The ecumenical future. . .

In what has to be the understatement of the year, Pope Leo said “While much progress has been made on some historically divisive issues, new problems have arisen in recent decades, rendering the pathway to full communion more difficult to discern.”  Ya think?!  While the ecumenical conversations of a certain age could have expected confidence in the ecumenical creeds or a consensus on the morality of divorce, birth control, same sex marriage, etc, this is no longer the case.  In addition to this, the cause of the Gospel of Jesus Christ crucified and risen has been replaced by social justice, climate change, and a host of other causes not even particularly addressed by Scripture.  Finally, the whole certainty of the Scriptural words, events, and message has been undermined until God's Word is merely a suggestion to many Christians today.  Do you think that this might have something to do with the conundrum suggested by the Pope's understatement?

There was a time when I applauded the work of ecumenical conversations.  In particular, the Lutheran and Roman Catholic dialogues produced some solid work engaging each other in what we believe, teach, and confess.  While not every one agreed with the fruits of this long standing theological engagement, it was serious, deliberate, and scholarly.  For the Lutheran side, most of this ended when the ecumenical chairs ended up in the hands of liberal Lutherans who did not take their own history or confession all that seriously much less the positions of their dialogue partners.  Now, the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America finds itself in the odd position of being in fellowship with nearly anyone and everyone except any Lutherans who do take their history and confession seriously and who believe these inform and set boundaries for faith and practice.  It is no wonder that the ecumenical conversations have become difficult -- difficult at least for those who want to take theology seriously but easy for those who don't.

Sadly, I confess that today it is probably not worth our time and effort to sit down and engage anyone in official theological dialogues.  For one, the ELCA and Missouri are not speaking.  For another, the conservative Anglicans are still wedded to some of the same liberal positions they had when they were playing well together so I am not sure how far we can expect to get with those who insist that the ordination of women, for example, is not going to change.  Finally, even once rather solid partners (the Lutheran Church of Australia) have set their course away from historic Lutheran confession and identity and it might be that the SELK in Germany is not that far behind.  So who is their left to talk to?

The answer seems to take us to Africa.  There we find churches more willing to sit down with solid and deliberate conversations about faith and life.  There we find some churches whose clergy are being formed within the seminaries of the LCMS.  There we also find a vibrant and and larger presence to the Lutheran identity than seems to be left across the West.  If there is anywhere we need to be going to talk, it is probably Africa.  There are some small and mission provinces offering us hope but by and large the once vaunted Lutheran institutions of the West (i. e. Lutheran World Federation) are probably not worth the conversation and will not offer much hope of any serious debate much less future unity. 

Next week. . .

Next week I will be in St. Louie for my probable last go around on a floor committee weekend.  Hundreds of overtures have come from the various places and entities that comprise the Lutheran Church Missouri Synod.  The floor committees have been appointed mostly from District Presidents and delegates who will be in attendance at the Synodical Convention in Phoenix in July of this year.  They will mull over what has been submitted, cull down the working number of resolutions to be presented to the assembly down to a manageable number -- south of a hundred to be sure.  Then, with elections, the assembly will discuss and vote.  If I could have my druthers, there would be more deliberation than is often the case.  Too many times, someone rushes to close debate or call the question before real, substantive debate can be had.  I will admit that it is not easy to manage a real debate with some 1,000 voting delegates (clergy and lay) as well as advisory folks.  But that is part of why we are here.  

We all know that the cost of these things means it is hard to let things simply fly as they will but it would be better rather than worse to have more deliberation by the assembly rather than less.  In part, the floor committees will probably work against resolutions that will prove too provocative and will try to sense the mind and mood of the majority to offer things that pass.  Even bread and butter resolutions will hear from some naysayer who wants his comment recorded.  That means that clock watching will go along with the debate and the voting.  Thankfully, if the electronic voting and queuing for debate tools work, this will give more time to the floor to aid in it in all.  

Some will complain that there are too many clerical collars.  Some will complain that there is too much gray hair.  Some will complain that there are too many woman even as some complain there are too few.  Some will complain that the same voices seem to have something to say on everything.  Some will complain that the resolutions sound a lot like previous year's.  Some will complain that they do not go far enough fast enough.  Some will complain that they go too far and too fast.  Some will confuse us and some will be confused.  A few solid voices will work to sort it all out and then give us a clean record of what we actually said and did.  Short of a papacy to dictate it all to us our a council of bishops to tell us what they deliberated and voted upon, this is what we are stuck with.  

I have been to more conventions than I can remember and sat in the seats where people made the decisions and cast a vote as well as in the seats on the side of the dais where the people who cannot vote sit.  I will come home with a few  tchotchkes from the vendors but not as many as I once did -- times are tough and even cheap stuff from China can be expensive!  I will see a great many faces of folks I know and reconnect with most of them in some way.  It will also be a working week for me and the members of the Commission on Constitutional Matters and Commission on Handbook.  We do not get to make the rules but we have to make sure we follow them -- even the ones some of us don't appreciate.

My only advice is the one that physicians once tried to follow -- do no harm.  We have had a few clinkers in the past with unintended outcomes and consequences.  At least do not make things worse.  We need to clearly affirm who we are, attempt to thoughtfully, Biblically, and confessionally address the challenges before us, select faithful folk to serve us in the many positions of leadership and boards of our Synod, and that is about all we need or should do.  We certainly do not need to reinvent ourselves every three years.  We certainly do not need to forget who we are as we tackle the big problems and issues before us.  We do need to act in such a way that we do not dampen our hopes or darken our view of the next triennium because of our time together in Phoenix.  Like a herd of turtles, moves the Church of God; brothers, we are treading where we've always trod...  Yup, it is a slow process in a fast world and that is probably how it should be.  Do no harm.  That is the best advice.  Don't do something stupid that needs to be fixed down the road because who knows how long it will be before the fix will be found and the error repaired?  And laugh a bit -- if at nothing else, laugh at yourself.  We can be pretty funny even when we intend to be serious.  Oh, well, time to pack up for the soiree in St. Louie.

How unlike his mom. . .

I don't know how I missed this.  In previous years, I had always looked forward to the Queen's greetings at Christmas and other holy days, especially Easter of 2020.  But this year King Charles III of England declined to give Easter greetings to the Christians of the church of which he is supposedly head.  Odd.  Charles has gone to great lengths to assure folks that he is not simply Defensor fidei but defender of faith in general -- no matter what it is called or which God is believed.  That said, he is defender of the Christian faith and, in particular, of the Church of England.  He had at one point shown interest in Orthodoxy, similar to his father.  He also seems to have great interest in Islam, having marked Islamic holidays with greetings from the throne.  So what are we to make of him?

There are many things to complain about in the long tenure of Elizabeth II but she seemed personally not simply spiritual but deeply religious.  She was known to regularly attend worship services and to pray and her messages at Christmas and Easter were written out of an implicit faith -- if not as explicit as some would have liked.  She was an anchor to the religious history of her people and preserved it even when some of those subjects had abandoned it.  Charles seems too at ease with the void of overtly Christian shape to the monarchy and to his particular role as head of the Church of England.  I fear he has passed this on to William who will succeed him.  Though I have read that William has committed to some sort of religious renewal, neither William nor Charles has yet shown the Christian resolve of Elizabeth.  That is sad.  It is a sign of the times, to be sure, but a sad one.

Some would decry state religion and insist that it is not a true faith.  I am not going to suggest that it is all that it should be but I do bemoan the rise of the nones and the norm of secularism that seems to be the wave passing over Europe and Canada and even the US which is not too far behind.  A state religion may not save one before the judgment seat of Christ but that does not mean that it did not contribute to the health and moral certainty of nations and peoples along the way.  Charles seems not even interested in this aspect and I fear too many are willing to let me off the hook for it.

Funny how we seem more comfortable confessing the things we are not sure about than the things we believe, teach, and confess.  I guess that is the shape of liberalism and progressivism.  We are so very full of steam when we speak of the things government needs to do but not so passionate about what we are called to do.  We love for the government to love the poor but treat charity as if it were a welfare program administered by the state instead of a reflection of the love God has revealed to us and for us.  Charles has his causes -- from animals to climate change among them.  It is as if he thinks that Islam is better suited to loving the neighbor than Christianity or Christians.  Christmas is the more familiar Christian holy day but Easter is the Queen of Feasts and a king who is head of a Christian communion should know that. If that is what he thinks, it is no wonder he smiles quietly without bothering to address his subjects with an Easter greeting.  He is in company with many folks today but I would not call it good company.  Give me some good old-fashioned state religion any day of the week over the kind of impious piety Charles has shown us.  I guess I expected it from him but I had hoped to be surprised.  

Trans is quieter but not going away. . .

As is typical, a heady euphoria of success can often be brought down to the level of managed disappointment.  Those in the LGBTQ+ coalition have seen trans issues as part of their overall purview but the rest of the population seems to have taken a more nuanced and deliberate approach to the trans issues.  It might make some of us think that they have been overcome or suffered a set back.  I only wish that were the case.  The media and the educational establishment are still firmly committed to the normalization of trans status and goals within the overall umbrella of society and government.  They have had to slow down a bit and be a little less front and center but they are still out to make sure that our children accept the trans status as normal even if the parents are more cautious.  That is what makes these social movements so dangerous -- they do not see setbacks as taking all that much away from their overall progress toward their goals.  In fact, I wonder if they do not rather count on those who have expressed caution or warning to its progress to wax and wane in their fervor whenever it appears we may have take some of the wind out of their sails.  If so, we could end up right where we did for abortion -- the law changed but people continued to act as if it was normal and moral to kill the child in the womb with a pill rather than a medical procedure.  The law sent it back to the states but the number of pharmaceutical abortions has increased and the overall number has not declined.  We won at the courts but lost in the court of public opinion.  Could that be exactly where we are now?

Our therapeutic Western culture has many aims to promote -- from endless life to painless death when we desire it from perfect designer babies to babies removed from the messiness of natural conception and birth, from maximum entertainment to limitless pursuits of preference, and from the relative truth defined by the individual to the good of the society overall which constrains our freedoms.  The trans agenda is part of this whole and the rest will be pursued whenever the individual trans issues are put on the back burner.  I am less concerned that any or all of these goals will ever be achieved than I am the whole of our society and the foundation of our liberty will be dismantled and cast aside in the pursuit of these goals.  In the end, it is not these individual issues that we are seeking but the fulfillment of the age old basic human desire to be like God.  From Eden to the present day, our undoing has been our willingness to do anything necessary to achieve that ostentatious ambition. Transgenderism has suffered a setback or two but in its place it is transhumanism that is under the gun as AI, the loss of common truth, and the destruction of common values proceed forth.  That is what I fear most -- not the loss of individual issues but our success going to our heads and our failure to see how the whole movement will usher in the destruction of marriage, family, liberty, life's sacred character, and our communal insistence upon defining what is good and right.  Once these are gone, we are undone.  What encouraged the continued destruction begun in Eden was when man looked around and saw that they did not die -- at least not right at that moment -- and kept on pursuing the goal of being gods instead of serving the God.  When we look around and take a breath and begin to believe that we have answered the existential threat of the transgender movement, we will give them the chance to normalize in the eyes of our children what we as adults think we must oppose for the sake of our children.  We will have preserved our children from those who insist they must claim a gender identity for themselves but we will not have preserved them from the loss of their very humanity without jobs, a purpose, a family, clear values, and a respect for life.

When the unchangeable Word needs to be changed. . .

Yvette Flunder, the Senior Pastor of the City of Refuge UCC over in Oakland and the Presiding Bishop of The Fellowship of Affirming Ministries, has said out loud what many others only say privately.  The unchangeable and unchanging Word of God needs changing.  When she talked to the folks at the Center for Public Theology & Public Policy, she was telling a liberal, progressive, and militant crowd exactly what they wanted to hear and, surprisingly, many other so called Christians probably agree.

"I’m about to say something a bit naughty, a bit dangerous, actually. I reckon we’re due for a Third Testament. Why? Because the Bible, as it stands, has become a bit of a nightmare, hasn’t it?

You’ve got bits in there like, ‘Slaves, do what your masters tell you like you’re doing it for the Big Man upstairs.’ It’s right there in the ink! Or, ‘Ladies, put a sock in it during church, and if you’ve got a question, wait ’til you get home to ask your husband.’

Now, look at me—I’m a believer! I’m all in! I wake up, I’m chatting with the Divine, the Divine is chatting back, we’re having a lovely time. But I am absolutely fed up to the back teeth with the way these ancient scripts paint God as some sort of vitriolic, narrow-minded headmaster.

People wag their fingers and say, ‘But Yvette, it’s in the Book!’ And I say, fine, let’s rip the page out then! And they gasp, ‘You can’t do that, it’s the Word of God!’ And I say, no, darling. It’s words about God. There’s a massive difference, isn’t there? Is it the literal Word of the Infinite Creator? No. It’s just not.”

The problem is that the old ways of trying to undo what Scripture says are not keeping up with the advance of liberal propaganda and so the only solution left is to do just that -- rip pages out of the old Bible that you object to an write in a new section promoting what you affirm.  This is not simply a rejection of the Scriptures but of the whole idea of Biblical revelation and of the central premise of those Scriptures, namely that it speaks with the unchanging and unchangeable voice of God.

God's Word has become merely a suggestion to us instead of the definitive Word and it has become more and more an unwelcome and rejected suggestion.  While this is surely true of morality and ethics, it is no less true of the story of the Scriptures that is Christ promised, incarnate, suffering, dying, rising, ascending, and coming again.  I wish I could say that this was an isolated opinion from someone on the political as well as religious left.  The truth is that this is the way many Christians of all stripes treat the Scriptures.  God gets a say but it is not the definitive one and when it does not accord with our own values and intentions, then it is His say that ends up changing and not ours.  Christianity overall but especially liberal and progressive Christianity has become a ship without an anchor, adrift upon the seas of change in which the wind in the sails is not God's work for our redemption but our own happiness, satisfaction, pleasure, and self-identity.

There was a time when the optimum question in Bible study is What do you think it says or means?  Now that question has been transformed into the real question that foments doubt and discord -- Do you agree with what it says or means?  There is no truth without our consent and there is no authoritative voice from God except the one whose voice fulfills our purpose and lives in submission to our own wills and desires.  This is no novelty invented by the 21st century but merely the current version of the question raised in Eden:  is that what God really said [meant]?