Growing up in the 1950s, I am not sure the Augustana congregation and the Missouri one were all that different. Okay, the Lodge issue was one difference and, not to mention, their pastor got a new car far more often than ours did. All in all they did not seem so far apart. Who would have thought that 70 years later, they would not even be on speaking terms. Which they are not. Neither one bothers to send greetings to the other when they hold their national meetings. It is probably best since we said they were not even Lutheran anymore and they said they would rather commune with a Methodist than us. But this is not simply a feeling. There are well documented reasons why we are so different.
First of all, though the Missouri folks complain about voting lists and such, it is pretty clear that there is some behind the scenes maneuvering going on in the ELCA since the election of their two highest ranking leaders (Presiding Bishop and Secretary) were in and of themselves a curiosity. The one elected their Presiding Bishop was not on any preliminary lists even though he was a prominent name. Also curious to me, an outsider, is how prominently sexual preference and race figured into it all. What was even more curious is that neither of the two high ranking leaders actually came up from the ranks of parish pastor or even a traditional M.Div. seminary route. Wow. That is odd to a Missourian. Then there was the business of campaigning. Oh yes, it was not really campaigning but simply repeated opportunities to address the voters, answer questions, and look the part. Again, for all our faults in Missouri, we do not have a highly visible horse race to elect our leaders.
Then there was the constant preoccupation with sexual desire, race, and social justice. It is not that Missourians don't have positions on these things but we actually spend more time on the actual Gospel and the work of the Kingdom related to that Gospel. Sure, you may not like what we say but we say it not because we have a position but because Scripture does and, predictably, we are traditional as is Scripture. We may not like history but we seldom overrule the Word of God and we seem to make our peace with its history without trying to impose 2025 social values upon the Word of God as if the Lord had it wrong and could have benefited from a crystal ball to see how it would be today. We not only believe that marriage is the historical and Biblical shape of God's order then, we believe it applies today and into the unknown tomorrow as well. That makes us fear to even consider treading where the ELCA seems to delight in going. That is a big difference.
Another difference is our confidence in the national judicatories. LCMS folk delight in calling our headquarters a Purple Palace and belittling our national presence (both false but familiar). It would seem that the ELCA has such confidence in their national presence that they no longer even care if the constitutional provisions of their church body are passed locally. Oh, well, if they like it, I guess that is all that matters. Nobody in the LCMS on any side of the LCMS would ever grant to the national level anything approaching the authority to make a constitutional amendment stick. We tried something like that once with the restructuring of 2010 and it upset one Synod President and has been the bane of the guy who followed him. Not a good thing.
One more difference is hurt feelings. I heard a lot of talk about offenses and hurt feelings from people speaking to the floor. Missouri must not care about feelings since we don't hear much about that and are not that moved by those who claim such hurt. I guess we like facts and figures. That may be good or bad but it remains a marked difference between the ELCA and Missouri.
Then there is the issue of the Filioque. Missouri could not even bring itself to pass a needed update to the language of the Nicene Creed (one which was so minor and so non-controversial it should not even have been debated) in 2006. We stuck with God of God instead of God from God and we remission instead of forgiveness, among other things. Then, in one fell swoop, the ELCA seemed to disown the Filioque without much of a theological debate and proceeded to confess the creed without it later. Missouri is loathe to change anything but the ELCA seems ready to change everything. I guess I should have seen that coming in 2009.
In the end, Bishop Eaton who surprisingly toppled her predecessor was granted a relatively easy way out to retirement. I have mixed feelings about her time. She certainly did not slow the drift of the ELCA into the mainstream of cultural and societal change nor did she seem to offer much of a theological brake to the speed at which the ELCA was heading into its sex and social justice gospel. She is probably tired of it all and just wants to be left alone. I get it.
Unfortunately, the ELCA seems to grab every headline along the way and pulls Missouri down with it. The world is so confused that the idiots at Westboro Baptist Church picketed our youth at their national gathering this summer -- thinking, apparently, that they were picketing the ELCA. It is a common error. Missouri and the ELCA are further apart than ever and few seem to know that there is a difference. Ouch. I guess nobody mistakes the ELCA for Missouri but it gets on our last nerve when people presume we are them. Such the saga of the ELCA and Missouri. Once they were like 8th graders at a sock hop at opposite ends of the gym staring at each other. They we tried dating and ended up marrying the sister of the Lutheran Church in America for a few years. Now we are like divorced people who cannot stand to be in the same room with the ex. I am not even sure we bother to formally fight anymore. Ignoring each other seems to be so much more fun.
2 comments:
The XXXA regards its national structure as a "church", while the LCMS does not (officially) consider its national structure to be a "church" in the same sense as its member congregations.
Furthermore, the LCMS has recognized a much wider difference between the two religious organizations. In its April 2012 document, "Response to Human Sexuality: Gift and Trust," the LCMS/CTCR stated (p. 21): "The ELCA has now taken this step, embodying apostasy from the faith once delivered to the saints."
When ELCA divorced itself from the LCMS, in reality, they rejected God, not merely Lutheran orthodoxy. The LCMS was the betrayed spouse in a marriage that crashed. The wayward spouse wanted freedom to find itself a place in the American culture. When a spouse leaves a marriage, it is often because they want more freedom, and in the case of ELCA, the Gospel message was confining and too repressive to be socially relevant. Spiritual blindness is a deadly malady which destroys the soul. The Gospel was never about being at one with the world, or about complying with the values of a particular society. The Gospel was always about the Kingdom of God, of people receiving Jesus, repenting of sin, with sins forgiven, being baptized and washed, regenerated, and starting a new life in Christ. It is about moving forward by the grace of God, not looking back, walking with Jesus on the King’s highway to eternal life. ELCA joins a long line of apostate churches which lost their first love, which found the cross deficient and unsatisfactory, and chose to be assimilated into the world system. There is no need to lament any further. There is still hope that the Lord will draw and save souls from the grip of ELCA heresies. But like a rebellious spouse who walks away from marriage for no commendable reason, the only choice is to let them go, and shake off the dust of a lost cause. Soli Deo Gloria
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