In my office hangs my ordination certificate.  Across it is emblazoned the name of the ordaining body, the body whose confessional commitments I pledged to uphold on the day I knelt and made my vows.  An adult convert to the Christian faith who settled in Lutheranism as the place where I would live out my “mere Christianity” after reading a church library copy of the Augsburg Confession, in the spring of 2016 I had served that denomination in various roles for twenty years.

This spring marks the eighth year since I called my bishop and informed him that I would be serving in a new church body.  Even as an adult convert, I know how painful the process is of leaving a church body you have called home; to cause further fracture to the Body of Christ, to disappoint My Lord by ensuring that His prayer that all His disciples might be one as I will become yet one more piece of living evidence of how little the truth of the gospel seems to change the lives of those who believe it, to serve at least in part as another stumbling block for people who—as did I at one point—hold the Christian faith in contempt, was an exquisite pain… I can only imagine how hard it is for a cradle member of a communion to make a similar choice.

In his classic study of what causes massive shifts in a mindset, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, Thomas Kuhn details how it takes a superabundance of contrary evidence to get people to rethink their fundamental commitments, coining the terms paradigm and paradigm shift.  A paradigm shift, when it occurs, is more than a reordering of the furniture in one’s mental office or even changing offices due to corporate restructuring; it amounts to moving out of the building, watching that edifice be razed, and having a new foundation poured upon which you must tentatively build a new place from which to conduct your business.

It is for this reason that I am uncertain whether my decision to leave the ELCA represents a true paradigm shift or not.  In the words of a Roman Catholic mentor whose specialty was ecumenical theology, with whom I shared the pain of my process, “You aren’t leaving your church; your church is leaving you.”  Though hopefully my thinking has become more refined and nuanced, my fundamental commitments in some ways have not changed since I first knew myself to be a Christian in 1995 and a conscientious son of the Lutheran reformation by early 1996.

Yet once such a choice is made—the choice to leave the home that has nurtured you during your most formative years—once the evidence piles up so high that you cannot ignore it, you begin to rethink many things.  Aspects of your identity you thought unassailable become things you question.  Commitments you thought unshakable bedrock you begin to recognize as issues of secondary and sometimes tertiary importance… sometimes you come to know them as even detrimental to keeping the most fundamental commitments of all.

Such for me has been the issue of inclusive language in ministry, whether for God or people.  The sine qua non of both my undergraduate and graduate education, I have come to question not just its utility, but its very ability to communicate the Word of God, which in turn means its very ability to foster human flourishing… especially for women.

By the time I was being formed in seminary, the use of inclusive language for human beings was a matter of basic politeness and the use of such language for God became mandated as a “justice issue” while I was away from campus on internship.  My early training conditioned me to be okay with the former; indeed I had chosen to pursue ordination in the ELCA over the LCMS because of a precommitment to women’s ordination, a commitment I still hold but should not have then, before I could possibly know the Biblical or theological issues at stake.

My conviction in Christianity as a revealed religion prevented me from embracing inclusive language for God.  Because of an encounter with a cult in my early twenties, I have a sensitivity to when I am only being told one side of an argument, so the aggressive insistence on the agenda second-cum-third wave feminism and the lack of critical presentation of any other perspective set off a voice in my head: “Danger, Will Robinson… Danger!”  The special prominence of this in my liturgics class, where we failed to learn the rudiments of using The Minister’s Desk Edition, made me begin researching the best arguments on the other side.

I was surprised to often find these arguments to be robust rather than reactionary.  An honest reader could disagree with these arguments, but not accuse the writer of bad faith or barely disguised animus against women.  Particularly compelling was an article by Jesuit Paul Mankowski (who often wrote under the pen name Diogenes) entitled Jesus, Son of Humankind? The Necessary Failure of Inclusive-Language Translations, which I found in a now out-of-print journal.  (It is still available on the Touchstone magazine website for subscribers.[1])

There is one issue central to our salvation that inclusive language translations of the Bible obscure—even those translations that only use inclusive language for human beings, like the NRSV—that I have never seen referenced in any scholarly work, so I would like to address it briefly here.

“No one comes to the Father but by me,” says Jesus in one of our most beloved funeral readings (John 14:6), but how exactly does Jesus get us to the Father?  “For as many of you as were baptized into Christ have put on Christ,” joyously declares St. Paul. (Galatians 3:27)  Elsewhere he adds, “For if we have been united with [Christ] in a death like his, we shall certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his.” (Romans 6:5)  We have been united with Jesus.

A robust Sacramental theology teaches us that as regards our eternal inheritance, this means that when the Father regards us, He sees Christ, with whom we have been united, and whom we have donned like a mantle.  In other words, He sees not Joe or Sally, merely created in the image of God however pious or penitent, but Jesus, His Son, God Himself, for Whom the entire realm of created reality and uncreated glory is the rightful inheritance.

What this means in contradiction to the polite niceties of post-Christian American cultural religion, each of us is, properly speaking, a child of God only when we share in the sonship of Jesus Christ through Baptism.  It is for this reason—not the misogynistic cultural baggage assumed by feminists of whatever wave—that St. Paul in his letters addresses both the male and female objects of his correspondence as “brothers.”  We are all brothers because we all through Holy Baptism share in the sonship of Jesus Christ.

Inclusive language translations that render St. Paul’s address as “brothers and sisters” obscure this important salvific truth, esteeming the demands of feminist-defined justice as greater than the actual Biblically depicted mechanism of salvation.  Further, it propagates its own fundamentally irreconcilable war between the sexes into the very “beloved community” that is to be the home of “the ministry of reconciliation” (2 Cor 5:18), fomenting disunity in the Body of Christ. Under such conditions, the uniqueness of Christ as the way to God is necessarily veiled and universalism will proliferate to the loss of the evangelistic impulse.

I count this as a very serious way that the very inclusive language that is purported to be a justice issue for women actually does worse than underserve them; it may fail to call them to Christ and so be positively opposed to their ultimate interests.

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[1] https://touchstonemag.com/archives//article.php?id=14-08-033-f

Have you ever been working on a project and felt like you were moving on “automatic”?  You hit a rhythm and find yourself going from one step to the next without even needing to think about it.  Whatever you are doing is so familiar that it has become second nature.  We’ve all been there at some point.  We act, but we don’t necessarily think about our actions.

The remedy, then, if someone’s actions are characterized by thoughtlessness, is to promote thoughtfulness as best we can.

That is the essence of a concept proposed by 20^th century Jewish political philosopher Hannah Arendt.  She called it “the banality of evil”.  Arendt fled Nazi Germany and eventually settled in New York.  Then in 1961 she covered the trial of one of the primary organizers of the Jewish Holocaust, Adolf Eichmann.  Afterwards, she published a report describing her impressions of Eichmann as she watched him throughout the legal proceedings.  We may expect that she would describe a man who resembled so many of our Hollywood villains.  The only thing he would be missing is the handlebar mustache that he could twirl with his fingertips.  But that was not what she saw.  According to Arendt,

Eichmann was not Iago and not Macbeth, and nothing would have been farther from his mind than to determine with Richard III “to prove a villain.” Except for extraordinary diligence in looking out for his personal advancement, he had no motives at all.  And this diligence in itself was in no way criminal; he certainly would never have murdered his superior in order to inherit his post.  He merely, to put the matter colloquially, never realized what he was doing. … In principle he knew quite well what it was all about … He was not stupid. It was sheer thoughtlessness – something by no means identical with stupidity – that predisposed him to become one of the greatest criminals of that period. And if this is “banal” and even funny, if with the best will in the world one cannot extract any diabolical or demonic profundity from Eichmann, that is still far from calling it commonplace.^[1]

To put it simply, Eichmann’s attitude was no different than anyone else who was just doing his job.  Of course, we can all recognize that his job involved perpetuating some of the evilest acts in history, but he simply never thought about it.  He no more thought about the details of what he was doing than a baker deeply ponders his actions while baking 12 dozen rolls to get ready for the morning rush.  He just hits that groove and goes through all the necessary motions.  In Arendt’s words, the evil that Eichmann committed had become, to him, banal.  It wasn’t that he thought through what he was doing, performing some ethical calculus and deciding it was the right thing to do.  He never thought about it at all.  If he was motivated by anything it was to do a good job and advance his career, in a similar sense to so many of us.  And that is what made his actions all the more frightening.

They allow themselves to not think about the moral implications of their actions and eventually come to genuinely believe that their actions are no different than anyone else who is innocuously going about their day.

Arendt argued that this “banality of evil” was a stereotypical feature of totalitarian regimes.  However, even if you don’t live under the thumb of such a regime, this banality can still raise its ugly head.  “Totalitarian solutions may well survive the fall of totalitarian regimes in the form of strong temptations which will come up whenever it seems impossible to alleviate political, social, or economic misery in a manner worthy of man.”[2]

An animal can become violent when it feels threatened and backed into a corner.  Survival instincts kick in and it will act in a way that it may not if it wasn’t in that desperate predicament.  As humans, our “corner” may be the weight of extreme economic, social or political pressure.  Someone who falls on hard times and doesn’t have enough money to make ends meet may feel tempted to illegally take something from another person.  The stronger the weight, the bigger the temptation.  Any time these things happen, according to Arendt, people may start treating evil acts as if they are nothing out of the ordinary.   They allow themselves to not think about the moral implications of their actions and eventually come to genuinely believe that their actions are no different than anyone else who is innocuously going about their day.

But if we allow ourselves to think, there is a fundamental difference between removing an appendix and removing the unborn.

Arendt’s description has an uncanny resemblance to some modern attempts to justify abortion.  Take, for instance, the oft repeated line that abortion is a private medical procedure and as such the decision is best left to a woman and her doctor.  If we were talking about removing an appendix or getting wisdom teeth pulled, few people would disagree.  These are normal, everyday procedures about which we rarely give much thought.

But if we allow ourselves to think, there is a fundamental difference between removing an appendix and removing the unborn.  As Francis J. Beckwith says,

the conceptus is a new, although tiny, individual with a human genetic code with its own genomic sequence (with 46 chromosomes), which is neither her mother’s nor her father’s. From this point until death no new genetic information is needed to make the unborn entity an individual human being. Her genetic makeup is established at conception, determining to a great extent her own individual physical characteristics … The conceptus, from the very beginning, is a whole organism, with certain capacities, powers, and properties, whose parts work in concert to bring the whole to maturity.[3]

This science, however, never enters into the “private medical procedure” argument.  It is not that the scientific data is considered and rejected.  It is never even considered.

How do people reach this point?  If Arendt’s theory is correct, it is the natural consequence of strong temptations to relieve seemingly impossible suffering or pressure.  An unwanted pregnancy can provide that pressure.  We live in a society in which many corners feed women the lie that they cannot succeed if they have children.  They are told that if they carry a baby to term, all their hopes and dreams will go down the drain.  When women are constantly bombarded with such messaging, it is hardly surprising that they feel trapped and are tempted to rid themselves of the one thing they believe is trapping them: the unborn child.  In light of the scientific evidence, though, it is undeniable that this way out” involves killing a child.  If the woman allows herself to think things through, she will have to face up to this reality.  The immense temptation, however, produces people who instead permit themselves to see abortion as banal.  If they were to think through the moral consequences they may not like the conclusion.  So, instead, they simply fail to think about it at all.

We live in a society in which many corners feed women the lie that they cannot succeed if they have children.

Arendt’s banality does not explain every pro-choice argument.  Some (such as the argument from bodily autonomy) clearly do acknowledge the humanity of the unborn.  But for those that do not, we can fairly ask how it is that someone can come to a place where they do not even give a thought to whether abortion kills an innocent unborn child, especially in light of the overwhelming scientific evidence that this is precisely what is happening.  They advance arguments that assume there is no human life and speak as if the act of having an abortion is just as banal as baking twelve dozen rolls in the morning.  The remedy, then, if someone’s actions are characterized by thoughtlessness, is to promote thoughtfulness as best we can.  Talk to people.  Confront them (with grace) with the scientific evidence for the distinct humanity of the unborn, creating something of a cognitive dissonance between what they want to believe and the new information you provide.  When that happens, they will eventually have to try to resolve the inconsistency.

Bibliography

Arendt, Hannah. Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil. New York: Penguin Books, 1963.

— — —. The Origins of Totalitarianism. Orlando: Harcourt, 1966.

Beckwith, Francis J. Defending Life: A Moral and Legal Case Against Abortion Choice. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2007.

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[1] Hannah Arendt, Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil, (New York: Penguin Books, 1963), 287-88 (emphasis in original).

[2] Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, (Orlando: Harcourt, 1966), 459.

[3] Francis J. Beckwith, Defending Life: A Moral and Legal Case Against Abortion Choice, (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2007), 67.

I was tasked by the Board of Lutheran CORE to formulate a response to the
ELCA draft social statement, “Women and Justice.” These are my own impressions and thoughts,
however, and ought not to be construed as The Official Stance of Lutheran CORE
on this statement.

Observations

I begin with two editorial observations. First: For a statement that is
centered on justice, and which mentions the word justice several hundred times,
it’d have been helpful to put the definition right up front at the beginning,
not simply hyperlinked to the glossary entry. After the first few dozen
repetitions, “justice” becomes a blur-word.

Second: The brief section on immigration touches on timely concerns but
is almost perfunctory.

Next, I have a few observations that don’t fit neatly in the categories
I’ll use shortly.

Interchangeable
or Not?

The document rightly complains that female bodies and physiology were
often ignored in medical studies. But transgenderism, which it supports as a related
“justice category,” posits an almost ontological change, as if male and female
bodies are interchangeable. The document wants to have it both ways. If
women are assumed to be “just like men” but that doesn’t fit a narrative, it is
a sign of sin and injustice. If women are discerned to be “not just like men”
but that doesn’t fit a narrative, it’s also a sign of sin and injustice.

Next: Although “justice” becomes a blur-word, there are a few
exceptions.  In lines 999-1025, the
discussion of “gender justice” speaks of living out our faith in God by love
for neighbor, with God’s grace healing and covering all our brokenness.
Similarly, in lines 522-530 there’s a reasonable description of “neighbor
justice.”  (Although how this differs
from the Golden Rule, aside from trendier language, is unclear). It’s hard,
though, to see in this draft how God’s revealed Word is greater than the sum of
feminist, intersectional, and “gender/sexual justice” language. It’s as if the
ELCA is trying to improve on what God SHOULD have said and commanded, if he’d
just been as “woke” as the This Church.

Explicit
Silence?

In the list of sins and injustices committed primarily against women, sex
trafficking and sexual abuse are rightly condemned. Oddly, neither prostitution
nor pornography are explicitly mentioned. Granted, they are specific examples
of the objectification, abuse, and commodification of women’s bodies, but they
are also the most lucrative, widespread, and pernicious examples thereof.
Perhaps the drafters wrestled with how they might have to treat a pronouncement
of This Church’s “public theologian,” Nadia Bolz-Weber, who recently opined
that there is such a thing as “ethically sourced porn” which can be enjoyed and
commended.

Scriptural
Imposition

The draft statement names real evils that injure real people. Lines
1013-1014 properly state, “Being freed in Christ involves being freed from all
that tries to replace Jesus Christ as Lord in our lives….” The document then
names “systems of patriarchy,” apparently all of them, as examples of sinful
bondage. It lifts up, as an example of the justifying freedom in Christ, being
“freed to recognize God’s work in creation through… human expression through
gender. We are enabled to see that humans are not simply gender-based opposites
and that we are not created in a hierarchy.” Elsewhere (Section 3) the document
states: “We believe God creates humanity in diversity, encompassing a wide
variety of experiences, identities, and expressions, including sex and
gender” (emphasis added). “Contemporary science” and “neurological
research” are trotted out to debunk “idolatrous” distortions of Scripture,
especially a binary interpretation of “male and female He created them.” There
is no citation from Scripture explaining how “God’s diversity in creation”
includes multiple sexual orientations or gender identities. This notion is
being imposed on Scripture for ideological purposes.

Stand
Under Scripture

This leads to the final section of this essay: more “thematic”
critiques. A fine theologian and churchman (can I still say that?), the late
Lou Smith, warned of the perils of simply trying to understand Scripture,
rather than to “stand under” it. The former puts us in control, using
our own criteria for dissecting, analyzing and judging Scripture. We treat it
as a “dead letter,” or as a merely human document, subject to our standards for
approval, critique, and judgment. The latter reminds us that Scripture
is God’s Word, sharper than a two-edged sword, piercing heart and soul, mind
and flesh, revealing our sinfulness and God’s remedy. It’s therefore something
that has authority over us, whether we approve of it or not.

“Women and Justice” belongs firmly in the former camp.

Problems
within the Scriptures?

Section 16 states: “While God’s Word of Law and Gospel speaks through the
Scriptures, there are words and images, social patterns, and moral beliefs in
them that reflect the patriarchal values of the cultures and societies in which
they arose. Their continued misuse contributes to maintaining hierarchies and
patterns of inequity and harm.… Our tradition’s complicity in patriarchy and
sexism is connected to such biblical interpretation and to the nature and focus
of some of the Lutheran theological tradition. We confess that there are
problems within the Scriptures themselves and that our theological
tradition has led to a theological understanding of humankind that is overly
male-identified. These problems even become idolatrous as deeply rooted but
false beliefs” (emphasis added).

The statement comes perilously close to declaring much of Scripture to be
sinful, or at least to aiding and abetting the sins of idolatry and
patriarchalism. It doesn’t quite cross the line, as it identifies sinful
material as the product (and hobby-horse) of misogynistic males, intent on
preserving their privilege and thereby contaminating, obscuring, or defying
God’s intent.

Scriptural
Authority

This does considerable violence, though, to any notion of Scriptural
authority. Section 16 continues: “The Word of God is first and foremost Jesus
Christ, God incarnate. Secondarily, we encounter the Word as Law and Gospel in
preaching and teaching. The Canonical Scriptures are the written Word of God,
which proclaims God’s grace and sustains faith in Jesus Christ…. The Word of
God is living and active, and we take the written form of the Word of God as
the authoritative source and norm for faith. In its use as Law, it provides
guidance and reveals human brokenness. In its use as Gospel, it reveals God’s
love and promise.”

Jiggering
the Parameters

Once again, the statement tries to have it both ways. Yes, Scripture is
held “within the ELCA” as authoritative. But apparently the only way to discern
“authoritative Scripture” is to jigger the parameters. God’s Word speaks
through Scripture. Law is contrasted with Gospel love. “Guidance” softens
“God’s will.” Sin is recast as “brokenness.” In this diminished and muted
framework, the Gospel is reduced from “forgiveness of sin, and life from
death” to “God’s love and promise.” The upshot is that the social
statement jettisons anything that a feminist/intersectional arbiter might
declare to be offensive, misogynistic chaff from the “real” Word of God. This
is Marcionism for the Woke Generation.

Shockingly
Incurious

There is another problem with the philosophical and theological
underpinnings of this social statement. The drafters are shockingly incurious.
They show no interest in asking, “If patriarchy is universally evil, why did
God routinely work within it? God explicitly condemned many evil
practices. Why not this one?” They do not wonder if at times, patriarchy might
be “the best of a bad lot” of options for sinful and broken human beings to
live as a community of men, women, and children.

They insist the scandal of Jesus’ particularity as a male has no bearing
on his work. They do not ponder why Jesus routinely used “Father” language.
There is no engagement with any rationale for “male images” for God the Father,
except to warn of abuse and misuse by those who are so inbondage to the sins of
patriarchy and sexism that they clearly think of God the Father as literally
male: genitalia, patriarchal privilege, and all: “When Christians rely almost
exclusively on male images and language for God, the images and language become
literal understandings of God. This is poor theology because God always exceeds
human understanding. Taking male images of God literally can also lead to
idolatry, meaning we idolize or hold onto only the male ima-ges” (lines
966-973).

God
is Opposed to Idolatry

There is no discussion of how God’s self-revelation in Scripture
repudiates the blatantly sexual, copulating deities of surrounding cultures, or
of how the “God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob” stands adamantly opposed to the idolatry,
fertility cults, and sacred prostitution that were rampant in the Middle East
and entirely too seductive to the people of Israel.

No one examines how relationships within the Trinity help us learn right
relationships with others, male or female. There is no discussion of the
nuptial imagery used for the relationship between God and Israel, or Christ and
the Church, except to tie it to oppression, sexism, and patriarchy. The
possibility that this divine/human intimate relationship could challenge,
purify, and be a model for marriage and family life is not on This Church’s
radar.

Victimhood
Instead of Justice?

There is no exploration of how Father language for God might transform
the sinful ways human fatherhood and masculinity are sometimes expressed. No
thought is spared for how matriarchies might foster other, equally harmful
pathologies, or how intersectional feminism might be a form of idolatry,
detrimental to women and men. No one seems to wonder whether intersectionality perpetuates victimhood instead of promoting justice.

Still
Idolatry

There is no interest in exploring why sexual sins in Scripture are
deemed real, even deadly sins. In the Bible, rape, incest, fornication,
adultery, homosexual activity, and prostitution are flatly condemned. They are
linked to idolatry. Why? Surely this is not simply another instance of male
hegemony!

In lines 570-575, we read, “We must continue the task of embracing our
unity and diversity so we welcome and uplift people of every sex and
gender—indeed, every body—in our work together as the Body of Christ in the
world. God’s love feeds the Body of Christ so that it might live in love.” No
one questions whether gender dysphoria or same-sex attraction should ever be
considered anything other than God’s intention and good gifts, to be celebrated
and incorporated into the Body of Christ without comment except “it’s all good.”
No one wrestles with the possibility that “God’s love” be more than sheer
affirmation and welcome, with no dying to self, repentance, forgiveness, or
transformation involved (except for the sins of male privilege and the failure
to rejoice in the marvelous diversity of sexes and genders in God’s wondrous
creation). I ask what, apparently, none of the drafters or leadership in the
ELCA has asked: what if This Church has gotten this all wrong?

“De-privileged”
Scripture

It may be a lack of curiosity. Or it may be the determined resolve to
brand such questions as dangerous manifestations of patriarchal privilege.
There’s certainly no attempt to wrestle with difficult passages of Scripture,
much less to consider whether any of them might reflect the will of God.
They’re merely “de-privileged.”

Egregious
Examples

Additionally, only egregious examples of sexism are cited as entirely
representative of most of the early church fathers. Church history, liturgy,
and ministry are seemingly unrelieved by non-misogynistic practices and
pronouncements. “The Christian Church as an institution, including the Lutheran
tradition, has been complicit in these sins” (lines 440-441). Even the
classically Lutheran notion of the “theology of the cross” is deemed
problematic because it might be perceived as abusive, demanding subservience
and suffering – especially by women.

Blanket
Condemnation

As far as I can tell, there is not one “positive” citation from the early
church fathers, the history of the Western church, the theological “Great
Tradition” that encompasses orthodox Christian thought, or much of Lutheranism
(except for the somewhat convoluted parsing of Law and Gospel, and of
justification by grace through faith, mentioned earlier). Even with qualifying
phrases (“continued misuse;” “can also lead to”), it’s not hard to read the
statement as a thoroughgoing condemnation of Scripture and Tradition from the
earliest stories of the Old Testament until the #metoo moment.

Contradictions

This leads to some genuinely contradictory statements. For example, in
lines 367-372, a perfectly fine observation is made: “The differentiation of
humankind into male and female, expressed in Genesis 2, communicates the joy
found in humans having true partners, true peers: “This at last is bone of my
bones and flesh of my flesh” (Genesis 2:23a). God creates community and family,
not a hierarchy…”

 Dishonesty

But then it goes awry: … “not a hierarchy based on race and ethnicity,
ability, social or economic status, or sex (what our bodies look like biologically)
or gender (how people express themselves)” (emphasis added). The document
rightly states that the very possibility of family is grounded in God-given
sexual differentiation between peers. But didn’t the writers remember that
they’d identified science as the proper arbiter of sexual and gender identity
and insisted that both are fluid human constructs? God’s Word, or science:
which is given precedence? And is it not simplistic and misleading – to the
point of intellectual and scientific dishonesty – to state that sex is defined
as “what our bodies look like” and gender as “how people express
themselves?”

Additionally, there are two sidebar graphics (see lines 727-747 and
1048-1060), illustrating how societal attitudes, religious beliefs, and laws,
policies and practices lead either to gender injustice or justice. It’s
presupposed that societal attitudes precede and shape religious beliefs.
Together, they shape unjust or just laws and polities which create communities
of injustice or justice for women and sexual minorities. Referring to lines
1048-1060, on forming a just society: “Working together, we can begin to
transform the circle of injustice…. Individuals and groups can challenge
harmful social attitudes and practices, reject sexist religious beliefs, and
work to change laws and policies that justify and reinforce patriarchy.”

The
Obvious Question

Nobody seems interested in what to me was an obvious question: If we
believe that God’s Word truly is “lively and active,” the “source and norm of
faith and life,” as this document states, then why is the revelation of
God’s word never considered the starting point for transformation of society? Why
is “religious belief” always secondary?How does all This Church’s
earnest language about Scripture as foundational allow the Word of God to COME
FIRST to challenge, forgive, and transform sinful human attitudes, and then to
change unjust laws and create a just community?

Let me conclude with this: If the Draft Social Statement on Women and
Justice is approved by the ELCA, then This Church neither understands, nor
stands under Scripture. And the tragedy is, it seems incurious and unconcerned
about what that means for the very real women and men it purports to care
about, and for.

Editor’s Note: This 4 page article by Pastor Cathy Ammlung originally appeared in Lutheran CORE’s January 2019 newsletter. It is a must-read for anyone trying to digest the 76 page statement that the ELCA will vote on at its Churchwide Assembly in Milwaukee in August 2019.

Click here to read the article.

Editor’s Note: The article below by Pastor Steven K. Gjerde originally appeared in the Summer 2018 Newsletter.

 

Click here to read the article.