Close to power. . .

Apparently I had missed that Lutherans were across the hall from power once.  VP Hubert Horatio Humphrey was a Lutheran.  And then he was not.  He became Methodist.  So we have had Lutheran Supreme Court justices and Attorneys General but now we could have a Lutheran VP who has not left for another church - Tim Walz.  The only problem is that his version of Lutheran is somewhat less than, well, Lutheran.  What do I mean by that?  If Lutheran means holding to the Scriptures as the infallible Word of God, then Walz belongs to a body that hedges its bets on that point.  If Lutheran means holding to the Evangelical Lutheran Confessions as normative over reason and culture, then Walz belongs to a body that believes that the Confessions are more historical document than confessional standard which informs and norms the present.  If Lutheran means being the catholics that our Augsburg Confession claims we are, then Walz belongs to a body that is more at home in liberal Protestantism than with what had been believed, taught, and confessed through the ages.

Walz, born in West Point, NE, and raised Roman Catholic, began teaching in Nebraska where he also met his Lutheran wife, Gwen. From Minnesota, she attended a slightly less prominent legacy Lutheran school, Gustavus Adolphus, than St. Olaf.  After Nebraska, they ended up in Mankato, MN, at the Mankato HS where was a coach and faculty advisor for the school’s first gay-straight alliance. From that time on, Walz did not merely follow the ELCA in its pursuit of the alphabet of sexual attractions and genders, he embraced and led the way to expanding upon it as Governor of Minnesota.

Now Lutherans are no different than other faiths.  We like to parade our politicians out in front just like Roman Catholics and everyone else does.  The problem is that too often we are more comfortable with the politicians than we are with the profundities of our own faith.  Look at Biden.  He claims to be a good Roman Catholic.  Some think he is but only if being a good Roman Catholic means refuting and working against the historic and set doctrinal positions of the Roman Catholic Church.  Who knows what Biden believes in his heart of hearts or Walz for that matter.  In fact, we are not to know what is in the heart -- that is the domain of the Lord.  But it is surely reasonable and, I might add, Scriptural, to believe that the thoughts and words and deeds are not opposed to each other but reflect a certain uniformity within the boundaries of our own human inconsistency.

So my long lingering journey to a point is this.  Be wary of trumpeting the politicians who might belong to your church.  They could be good and faithful folk who believe and confess exactly what their churches do.  They could also be good and faithful folk who believe and confess exactly what their churches do but who believe that they should not impose their personal convictions on others.  They could also be good and well intentioned folk who believe and confess along the lines of what their churches do but who believe governing and believing are two different realms with few bridges between them.  They could also believe that they are good and faithful folk whose duty it is to conform the faith of Scripture and the ages to their own preference and that this is the mark of faithfulness to disagree and diverge from the confession of the church where they think the church is wrong.  In any case, while it is nice to claim a politician as close to the halls of power as one can get, it does little for that church in pursuit of the mission anointed by God and can, in fact, do some harm.

Tim Walz may be a great guy but he probably is not the kind of Lutheran he ought to be or he would not belong to a church which is content living on the cutting edge of Lutheranism and going beyond that edge for the sake of culture, society, modern values, individuality, diversity, equity, inclusion, justice, and access.  So whether we think he is a good guy or not, let us not list his Lutheranism as one of the reasons why he is.  In fact, I would be happiest of we judged our politicians on the basis of their public stands and records and not on anything else.  If you have read my blog you know that I am not a diehard Republican or a Trumper but I do appreciate that some of his governing was much better than his words and the Republicans have generally stood more solidly on the issues of life, culture, gender, and such.  I would happily support Walz or Biden or Harris if that were also the case.  My conundrum is that while the left has gone lefter the right has also headed left.  Because of that, there is a bigger issue than if they are Lutheran or Roman Catholic.