AI just keeps on giving. . .

Child pornography without a child.  Is it wrong?  Well, we are far removed from the time when right or wrong mattered.  Is it legal?   On August 25 of this year, Judge John Z. Lee of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit ruled that the First Amendment does indeed protect the right of Americans to possess AI-generated child pornography.  In Wisconsin, Steven Anderegg was charged by the Justice Department in 2024 “with producing, distributing, and possessing visual depictions of minors engaged in sexually explicit conduct and transferring such material to a minor under the age of sixteen.”  This was not a small matter but many thousands of very realistic images.  In 2025, a Western District of Wisconsin judge dismissed Anderegg’s possession charge while allowing the producing and distributing charges to remain in place.  A few months ago, minors in TN were charged with using AI to make nude images using the faces of classmates.  It was a narrow ruling applied only to the use of possession statute 18 U.S.C. § 1466A(b)(1) in the possession charge but it does highlight the new ground which AI is plowing as our society defines what is legal and what is not in the realm of AI created images.

It did not begin with AI.  When the day came that our courts decided, probably with public opinion on its side, that pornography was protected speech, the whole world changed.  Indeed, we subjected a new generation of youth to a sexual maturity in which their desires were also shaped by pornography and often extreme violence and perverse pornographic images and videos.  So it did not take long before AI offered the opportunity to expand what was possible and that included the use of images created of children.  What we fail to realize is that even if no child is involved and the images and videos are entirely AI, these will effectively change the landscape even further and have a profound impact upon the maturing minds and desires of young people.  Simply saying something is legal does not seem to be saying much but in a time when legality stands without morality to define what people see and how that influences desires, it is enough. Things are not going to get better.  They assuredly will get worse.  In the balance lies the development of healthy youth and the easy access and alluring temptation being provided them by new technology that blurs reality and erases boundary lines.  What will we do as a society and what can we do as Christians within that society to protect our children and promote an honest and healthy environment for our kids?  That ought to be the question before us.  Not everything legal is moral.  In this case it seems fairly obvious that what some have said is legal is extremely dangerous and evil.  The use of AI in gaming as well as other entertainment platforms will only encourage its use and eventual acceptance in pornography.  There has to be a way of limiting or identifying this menace.

Rome and Trent. . .

Though there are some who object to the term Roman Catholic Church, it is a fair term and not simply a derogatory label applied by the Reformation parties and its theological heirs.  It befits us in this October month so special to Lutherans to take a look at Trent and the Roman nature of that church body which convened the council.

The Council of Trent  was held between 1545 and 1563 in Northern Italy in the city that gives it its name.  Called the 19th ecumenical council of the Catholic Church, it was the council requested by the Lutherans and was convened due to the efforts of Holy Roman Emperor Charles V more than any pope.  It was the last "ecumenical council" outside Rome and is regarded as a local council by the East.  Though the Reformation was the trigger, the outcome was more far reaching than a response to Luther and his cohorts.  The Council put into place statements and clarifications of its doctrine and teachings on an expansive list of topics, including scripture, the biblical canon, sacred tradition, original sin, justification, salvation, the sacraments, the Mass, and the veneration of saints -- as well as the requisite condemnations of Protestantism.  Though there were not many statements about the papacy, this council defined Roman Catholicism for centuries and in a way that had not been done before.  Three popes oversaw the sessions but none attended -- a condition imposed by Charles V -- so they were represented by legates.  It would be 300 years for another council and this one focused more on the papacy -- Vatican I in 1869.  It came relatively soon -- the Fifth Lateran Council had only concluded in 1517 -- but we all know what happened that same year.

The emperor intended it to be a strictly general or truly ecumenical council, at which the Protestants should have a fair hearing and safe passage but no vote.  The obvious corruption in the administration of the Church which was one of the causes of the Reformation was a primary focus of the council.  The papal legates ensured that no concessions would be made to the Protestants.  The position of the Roman Church as the sole interpreter of the Scriptures (the primacy of the Vulgate included), the rejection of justification by faith, the clarification of the relationship between faith and works, and, while abuses condemned, practices such as indulgences, pilgrimages, the veneration of saints and relics, and the veneration of the Virgin Mary were strongly reaffirmed.  Don't forget the affirmation of celibacy for the clergy.  The most enduring and profound consequences of the council were liturgical. A year after the council, Pius IV issued the Tridentine Creed (after Tridentum, Trent's Latin name), Pius V then issued the Roman Catechism and revisions of the Breviary and Missal, and the  codification of the Tridentine Mass ensured the council would live on for the next four hundred years and define Roman faith and practice unchallenged until relatively recently.  In addition, the Eucharist was defined as a true propitiatory sacrifice as well as a sacrament, in which the bread and wine were consecrated into the body and blood of Christ using the term transubstantiation but without the full Aristotelian explanation later defined by Scholasticism.  Pope Pius IV affirmed the decrees on 26 January 1564 under pain of ex-communication for those who rejected its canons.  Though England and elsewhere seemed to make no effort to enforce the decrees, the  main and most detailed theological response was the 1565–73 Examen decretorum Concilii Tridentini (Examination of the Council of Trent) by Lutheran Martin Chemnitz.

So, there you have it.  Without spending much time on the papacy per se, the council effectively Romanized the Western Church from the sixteenth century going forward.  It was to wait until Vatican I in 1870 to address the papalization of the Roman Church but the framework was already in place and the decrees of Vatican I fit well with the work of Trent.  You can complain all you want but the reality is that it would have been difficult to know the Roman Church without the work of Trent and, later, Vatican I.  That is the simple and honest witness of history.  While you may dispute whether the Lutherans live up to their claims in the Augsburg Confession to be catholic in doctrine and practice, it is very difficult to dispute the monumental change of identity within the Western Church in the wake of the Council of Trent.

Full even when empty. . .

There is no one plan for the architecture of a church.  We all know this and it has never been so.  Yet there are remarkable similarities between those church buildings which continue to invite, inspire, and include the faithful around the Word and Table of the Lord.  Despite differences, they all seem to reflect certain traditional ideals about the centrality of altar, the rising height of the ceiling, the focus of the vision from the pews, and the sense of reverence that remains even when there is nothing going on in the space.  They are full even when they are empty of people.  Folks know this even when unable to describe it.  In these spaces, conversations are instinctively hushed when no there is worship service happening.  It is the sense of the presence of God that cannot be tied to one period or style of architecture but is common to all of them.  The architecture directs the attention of the person to the God to whom the building points and whose presence in Word and Sacrament gives the building a reason for existing.  Except the modern.

Modern architecture too often is self-referential.  It relies on the building as its own expression and justification.  It points to itself in ways that even the more elaborate forms and styles of the past did not and do not.  Sometimes it is whimsy and novelty which are employed.  Sometimes it is in uniqueness that the architecture gets its purpose and goal.  Sometimes it is in the focus on the people who would gather in the building and the goal of providing accessible space for the horizontal dimension.  Sometimes it is on the lack of adornment that the building makes itself its own adornment and its own focus.  Sometimes it is the sharp corners which make it seem less friendly and less filled when full and more empty when not.  In any case, the hard judgment against so many modern buildings used for worship is that feel empty when full and when not full even emptier.  I wish I had better words to say.  The buildings try too hard to be relevant and end up being enemies of the very purpose for which they were erected.  Even when striking, the modern architecture points to itself more than to the purpose for which it was constructed and the God who is present even when the building itself is empty.

Occasionally these cold and sometimes brutal structures seem to cry out for someone to humanize the space.  I wonder if it s less the humanization of a space to make it more inhabitable than it is the loss of its purpose and reason for existence.  It does not draw the mind or the heart away from the person to the God whose house it is but leaves the worshiper cold and confused.  Why am I here?  Who is here?  Those are the two questions any architecture must answer in order to fulfill its sacred purpose.  The buildings of the past endure precisely because they answer these questions well.  The ones torn down or repurposed did not answer these questions well.  Even those outside the Church know the value of the sense of the sacred and when it is present and when it is not.  They know without being told to be quiet within this space and to reverence the God who is present even if He is not their God.  These venues work well for choral and instrumental music (especially organ, of course) precisely because they tend to do for the music what they do for the worship.  They magnify the setting so that even something simple seems profound.  In contrast to this, the flaws of too much modern architecture is that it makes what is profound ordinary.  It defeats the purpose for which the building exists and works against the sacred gathering of God's people around His Word and Table.  Even spaces which work well as lecture halls fail the Word and even spaces which work well as dining spaces fail the Sacrament.  Liturgical space has a function but it is not functional or utilitarian in the sense that too much modern architecture is.

I wish I could make this more intelligible.  It is not for lack of trying.  Sadly, even those with the most limited experience with churches and their purpose can tell almost immediately when a space is simply wrong or fails in its calling to be home to the holy.  I only wish somebody in architecture schools and on building committees could do the same.

What has changed over many years?

When I began life, everybody around me in the LCMS was in The Lutheran Hymnal and everyone around me in what would become the LCA and ALC was in the Common Service Book or the American Lutheran Hymnal.  Of course, all that changed soon.  In 1958 the Service Book and Hymnal replaced the LCA and ALC books and in the mid to late 1960s the era of Inter-Lutheran worship books was initiated leading to Lutheran Book of Worship and the LCMS version Lutheran Worship.  What could be said in the 1950s is that Lutherans may have had different worship books but they seemed to look and act and sound alike on Sunday morning more than has ever been since.  But the change has been more than simply about the worship books.

Across the more liberal bent of Lutheranism and across mainline Protestantism as a whole, the emphasis in worship, prayer, and hymns has moved to echo more nearly the primary emphasis in these churches on peace and justice and the increasing value of variety.  In the 1950s I am not sure it would be so easy as it is today to identify a sermon from the different Lutheran bodies.  Now is not much of a problem.  On the left are the themes of peace, justice, sexual identity and desire, and climate.  On the right is the cross and empty tomb, in other words, sin and forgiveness.  In the 1950s, the order was certainly very similar if not exactly alike even if some of the music was different.  Today on the left is the wholesale borrowing of the worst of Roman Catholic contemporary hymnody (Joncas, Haugen, etc.) and on the right the prevailing popular contemporary Christian music of the moment.  But, to be fair, both sides seem to presume that variety is the spice of life.

Whereas variety in the past might mean a variety of hymnals who all preserved more rather than less of the Lutheran liturgical tradition and its Western Mass form, today variety seems to mean anything goes.  I wish there was a way to go back to the way things were but I fear the genie is out of the bottle.  We may never get back to following the book or whatever book the churches have published and this is probably due to the fact that some either do not want to use any book or who insist that the causes du jour which are too avant garde to be reflected in any book.  In other words, both sides presume that books are merely suggestions and/or starting points for something that is local or ideologically driven.  It is no wonder that there is more liturgical chaos among Lutherans today than Theo Graebner ever could have envisioned going on 100 years ago.  Variety may seem to be the spice of life but we are over spiced with variety and it is killing the brand -- in ways that any number of Lutheran hymnals existing side by side never did in the past.  Even those who call themselves Lutheran do not know who we are anymore on Sunday morning.  We do not know what to say about God anymore and we cannot agree on what sin is so Lutheranism is a veritable muddle on Sunday mornings -- both to the assembly of the baptized and to the world around them watching them.  We could not have screwed things up more if we had tried deliberately.  Ok, maybe we did.  Maybe the ELCA worked too hard to look and act and sound like mainline Protestantism with all its liberal and progressive eccentricity and maybe Missouri has been watching too many evangelicals on TV.  In any case, it is killing the brand worse than just about anything else we could have done.

Owners or renters. . .

It is often said that we do not do a very good job recruiting, encouraging, and rewarding volunteers in our churches.  I suppose there is truth to this and it would not be wise to suggest otherwise.  But the care and feeding of volunteers presumes that the volunteers need to be rewarded to give of themselves toward their cause.  The volunteer needs to get something out of it in order to justify volunteering.  Except that the Church is not a cause and those who "volunteer" are not really volunteers at all.  If it does not belong to you, then you are a volunteer but if the Church is yours, if you belong to it by baptism and faith, then the questions remains, in what sense are you a volunteer?

We all know the drill.  Before or after the Divine Service, someone (usually the pastor because he has more authority or pull) will stand up and go over the list of activities going on and how desperately in need of volunteers the parish is.  Inevitably, there is a sign up sheet somewhere to jot down your name and let folks know you are stepping up.  In some parishes, a QR code means you can volunteer by smart phone.  In the end, a few folks are guilted into signing up, maybe a couple of others are called out by name and end up agreeing to serve to avoid being nagged anymore.  Some will sigh and give in only to keep the litany of pleading announcements from going on one more week.  But most folks will end up shuffling uncomfortably in their pews, avoiding any direct line of sight with anyone involved with the activity, practicing their excuses, sure that the old regulars will take care of it and staff the Sunday school or coffee hour or fellowship committee or maintenance group or yard sale.  If the Church had a draft, such a means would be employed to fix what everyone thinks is embarrassing and irritating.  

I fear the problem is that most folks do not really believe that the enterprise that needs the volunteers is really either urgent or necessary or at least not urgent or necessary enough for them to actually sign up and do it.  They are what might be called renters.  Renters rent because someone else takes care of the major stuff and all they have to do is the little stuff.  It is a vastly different enterprise than ownership which comes with a constant drain of time, money, and effort to keep up appearances.  The Church is filled with renters and has too few owners.  Renters occupy a pew but do not feel obligated to more than paying the monthly rent on their space.  Owners feel the responsibility to show up and cough up time, money, and skills to keep the place open and operating.  Renters have to be enticed to volunteer but owners know they have a duty and responsibility to the place.  They may not like it but the Church is theirs and so they show up bidden or not, whether they signed up or not, and do what must be done whether they like it or not.  Oh, they complain about those who are not there but they know the complaints change little or nothing and they just keep showing up and doing the work.

It might be tempting to complain but the reality is that the solution to this problem is not more complaints or more guilting folks into volunteering.  We would be better off trying to build a sense of ownership over the parish and its work.  That is not to imply that it is not God's House or His work but that we have been called into partnership with Him in the Gospel.  We each have our own callings and vocation as the baptized children of God and each of us is called to offer ourselves as living sacrifices.  This is our reasonable service and our stewardship.  The vocation as the children of God who belong to the Lord and whose labors are also for Him and to Him is precisely the thing that often seems missing.  When we treat the Church as belonging to a small group that excludes us, we are doing more than failing to volunteer.  We are renting God's house as if that was all there was to it.  It is not a better job of enticing folks to serve that we need but a stronger identity as belonging to God and His House as our own home.  

Growing up in a small congregation and then serving in a small parish right out of seminary, I can see where fewer numbers makes it harder to presume that a person is not needed.  There does seem to be a cohesiveness to a smaller parish that is sometimes missing in a mid or large size congregation.  But, again, it is not about the urgent need but about the identity we have as children of God who live out our lives in response to His goodness, with thanksgiving.  I will not suggest I was good at this but I do think it is something we all need to work at.  The Church has, in that sense, no volunteers but only those who have a sense of ownership and those who need to develop one.