper demands, and through this weakened flesh the willing Spirit has His way, and He knits together the growing body.  For who knows our flesh and spirit better than He who became our flesh and breathes the Spirit?  He makes us bold to bear that weakened flesh, that beloved body, the body that He has so lovingly destined for glory, no matter the times it may bring.

I remember well the first time I met Paull Spring.  It was in a meeting in a Gullixson Hall classroom at Luther Seminary that would lead to the beginning of CORE.  Paull walked into the room (in clerics, of course, whenever he was doing church business) with a leader of Word Alone …  that was an amazing sight and combination to be sure.  But the cause of Lutheran Orthodoxy and faithfulness brought such together.  And many more of us with them, too. 

Paull Spring represented some of the best of eastern Lutheranism, a pastor and bishop and leader from years of ministry.  He brought those gifts to the diversity of faithful Lutherans all over the country as we began to form Lutheran CORE.

Those were amazing days, as we came together around the challenge to affect the slippery slope of the ELCA’s theological and spiritual descent.  Paull Spring was articulate and theologically able.  He spoke with both authority and passion……and a deep love and concern for the Church. 

We didn’t always agree, but we had huge respect and mutual patience to get the best from each other, not just me but everyone else with Paull Spring.  It was a fruitful partnership and collaboration.  Our work brought us to Synod and Churchwide Assemblies, to gatherings all over the country.  Who could forget the hundreds who came to Fishers, Indiana after the ELCA vote of 2009?  Paull was a giant at that meeting and others to come.

Our CORE work eventually came to the reality of forming the NALC, which was launched at a yearly CORE Convocation in Columbus, Ohio.  Paull Spring was chosen as the NALC’s first bishop.  He knew how to do that already.

Since those times Paull Spring led faithfully and has been succeeded now twice.  Yet he has remained a valued leader and respected confidant to many in this new “retirement.”

Paull Spring’s wisdom lives on even as we grieve his passing.  Eternity will tell the rest of Bishop Paull Spring’s story.  We will enjoy hearing then what now only God knows and Paull sees more fully.

“Oh God, the generations rise and pass away before You.  You are the strength of the weary; You are the rest of the blessed dead.  We rejoice in the company of All Your Saints” including now Bishop Paull Spring. 

Blessed be his memory and legacy to us all.

Paul Ulring

I
was thoroughly blessed through reading the recently published memoirs of Dr.
Robert Benne.  Many thanks to Dr. Benne
for writing them and to the American Lutheran Publicity Bureau for publishing
them.  Reading Dr. Benne’s memoirs
reminded me of when I saw the 1989 movie, “Born on the Fourth of July.”  While watching that movie, and while reading
Dr. Benne’s memoirs, I felt like I was reliving several of the years of my own
life. 

I
was born ten years after Dr. Benne, but like him I grew up in a culture that
supported and encouraged the Christian faith. 
He grew up in a small town in Nebraska. 
I was born in Minneapolis and spent some of the formative years of my
life in a small town in Iowa.  At that time
the world was trustworthy and safe, America was great and good, and right and
wrong were clearly defined (page 77). 
Bob Benne met his first black persons in college.  I had my first Asian friend in seminary. 

I
experienced and was dramatically changed by the same social and cultural
dynamics that strongly affected him, though at an age of ten years
younger.  We were both influenced by the
liberal idealism of the early 60’s.  Like
him, I came to view the church mainly as an instrument of social transformation
(page 83).  I identified with his
self-description, “I tried to swim with the radical tide” (page 88).  I was amused by his comment, “I became a
‘social justice warrior’ before the term had been coined” (page 106).  He mentioned that while teaching at the
Lutheran School of Theology in Chicago he worked with the Ecumenical Institute,
an organization that offered introductory courses to the Christian faith,
workshops on anti-racism, and training in community transformation.  I remember while attending college near
Chicago hearing a presentation by one of the staff members of the
institute.  I was stirred by what he said
and was determined that that is what I wanted to do after graduating from
seminary.

I
could identify with Dr. Benne’s then sharing the story of how he came to
realize the spiritual bankruptcy of that view of the mission and message of the
church.  He described himself as a
“wanna-be radical” who got “mugged by reality” (page 90).  He came to see how, by viewing the church
primarily as a vehicle of social transformation, he had reduced its
transcendent message to merely human efforts (page 89). 

I
greatly appreciate the way in which Dr. Benne shares so personally, openly, and
honestly the story of his own spiritual and ministry journey.  He feels deeply and articulates boldly and
clearly the seriousness of the departure of much of American Lutheranism from
the historic Christian faith.  He feels
the pain, and he can articulate the issues. 

In
the final pages of his memoirs he describes the events of the last twenty
years, including the formation of LCMC (Lutheran Congregations in Mission for
Christ), Lutheran CORE, and the NALC (North American Lutheran Church).  He states wisely and accurately, “Though
church schisms are undoubtedly serious matters that should be undertaken with
trepidation, it has seemed clear to me that the schismatic party was actually
the ELCA.  It simply collapsed before the
‘progressive’ American culture, as did other mainline Protestant denominations.
. . . The ELCA bishops, whose first duty was to defend the orthodox truth,
failed miserably” (page 167).

I am very grateful to Dr. Benne for writing these memoirs and am very thankful for the opportunity to read them.  I also want to thank Dr. Benne for the role he has played in the formation and life of Lutheran CORE and the ministry that he continues to have. 

Dr. Robert Benne currently teaches Christian Ethics at the online Institute for Lutheran Theology. He was Jordan-Trexler Professor of Religion and Chair of the Religion and Philosophy Department at Roanoke College in Virginia for eighteen years before he left full-time teaching in 2000.  He founded the Roanoke College Center for Religion and Society in 1982 and directed it until 2012.  He continues at Roanoke College as a research associate in its religion and philosophy department.  A link to the ALPB (American Lutheran Publicity Bureau) website where you can order a copy of his memoirs can be found here.

---

On August 25, 2010, at a meeting of Lutheran CORE that would at its close give birth to the separate organization of the North American Lutheran Church (NALC), I wrote this in my blog:

What the upcoming internet broadcasts and book are sure to fail to convey, however, is the sense of hopeful expectancy that characterizes these proceedings. The Spirit is definitely doing something amazing, as seemingly just the right people with just the precise expertise needed to tackle the issues before us as a church have been assembled from the disparate corners of North American Lutheranism. Not only has this been an immensely satisfying—though extremely challenging—couple of days intellectually, it has also been so emotionally and spiritually. … Simply put, it is humbling to be here.

Because
I had just taken a call at an ELCA church whose statement of faith aligned with
that of Lutheran CORE but who needed to yet have the conversation about whether
they could maintain that position within the ELCA, I would not join the ranks of
the NALC for another 5 years.  When I
finally did become a pastor of the NALC, it felt nice to simply breathe easily
for a while; to not feel like I was fighting every aspect of the institution
that was supposed to help me proclaim the gospel just for the
opportunity to do so.

No More Easy Breathing

Nine years into the NALC’s
life, the time for breathing easy is over.

Oh, we seem to be handling
our inevitable disagreements healthfully, without a trace of the Politburo-style
ecclesiastical maneuvering we all experienced within the ELCA, where, to paraphrase
Orwell, it was clear that “some Christians are more equal than others.”  There is also no hint of doctrinal departure
from Great Tradition Christianity or the revisionist hermeneutics that breed
the same—yet.

I add the “yet” in that last sentence not because I see it happening now but can foresee it happening before my funeral liturgy.  I foresee this as I teach my confirmation class full of 7^th and 8^th graders and my Tuesday morning Bible study full of 70 and 80 year olds, because I see the vast distance between the experiential, intellectual, and imaginative worlds they inhabit.  The older group are largely unaware of how different the world the young live in is from the one they grew up in and they are shocked when I acquaint them with some of its contours.  The young are being trained by their schools, entertainment, and constant diet of technology to view the older as at best hopelessly out of touch with the self-evidently true and even scientifically “proven” categories of the new (liberal) orthodoxy.  At worst, they are being trained to view them as oppressors to be forcefully sidelined, re-educated—and if necessary, silenced.

Oh, the latter, rage-filled
part of that progression will largely not come until their thorough catechesis
into the new civic religion at the collegiate level, but the foundations are being
laid far earlier.  Six years ago, I had a
youth group member inform me that she was an “LGBT ally,” and many more former
youth group members have done the same. 
Some of these had attended the local evangelical Christian high
school.  Others were attending an
evangelical fellowship in college and were even engaged in active Christian
outreach on campus.

Could I have imagined such a reality, coming of age in the 1980’s?  Could my Bible study participants, doing the same in Eisenhower’s America, have imagined it?  Could the founders of the NALC imagine, less than a decade ago, that a local fire company would raise money by offering as bingo prizes not homemade jams and pies but sex toys or the billboard pictured with this article, planted in the heart of historically Pennsylvania Dutch country?  Could they imagine that people could be publicly shamed and careers summarily ended for even questioning whether a person’s experience of being in the wrong body could be anything other than an absolute and legitimate expression of identity?

It is a brave new world.

The Authority of Holy Scripture

I focus on the sexuality issues not because of any inherent interest in them, but because as Dr. Robert Gagnon noted so many years ago, you cannot espouse the new, affirming positions on these issues without evacuating the Bible of its authority as Holy Scripture and the Word of God.  You cannot affirm the authority of Genesis while espousing a “non-binary” (Trans) view of human sexuality.  As the ELCA has recently confirmed, without a high view of Biblical authority, you cannot assert the uniqueness and necessity of Jesus Christ for human salvation.  It was by reflection upon the books that we know as the canonical New Testament that the Council of Nicaea shifted from being predominantly Arian in its view of Christ to articulating the doctrine we know as the Hypostatic Union with near uniformity.  (Not surprisingly, Arius and a close personal friend held out for their own view against the assembly.)  It was fifteen years ago that an ELCA pastor brazenly asserted to me as a seminarian at a regional youth gathering that, “we only know about the Trinity from the Bible; God could easily be more like the Hindu idea of Brahmin, having countless avatar pseudopods to minister to the ‘endlessly diverse people’ s/he has created.’”

Without a high view of Biblical
authority, we can glean from its pages the sorts of vaguely inspiring ideas
about God that are largely our projections in the first place, but we cannot receive
revelations about God—or about God’s will for us, His creatures. 

Danger of Theological Revisionism

And that is exactly what theological
revisionism is all about; it is about recasting God’s revelations as human
conceptions, and once everything is a human conception, all is mere politics,
the rules of which we know well from Plato, Hobbes, Machiavelli, Nietzsche, and
Foucault… not to mention Marx, Lenin, Mao, and Alinsky.  In such a world, it is perfectly legitimate
for the philosopher-kings-and-queens to determine which views are “more equal
than others” and to eliminate cross-examination in the interest of “justice.” 

And this is exactly what is
happening.  Consider this letter sent by
‘We, few of the Black students here at Pomona College and the Claremont
Colleges’ to the administration of Claremont McKenna College, who had dared to
permit conservative scholar Heather Mac Donald to speak on campus:

Historically, white supremacy has venerated the idea of objectivity, and wielded a dichotomy of ‘subjectivity vs. objectivity’ as a means of silencing oppressed peoples. The idea that there is a single truth – ‘the Truth’ – is a construct of the Euro-West that is deeply rooted in the Enlightenment, which was a movement that also described Black and Brown people as both subhuman and impervious to pain. This construction is a myth and white supremacy, imperialism, colonization, capitalism, and the United States of America are all of its progeny. The idea that the truth is an entity for which we must search, in matters that endanger our abilities to exist in open spaces, is an attempt to silence oppressed peoples.[1]

Unlikely Ally

Douglas Murray recounts the
incident in his recent book The Madness of Crowds.  If a gay intellectual from Great Britain
seems an unlikely ally of a Christianity that is both evangelical and catholic,
read the way he goes on to analyze this letter:

“‘The Truth’ is a construct of the Euro-West. It is hard to think of a phrase which can at one and the same time be so wildly misguided and so dangerous in its implications. If ‘the Truth’ (in scare quotes) is a white thing, then what is everyone else meant to live in and strive towards?” 

Stalin pithily noted, “Ideas
are far more powerful than guns. We don’t let our people have guns. Why should
we let them have ideas?”  Our young
people are being deprived of the most important idea ever, an idea that is not
white or black, gay or straight, Christian or otherwise; they are being
systematically deprived of the idea of truth.  Furthermore, they are being taught that the
pursuit of it is disloyal, bigoted, and dangerous.

Future Outlook of the NALC

As a fellow NALC clergyman noted to me recently, “The NALC was formed at the last possible moment it could have been, historically-speaking.”  This undoubtedly displays an admirable ecclesiological instinct, for it is indeed part of Great Tradition Christianity that the Church of Jesus Christ is “one, holy, catholic, and apostolic.”  It also sets forth the challenge clearly before us, as it was founded by people I would categorize as the last well-catechized generations.  Here I refer to their catechesis not only with the Church, but their cultural catechesis as well.  Most of us on the clergy roster of the NALC are still here because we underwent a migration made necessary by counter-cultural convictions.  What will become of the NALC as its first native-born daughters and sons rise to offices of prominence within the church?  Philosophy was once described as the handmaiden to theology because it provided categories of meaning that helped people do the very difficult work of theology.  What will happen to the church’s proclamation when its young pastors have not been formed in the fundamental categories of meaning that make clear thinking about the Bible possible?  What will happen to it if they are convinced by their primer school training that to even consider certain ideas makes them the moral equivalent of a Nazi?

Students of Christian history
can broadly trace the theological revisionism of our day back through the
social gospel movement of the early 20^th century to the “higher
critics” of the Enlightenment.  It is a
history of more than ideas; it is a history of people, of champions of ideas
who viewed themselves as the saviors of a movement with some social utility
(Christianity) whose convictions were hopelessly backwards and out of touch
with the “obvious truths” of the modern world. 
For all orthodox Lutherans, the NALC included, the challenge is to catechize
a new generation of theologians from elementary school age on up in an
intentionally countercultural way. 
We will need to be aware of the prevailing ideas and neologisms that are
being introduced in a deliberate ploy to undermine a worldview congruent with
that of orthodox Biblical Christianity. 
As Christians, we have no stake in Western culture qua Western
culture, but to the degree that what we know as Western culture is the product
of Christian theology, including its emphasis on truth as a fundamental
category of meaning, we need to advocate for what is in imminent danger of
being lost.

Written nearly thirty years
ago, in his classic book The Once and Future Church, Loren Mead noted
that the West was becoming the Church’s new mission field and that state church
traditions like Lutheranism, used as they were to cultural underwriting of
their religious project, were likely to have the most difficulty adapting to this
new reality.  It remains for us to
determine whether his words were merely cautionary… or prophetic.

We Must Teach All Our People

Most importantly of all, we need to communicate to our people from the oldest to the youngest how the orthodox Biblical teachings on creation and fall, judgment and grace, repentance and forgiveness, faith and obedience, spiritual bondage and true freedom are more compelling and truly loving than the secular narratives with which they are being daily indoctrinated.  We must teach them who God is and who we are meant to be as creatures made in His image but defaced by sin almost to the point of being unrecognizable.  We must teach them that because of that reality, no matter the strength of our emotions, our own narratives about our inner lives are not the most reliable story about ourselves, but rather God’s story about us, recounted in the Bible, holds primacy of place.

We must do this knowing
that our work is being undermined both by determined ideologues and
well-meaning people engaged in herd behavior, what Murray accurately deems “the
madness of crowds.”  We must be clear
with them that this dynamic is going to be part of their experience as
Christians in this culture without becoming reactionary or uncharitable toward
those who hate us. 

In one of the responses to my Postmodernism articles, I was accused of being a “reactionary theologian.”  I confess that I have never heard the term before, but it sounds like the sort of jingoistic turn of phrase intended to make the hard work of thinking through complex issues unnecessary—a word like “anti-revolutionary.”  On the August day in 2010 recounted earlier, Dr. Steven D. Paulson reminded the gathered assembly that Martin Luther had noted that “it is a characteristic of love to be easily deceived.”  We must highlight this reality and remind them that their love—especially their love of friends and the consequent alliances they make with them—like the rest of themselves, is fallen, disordered, and so, unreliable until it is conformed to the revealed Word of God.

The Frog

We all know the old saw.  How do you boil a frog?  If you put him in hot water he will jump out
before he gets too injured, but if you put him in cold water and turn up the
heat slowly, he will be boiled before he knows what happened to him.

Most reading this article have spent our lives watching the Lutheran frog being boiled.  Some of us felt the need to “go out and be separate.”  If we hope to not see our frogs boiled in the way other communions have unfortunately experienced, we will need to be intentionally countercultural.  Our catechesis and our sermons will need to be apologetic in tone, whether we are apologists by vocation or not.  We will need to listen carefully to a world that hates us so we may build bridges to their linguistics worlds of meaning and so that we can dismantle Trojan Horses meant to destroy Christianity and its necessarily attendant, coherent worldview from within.

In 1809, biographer Thomas
Charlton popularized the phrase, “the price of liberty is eternal vigilance” in
our newly-birthed republic.  The bloody
reign of terror had just recently ended in France, a cautionary tale for those
who might have complacently believed that the new order was enough to insure
against future tyranny. 

We ought to take a lesson from this page of history.  The price of the liberty that the true gospel of Jesus Christ alone can bring is free, but the price of preaching that gospel fully and faithfully is eternal vigilance.

Vigilance Required

On August 26, 2010, as the
theological conference transitioned to the constituting convocation of a
re-visioned Lutheran CORE, I reflected in my blog that “it was time to see if
this dog would hunt.”  Could the ideas we
had bandied about for two days now become incarnate, take on flesh in a living
institution that actually facilitated the living proclamation of “the eternal
gospel” in the ways God has ordained that it should?

As I reflect on the state of the Church and the
nature of its current mission in the wake of Reformation Sunday, I give thanks
that it could happen, but I note that we are sitting in water that seems to be
already getting warm.  Vigilance is
required.

---

[1]
Murray, Douglas. The Madness of Crowds . Bloomsbury Publishing. Kindle Edition.