The devaluation of value. . .

Oftentimes we say that values are changing.  I suppose you can still say that.  However, the result of philosophical and religious change in Western culture has been less about the changed values than it has the erosion of values altogether.  This devaluation of value has affected nearly every aspect of our lives and certainly all our institutions.  Even more importantly than the fading value of values is the suspicion of values that has arisen.  

Nowhere is this more true than when it comes to life.  When we begin by devaluing the value of the life in the womb, it leads automatically to the devaluation of life outside the womb.  The babies who survived abortion can be left to die and the aged and infirm can be put out of their misery and anyone who deems life not worth living can arrange for a painless exit.  Do you think that they are not connected?

I well recall when Gilbert Meilander wrote "I Want to Be a Burden to My Children."  He immediately pointed out the fallacy of those who insist that options need to remain open so that you can choose not to be a burden to your children (or community or society as a whole).   Living wills, advance directives, and durable powers of attorney are all different ways of trying to take the family out of the loop when a decision has to be rendered.  It is like the dying are giving permission to the living to let them die.

Every single one of us has been or will end up being a “burden” on others.  The young are dependent upon the care, protection, and provision of their parents.  The ill are equally dependent upon the kindness and care of family or strangers.  The aged are highly likely to need some form of care or supervision as the years pile up (and they do as we are graying as a society).  I sat in an ER for a while a couple of months ago and listened to an aged daughter who was bringing her even more aged father in for treatment.  The future of our lives always seem to look like care-giving.  But it this bad?  We certainly resist it (from youth to old age) and we insist that you are not the boss of me.  But is it really a bad thing to be dependent upon others?  Is that not the definition of humanity? 

A nation's laws reflect its values and its values are reflected in its laws.  More and more we seem not to have placed much stake on life.  We are deathly afraid of suffering, to be sure, but I am not convinced that has arisen to a value.  We are stridently individualistic but again the question remains is this a value.  Some of these things are not so much formed values as they are the result of an absence of values -- like life and family and community.  Odd that someone would wait around for the government to approve medically assisted suicide (pain free, of course) but summarily dismiss the wishes of the family to have the loved one with them longer.  Is the avoidance of suffering our prime directive?  How far could you go with such a value?

All of this flies square in the face of the suffering God whose suffering redeems humanity.   To say that this is not Christian is not enough.  It is positively anti-Christian.  Life is a primary Christian value -- God who created and sustains all life, including those with disability or limitation.  Life is the universal Christian value -- God who comes in flesh in order that the God who cannot die might suffer and die for those who can be rescued and redeemed only by His self-offering.  Is there a Jesus who has not come to suffer?

The individual goal of control over life is not quite Christian either or Jesus would not have us turn the other cheek.  No, we have got to absent from our minds the whole screwy idea of what daddy would have wanted us to do?  Daddy's wishes are a profound influence over funeral practices but not salutary ones.  They are even worse on issues of life.  The same with the horrible question of whether or not their life is worth living.  How do you answer that question without values?  Meilander had it right.  How can we value the life the person now has?  That should be the value inherent in all of our values and if we get this wrong, the rest do not matter all that much.  And if this value does not apply to all lives, it applies to none.

A universal commandment. . .

It’s pretty hard to find a real faith tradition that doesn’t disparage sexual relations with someone to whom you are not married.  Judaism to Christianity, Islam to Buddhism, Sikhism to Taoism, they all say pretty much the same thing when it comes to adultery.  Don't do it.  So much for the religious.  I guess the spiritual kind of folk have joined with those who have no spirit to heavily influence modern thinking on the matter which goes directly against the prohibition.  Maybe it is the fruit of all that free love and sex from the 1960s.  Modern thinking is remarkably less set against adultery (all things in moderation?) than the religions of old or the population overall for a very long time.  But this just might be changing.   The end result of sexual liberation in the 1970s declined a bit as people began to think adultery is always or almost always wrong and now approval seems to be growing a bit.  The data suggests that those who once thought adultery always wrong are now thinking more almost always or sometimes wrong.  It is, in fact, a 10% drop just since 2010 among those who back off from always to almost always or sometimes.

The question asked since 1973:  “What is your opinion about a married person having sexual relations with someone other than the marriage partner--is it always wrong, almost always wrong, wrong only sometimes, or not wrong at all?”

The answers?

Oddly, evangelicals and Black Protestants are more likely even than mainline Protestants and Roman Catholics to say it is always wrong but even there the same groups have eroding views of adultery always being wrong.  How did this happen?  When all the major religions of the world are united in their disapproval of adultery, how did it end up that adultery became almost respectable?  Could it be that the fruits of the spiritual but not religious and the nones is not simply in theory but in practice?  Could it be that the universal prohibition has waned precisely as religion has waned over all as an influence over values and views?  Twice as many nones find nothing wrong with adultery as other religious adherents.  So, yes, the fading religious complexion of America does have an impact on something more than bodies in the pews.  Again, age is not quite the prominent indicator of views as you might think.  Young and old, those under 40 and those over 40, have very similar views on this subject.  Yes, we know that views change and even Boomers are more conservative in age than they were in youth.  That said, it would seem we have a problem.  The trust issue between partners (remember when we called them spouses) is one of those or the continued separation of sex from love (and sex and love from marriage and children) is hard to address. 

The dividing line of Christianity. . .

Though some have tried to make the great divide in Christendom about Scripture and such things as its inerrancy and infallibility, I struggle to know how that works.  How is it possible for a group that has a high view of Scripture to have a low view of the means of grace?  What good is an inerrancy that rejects baptismal regeneration or Christ's real presence in the Eucharist?  Within the groups that purport to hold to a high view of Scripture, there are also those who hold that God is still speaking and the Word of God is not limited to or even normed by the written Word.  So it does make me uncomfortable that in my own church body there are those who think we have something more in common with those who have such a high view of Scripture but a low view of the Sacraments.  Do we?  How?

I think that the great dividing line in Christendom is between sacramental churches (and therefore liturgical ones) and those who are not sacramental.  No, this is certainly not a guarantee that a sacramental church will not succumb to liberalism or fail to live up to its stated confessions but it does mean that we speak the same language even if we end up in different places.  The ELCA and Missouri have little in common other than the name Lutheran and yet we speak the same language.  Missouri and the Southern Baptists may appear to have something in common but we really do not speak the same language at all.  This is especially true of Scripture.  We believe that Scripture is itself sacramental -- it speaks and in its speaking things happen.  Hearts are warmed to faith and sins are forgiven and water bubbles with life and bread and wine actually become the flesh and blood of Jesus.  This sacramental reality flows naturally from the Scriptures as living voice.  We say this not to confine God to something alien to Him but precisely because this is how God has said He works.

Liberal sacramental churches may have forsaken their roots but they retain the language of the Scriptures and the way God works in and through that living Word.  Though it might seem that conservative Lutherans might share something with conservative Baptists, the reality is that they do not speak the language of Scripture at all.  The truth they seek to preserve is a testament or record to factual events of the past and is not a living voice that works through the Word.  How can we say we have more in common with conservative Protestants than sacramental churches?  The sinner's prayer and baptismal regeneration do not complement each other but work against each other.  One group preserves the historicity of Scripture and its unconditional truth but then ignores what that Word says to invent a means of grace called the sinner's prayer.  Where in Scripture or in the history of Christendom prior to the Reformation any sense in which God requires a decision from us or uses such a prayer in order to come to us and make His home in us?  What ever happened to faith comes by hearing the Word of God?

Of course, we Lutherans have problems with Rome.  I am not saying that because Rome (or any other communion) is sacramental or liturgical we give them a pass on the things they confess that conflict with God's Word.  But we speak the same language.  A high view of Scripture does not lead to a high view of the sacraments but a high view of the sacraments forces a church to deal with the Scriptures in a way that most all Protestant churches do not and cannot.  They are preserving a fossil -- a record book of facts and events.  We are hearkening to the living voice of our Good Shepherd still speaking to us by His Word.  

Thankfully there is a great felicitous inconsistency.  Individual Baptists actually believe the Scriptures even when it conflicts with their confession and individual Roman Catholics actually believe the Scriptures even when it conflicts with theirs.  That said, I long for the day when the great divide in Christendom will change.  In this great realignment, people will move toward the poles of greatest consistency.  On the one side are sacramental churches who have Scripture and the history of the faith on their side.  On the other side are the non-sacramental churches who have insist upon an inerrant Word but do not allow that Word to speak.  If the patterns of the present continue, younger Christians will not countenance a church that says and does different things.  It is one thing to move from a liberal sacramental communion to a more conservative one (call it catholic and orthodox).  It is something else to move from being non-sacramental to suddenly confessing baptismal regeneration, the Real Presence, and a God who works through means -- including a sacramental Word.  I wish I could say there is a good chance that we will find movement on the Protestant front closer to our Lutheran Confessions but I think the real movement will actually come as those in liberal sacramental churches begin to discover how untenable that is.  

Of course, I have been wrong before.  I thought maybe after the 2009 sex decisions in a body like the ELCA that an exodus of people would end up in Missouri.  Instead the ELCA birthed two very small denominations which tried to be like the ELCA prior to 2009 and those infamous sex votes.  In the end, they did not want go very far from home even if they see the inconsistency of their position.  I have been equally as wrong with those Baptists who actually believed closer to Lutheran but kept going back to their Baptist Church because they had a higher value on things other than the implications of what Scripture actually said.  So maybe it does not matter because a grand realignment of Christianity is not in the cards.  At least not in the foreseeable future.  God willing, I am wrong, and we will find the renewal of the faith led by those who hear the voice of God speaking and follow Him even where they first said they would not go.  If that happens, it won't matter all that much anymore and Christianity will end up with faith that matters and the people will go where the catholic faith of the Scriptures lives.  At that point, it will matter less what name they wear than the fact that they believe not only what God says but believe that God is working sacramentally through that Word.

What should education be about?

England is cutting costs on the backs of state school pupils whose GCSE Latin will no longer be funded.  Remember, this is for poorer schools and not the elite schools of the upper class.  It may be an unpopular but unstoppable decision.  School leaders, scholars and authors are urging the Department for Education to offer a reprieve to the Latin excellence program and thus enable hundreds of students to complete their GCSE courses though this would only delay the end of it and not change the outcome.  The DfE announced shortly before Christmas that it would end funding in February for the program supporting Latin lessons for more than 8,000 pupils at 40 non-selective state schools.  Schools, also in a funding crisis, will either have to come up with the money or let go Latin teachers.

I only wish that we had a targeted program in the US for Latin in the poorer schools across our nation.  I only wish that languages, art, music, and dramatic arts were not also the victims every time it looks like a budget needs to be cut or funds are running short.  I have no idea what it is like in England but in America the schools are shouldered with all sorts of programs unrelated to their core purpose of education and designed to address difficulties presumed in the home life, family, or social aspect of the student's life.  We seem as a nation to find funding for all sorts of things related to gender and sexual desire and especially for athletics but when it comes to something that truly enriches a whole life, music and the various arts are much more relevant.  As countless memes have said, it is highly unlikely many of our kids will make a living from sports and most of them will watch their teams from the comfort of a couch with a favorite beverage and snack in hand.  Music is a lifelong gift.  We sing in worship, we play in community orchestras and churches, we play for our own enjoyment and benefit, and we play because this has proven to be an effective and useful activity for the preservation of memory.

While I lament the decision of any government to stop funding music and the arts, I lament even further that we think education in technology is all that is necessary for people in life.  It is ridiculous to assume that the only purpose of education is to get a job -- especially when it seems that job may change and the career change half a dozen or more times along the way.  We don't need to teach our children how to use a screen.  We need to teach them what is not on the screen.  We need to make sure that our schools are educating the imagination and not merely providing tools for the almighty paycheck.  We need to reinvigorate those things that elevate and ennoble us as a nation and a people and a culture.  That starts with music and the arts. Only a fool would believe that one day we will wake up to an educational landscape made up significantly or more of classical schools.  But the schools we do have would profit from a renewal that included Latin, music, art, the dramatic arts, and a host of other things we seem hesitant to fund.

It's not about you. . .

Having read a few excerpts of the Pope Francis autobiography (when did Popes start writing more about themselves than anything else?), I am even less impressed.  From what others have said, this new book is not all that new and simply rehashes what he has said or interview with others he has given.  There are a few insights.  Hope, The Autobiography, gives much of the same confused and contradictory glimpse into this pope as the previous books by him or about him.  He is not an intellect though he presumes himself to know more or better than everyone else.  He is not a kind person to work for though he would argue with that point (and some of those who have worked for him would argue back).  He is not a person who tolerates disagreement or a difference of opinion though he would surely insist that he is the most tolerant pope every to sit on the papal throne.  He is not learned though he thinks he is and one mark of his lack of learning is his willingness to paint those who hold traditional views as mentally unstable.  He is not a simple man though he refuses the ordinary things that have accompanied the popes who went before him and this shows his arrogance in putting personal choice above office.  He is not very pastoral and has hardly ventured outside the Vatican though he is bishop of Rome though he would insist he is above all things a pastoral pope.  He is not synodal or collegial but authoritarian in his exercise of the office though he would surely beg to differ.  What is there to make of him?  He is this, rather complex, inconsistent, head strung, and ruthless while trying to appear very compassionate and easy going.  In this he is not unlike many liberal and progressive leaders on other stages.

Surely he knows on some level that the office he holds is not about him.  You would hope so, anyway.  But in this he typifies all that is wrong in culture and society as well as in religion.  He continues to make it about him despite his words to the contrary.  From what I have read, his funeral will be different as well.  Isn't it just like him to snub tradition (whether good or bad) because he does not like it!  He has insisted that there will be “no catafalque, no ceremony for the closure of the casket, nor the deposition of the cypress casket into a second of lead and a third of oak.”  Okay.  No arrogance there, now is there.  But that is my point.  This pope acts much like the times.  He presumes that it is about him.  Perhaps he is not that much different than evangelical media personalities who call themselves pastor or modern clergy overall who will give the office they bear some of themselves but insist upon keeping the rest for themselves alone -- in pursuit of that life/work balance that somehow they have reconciled with vocation.  I don't get it.  I don't like it.  Not in Rome or in Wittenberg or wherever it shows up.  It is not about you whether you are creating a cult of personality around yourself or working to make the pastoral office merely a job.  Grow up.  Get over it.

Some months after we moved into the new educational wing, administrative area, and sanctuary at my parish in 2001, a member came up to me and said "well, are you happy with your new church?"  How odd!  It was "my" church?  Funny, when we were trying to make decisions my voice was merely one among many and my role was more the facilitator who tried to make sure that it was a building project that fit the congregation and reflected their concerns.  My response, by the way, was that if they knew me, they would know that "my" new church would have looked very different than the one we constructed.  Mine would have been colder and darker, lots of wood paneling and carving, tall windows, and a giant crucifix designed to make me look smaller.  Don't get me wrong.  It is very nice.  But it is not a mirror of my taste in churches.  I like stone and dark wood and tall ceilings.  But, as Pope Francis should already know and every other pastor as well, it is not and was not about me.  If only clergy were as concerned with making it about Christ as they were about pursuing their own desires.  It is a common problem, probably less common among conservative churches than liberal ones, but common enough.  It is no wonder that folks only take Pope Francis seriously because he can make the rules.  It is no wonder that folks struggle to take other clergy seriously.  It is not about you.  That also includes the folks in the pews. 

We don't sing hymns or preach on the basis of polls or opinion or favorites.  We don't believe doctrine because it has received majority approval.  We don't teach what most people think is in the Bible.  That is perhaps the Lutheran genius.  We have written confessions.  Of course, you can see how far that went when folks decided not to pay attention to them -- like the decisions of the ELCA and its predecessor bodies going back 50 or 60 years.  We don't vote on things like who communes or how often the Sacrament is offered or how long the sermon should be or even chalice or individual cup.  Pastoral decisions are not less orthodox but made first of all away from the realm of personal taste or preference.  We model a fuller piety but make no rules that everyone has to cross themselves or the like.  We preach faithfully the whole counsel of God and not what fits the mood of the people.  We serve not to build monuments to ourselves but to carefully steward the mysteries of God among His people in the time we serve them.  It is not about me or you.  To his shame, the current autobiography of the Pope and the previous written offerings about him share this common character flaw.  He does think it is about him.  

Screens work against community. . .

I am more and more convinced that churches should be technology free zones.  It is neither helpful nor faithful to make churches into the religious versions of the digital platforms that already dominate our lives.  The screens that we put up in the chancel and the apps we think so helpful to the faith only do two things.  One is that they blur the lines between the church and the world.  The other is that they assist in the individualization of things that works against the community (koinonia) inherent to the Gospel.  Both of these ills are increasingly troublesome for the churches.

We have already learned that screens are not an aid to education but actually a hindrance.  We thought we were preparing people better by using the tools of entertainment but it turns out the screens are a diversion and a distraction from the educational task.  Even careful and judicial use of them is not advancing the cause of reading, writing, and arithmetic but becoming competition for the core tasks that once dominated the educational sphere.  Why would churches follow this dead end path in their own approach to worship, catechesis, and the sanctified life?  The reality is that nearly everyone is unable to balance screens with anything else and the tools become the master and the mind and heart the servant of that master.  

Take down those dang screens that distract away from altar, pulpit, and font, from hearing the Word read and preached, and from the fellowship of the table lived out before, during, and after the actual communion on Christ's flesh and blood.  Stop trying to sell devotional life as an app.  The first step to a fruitful devotional life is to get your face off a screen not glued to one.  Stop turning the church's song into a mere soundtrack for the video which is chosen and reflective of each individual's preference.  Give up the illusion that some people are visual learners and train up the mind to hear and meditate upon the Word of God.  It is not the Word that must accommodate the person but the person who grows in knowledge, appreciation, and trust in that Word.  Faith comes by hearing.  This was not a statement conditioned upon the lack of technology when it was written by St. Paul but the universal conclusion of how God has operated from the beginning and to the end of all things.

In addition to the problem of screens for the person, there is the role the screens play working against community.  With our ear buds in and our eyes on our screens (large and small) we are increasingly isolated in life and the church should not cater to this.  Look around you.  Homes are fortresses to keep people away where once they were places where we welcomed others, broke bread together, built community through conversation, and enjoyed our lives together in entertainment that engaged us together (like card games and board games).  The reality is that this happens less and less among all ages.  It also happens less and less in the church.  The jokes have made pot lucks and game nights and other such things into a mere joke.  We have ignored that the food was not the focus but the eating together around long tables which made us sit with people we would not have chosen and engage one another in conversation about who we are, our lives in the family, and our lives together as God's people.  Instead of community, we have collections of individuals living in the bubble of their own worlds and screens -- even in church.

Some have labeled our time as the anti-social century.  One might add that the church has also become at least neutral to the cause of community and sometimes also its enemy.  Our penchant for finding a church that fits us has made the Gospel itself malleable and adjustable so that we hear what we want and then we hear it how we want to hear it.  The pews is an increasing anachronism to a people who do not need to be present for worship but can do it just fine at home in front of a screen.  Even communion has betrayed its own name and turned into a person in front of a screen with something that resembles bread and wine (or juice) in a hermetically sealed container.  We meet Jesus in our jammies instead dressing up and we meet Jesus more and more alone instead of together and then we wonder why the church is viewed as irrelevant or why we are not making headway in our purpose and mission.  

Community cannot be defined digitally.  It cannot be created digitally.  It begs what is in short supply today -- face to face identity.  In person has become the option that vitiates against the fellowship that the lonely long for and the fearful need.  No, technology ought to be suspect by those who deal with a reality that is personal, a God in flesh, and a God in flesh who works through means.  It does not get more real than this.  People gathered together around the Word and Table of the Lord.  Our use of technology has become a liability and not a blessing in the pursuit of a people called by God to be His own in baptism and nurtured by His Word, fed at His table, to love and forgive one another in Christ's name.  It is time to wake up and smell the roses.  Technology is not our savior and may be our demon.

Young men interested in the Holy Ministry. . .

If you are interested in becoming a Pastor in the LCMS, this might be for YOU!

The Maier Conference—From the 2nd-4th of May, Zion will host a theological conference geared towards young men confirmed in the church who want to learn more about a vocation in the Holy Ministry. Presenters include Rev. Dr. Adam Koontz (Brief History of Power), Rev. Matthew Wiedtfelt (Concordia Theological Seminary, Fort Wayne, IN), and Rev. Reed Shoaff (Luther Classical College), among others.  Along with the presentations, we will also have Matins and Vespers services, meals, Barbecue, softball games, and other events.

 Visit HERE for more information and registration.

Practicing "medicine" without a license. . .

As the medical system in America increasingly moves to the screen and a visit to your physician may include a URL, we have not quite faced the full consequences of the direction we are headed.  Furthermore, as physician assistants and nurse practioners become the ordinary physicians and regular MDs more their supervisors, we will have to discuss the consequences not simply for the patient but for medicine itself.  As urgent care centers become the de facto primary care providers for more and more people, we will have to consider how that will change things down the road.  All of these are honest and legitimate questions.  One that should not be honest or legitimate or legal is deferring to the pharmacist to prescribe treatment for patients.  Yet that is effectively what is happening.  Washington the state (not the District of Columbia) set up a program for select pharmacists to do just that with the drugs used to cause an abortion -- the so-called morning after pill.  Mifepristone is not quite the same as a flu vaccine or even birth control and these are already prescribed by pharmacists in some states.  The outcome of this "medicine" is a death.

Some states have decided that free access to drugs which are designed to kill the child in the womb is more important than honoring the medical history of patient evaluation by a licensed physician who can and should consider the whole of the patient in addressing particular issues.  Abortion is so important to some Americans and in some states that it must be available at a single visit to a pharmacy.  Though I have great respect for pharmacists -- indeed, some of the smartest people I know -- that is not what they were educated to do or licensed to do.  Treating patients is something different.  No matter how states might tweak the language, deferring to a pharmacist to prescribe treatment, especially one designed to cause a death, is practicing medicine without a license.  If you call abortion medicine!  The pharmacist can certainly distribute the drugs and probably knows more about what he would distribute than the physician but he is not situated to provide follow up care, to evaluate medical history, to monitor for complications, and to issue lab orders -- much less pick up the pieces when it all goes wrong!  So will we be setting up exam rooms, issuing lab orders, taking patient histories, and intervening when things go south -- all the while people are waiting for someone to dispense the thyroid medicine or antibiotic which must be prescribed by a real physician?  I guess we began this when pill factories began to set up consults over the phone so that the little blue pills could be distributed.  Certain things are so important to Americans that they can and do bypass all the other protocols put in place in reasoned and legitimate health care.

For those of you who wonder what rattled my cage today, let me remind you.  More than 60% of all abortions in America today do not happen at a Planned Parenthood facility or in a hospital but through an abortion pill.  They get it at a pharmacy (at least until we decide to prescribe them through vending machines) and take it at home.  Does it ever go bad?  Is anything foolproof?  The complication rate is low (5% or less) but that number does not take into account that the older the patient who takes the drugs the more likely there are complications with this easy, private, do-it-yourself method of abortion.  Though marketed as safe and effective, the abortion pill can actually be quite dangerous — four times more dangerous for women than surgical abortions.  When we talk about abortion, we are first of all talking about the chemical abortions that may start with a visit to your pharmacist.  I have nothing against the pharmacist -- as I said, some of the brightest people I know are pharmacists -- but I do have something against a society which is so intent upon making the right to kill the child in the womb free, easy, and accessible that it may not be thinking of what is in the best interest of the woman.  We already know that the child in the womb has neither voice nor vote in the matter.

Yes, we need it all. . .

Protestantism certainly had enough to protest about.  Rome had long passed its shining moment and was well into the shadows by the time Luther came along.  It was not so much rejection as it was disappointment and disillusionment that troubled Brother Martin.  It was not simply what was but all that was squandered in the promise of the Word and the Sacraments.  The Lutherans, however, were not really Protestant.  At least in their soul, they were not.  Luther conserved the precious tradition he had received thought he cleansed it from some of its accretions that had muddled it all up.  This was surely not enough for the likes of a Zwingli or a Calvin.  Either they or their successors gave up smells and bells along with sacraments and sacrificed beauty as unnecessary and art as a distraction.  

It's all in your head.  Who needs statues or paraments or stained glass or candles or vestments or anything except the bare Word?  isn't that enough?  But that is exactly the point.  It is not and was never simply about what was enough but what God had given.  What you do not need is what you should not have.  And with that great but absurd leap, the world learned to put Jesus not in water or bread or wine but in feelings.  We transformed faith into a soft spot for God (and the other way around).  The first step toward losing your religion is to end up at the altar of the minimum necessary and to deem what might suffice for a desert or island emergency to be the goal and norm of all things.

So we saw Protestantism and with it a temptation among some Lutherans to be perfectly happy sans statues or stained glass, vestments or sacred vessels, altars or incense, and everything in between to promote the true spiritual worship of the head and heart.  Oddly enough, it also looked a lot like a few people coming together for singing and praying and preaching.  Even more strange is the way this minimalism which was supposed to be back to basics seemed to change the heart even less than the ritual worship of the past with its emphasis upon the God who comes in means.  Temptation is no more or less set aside by the great absence as it is by the great presence.  Sin is no more or less replaced by righteousness when God is hidden in the out there somewhere than when He is made known by the God who is in a particular place. Worship got blamed for human failing.  Ever since Protestantism has tried to preach the mind into holiness or train up the feelings for godliness.  

I was reminded of how deeply this had intruded into our lives than in a discussion of church buildings and property became a debate of whether these things were needed or not.  God does not need an efficacious Word or Sacramental means but we do -- at least He thought we did.  Who are we to argue?  Is there some badge of honor we claim by insisting we need not even that which God has decided to give?  Jacob had the dream of God but after a wake up call he did not leave it to the memory of a dream but built a place and an altar (Bethel).  The dream was nice enough but a place and stones lifted up were even nicer.  We really do need buildings.  We need candles. We need altars. We need organs.  We need bells.  We need incense.  We need beauty in all its various forms. We need the sign of the Cross and bowing and kneeling.  We need sacraments and signs. As soon as it becomes the argument of how much and no more than what is essential, we have lost it all.  Protestantism was bound to invent something to replace what God had given.  It is about time we simply admitted that we need it all. There is no shame in this.  Having it will not make us holy anymore than not having it has.  Admitting that God has created and used these is admitting that even if we do not know it or refuse to admit it, the obvious is true.  We need it all.  Thanks be to God!

A little help...

The Biden administration had worked through the Department of Education to effect rules to ban discrimination against a person’s self-asserted “gender identity” in K–12 schools and colleges.  This extension of the DoEd authority was challenged from the beginning -- especially by the Christian schools and conservative institutions it would most affect.  While Biden was at Carter's funeral, the rule was blocked nationwide by a federal court in Kentucky on January 9.  With the incoming administration of Donald Trump highly unlikely to appeal, it appears that this encroachment has been stopped for now.

The rule which was implemented under President Joe Biden’s administration would effectively reinterpret the Title IX ban on “sex” discrimination so that it would also include a ban on “gender identity” discrimination -- this even though the phrase “gender identity” is absent from the 1972 law.  The judge, Judge Danny C. Reeves of the District Court of the Eastern District of Kentucky, ruled that the department had “exceeded its statutory authority” in implementing this rule but also found that the rule itself violated the US Constitution, both quelling the discussion of gender ideology and because it was “vague and overbroad.”  This challenge against the Biden administration’s Title IX rule change was brought by attorneys general of six states: West Virginia, Kentucky, Tennessee, Indiana, Ohio, and Virginia.  Their concern, among others, was this had the effect of overriding applicable state laws that provided for separate athletics, bathrooms, locker rooms, and dormitories on the basis of biological sex.

Those most affected by the Biden administration’s Title IX effective end to the sex-based protections for biological women in all aspects of education were the women for whom Title IX had been implemented and whose progress so far would have made a retreat.  The judge noted that the Title IX prohibition on sex discrimination is “abundantly clear” that it refers to discrimination “on the basis of being male or female” and “there is nothing in the text or statutory design of Title IX to suggest that discrimination ‘on the basis of sex’ means anything other than it has since Title IX’s inception.”

Therein lies the problem.  The role of progressive and liberal government is always to expand beyond the written language of statute and law in pursuit of a goal of a nanny state which replaces individual freedoms and responsibility with a governmental mandate to control and manage nearly every aspect of our lives as individuals and as a nation.  The stereotype is that those opposed to such controls are trying to micromanage the lives of the citizens and their institutions but the reality is just the opposite.  In preserving both the liberty and responsibility of the people and the institutions they form to serve them, the cause of those for a smaller governmental reach is to keep the government out of their lives and not impose rules that are both costly financially and incidental to the real and established purpose of those institutions the people establish.  Finally, I wonder when the women who have enjoyed the Title IX rules will awaken to the dilution of their own position under those rules by those intent upon expanding the reach of government to manage statutes which were never intended to reach that far.

In Article One, Section Eight are enumerated the proper objects of congressional legislation. Congress can:

• borrow money, coin money, regulate its value, and punish counterfeiters
• regulate commerce with foreign nations, among the states, and with Indian tribes
• establish rules for naturalization and bankruptcy
• establish Post Offices and Post Roads
• issue patents and copyrights
• establish courts inferior to the Supreme Court
• punish pirates
• suppress insurrections, repel invasions, declare war, raise an army, maintain a navy, and make rules for the army and navy
• organize the Militia (leaving to the states the appointment of officers and the authority of training the Militias).

There you have it.  This was the intended scope of congressional authority and the government's reach.  Compare that to what we have today.  Americans had a constitutionally limited federal government and what Justice Louis Brandeis famously called “laboratories of democracy” in the states. The limitation of the authority of the federal government was so that the lion’s share of governance would be closer to the people and lie in state hands. Each state may and would govern somewhat differently.  This was not, in the beginning an impediment to democracy but its exercise. 

In 1942, the Supreme Court decided a case, Wickard v. Filburn, in which farmer Roscoe Filburn ran afoul of a federal law that limited how much wheat he was allowed to grow.  The Agricultural Adjustment Act of 1938 placed an upper limit on how much wheat farmers were allowed to grow in order to maintain higher prices and profits by limiting supply.  Poor old Roscoe Filburn grew 12 more acres of wheat than he was allowed by law.  Though he not sell the wheat at all but fed it to his cattle, the SCOTUS used the most impressive mental gymnastics possible to insist that he was, indeed, engaging in commerce and interstate commerce at that. The government was so intent upon preserving its authority that it gave to words meanings not ever intended in order to impose regulation upon something that clearly did not fall under those statutes.  In so doing, they drove a truck through the Constitution and left a hole that every liberal and progressive government has tried to expand and every conservative one has tried to close.  So, in some respects, it is remarkable when the courts actually find that what was intended by clear language under statute is actually what was meant.  In the meantime, we are still left with the gaping hole -- only this small pickup has been barred from going through it. 

If you are interested. . .

I have been asked to teach a continuing ed course in August in two locations.  The information is listed below.  Take a gander and if you are interested, sign up and join us.  It is not only for pastors but also for lay folks as well.

August 4–6, 2025 in Auburn, MI &

August, 12-14 in Cupertino, CA 

The Rev. Larry A. Peters is a native of Nebraska and graduated from St. John’s College, Winfield, Kansas, Concordia Senior College, Fort Wayne, Indiana, and Concordia Theological Seminary, Fort Wayne (1980). He vicared on Long Island and served his first call in Cairo, New York, before moving to Clarksville, Tennessee, where he has served Grace Lutheran Church as senior pastor for thirty-two years. He is now pastor emeritas of Grace. In 2017 Concordia Theological Seminary recognized him as alumnus of the year. He has served as a circuit visitor in the Atlantic and Mid-South districts, is currently chairman of the Synod’s Commission on Constitutional Matters, sits on the Synod’s Commission on Handbook, and is also secretary of the Mid-South district. He has also served on the planning committees for the Synod’s Institute for Liturgy, Preaching, and Church Music for the last ten years. Pastor Peters has published many periodical articles and served as a contributor to a number of CPH volumes. He is the author of the popular blog, Pastoral Meanderings. Pastor Peters has been married to his wife, Amy, for more than forty-six years, and they have three adult children and two grandchildren. He is currently trying to figure out what retirement means.  

At All Times and in All Places: All God's People Pray 

More words about prayer can be found in the Scriptures than about most other topics, and yet God’s people struggle with what it means to pray. This course will examine the practice of prayer among God’s Old Testament people, through the time of Christ, through the history of Christianity, and down to the present day. What is prayer? What does it mean to pray? How do we pray? How did the people of God order their prayer lives before us? What is the difference between and what is the connection with the individhttps://witness.lcms.org/the-magazine/ual prayer lives of God’s people and the common prayers of God’s people together? What does God’s Word teach us about prayer? This course will help participants learn and appreciate the lessons of the past on the practice and discipline of prayer both as individuals and as a people gathered together for worship and prayer. All of us are both amateurs and professionals when it comes to praying, and this course is both for those who lead and teach God’s people to pray and for the people of God in their discipline of prayer throughout the circumstances and places of life.  

Location:    Grace Lutheran Church 303 Ruth St. Auburn, MI 48611 To download the registration form, click here.  

Lutheran Church of Our Savior 5825 Bollinger Rd. Cupertino, CA 95014  To download the registration form, click here.

Coordinators:  Rev. Aaron T. Schian Email: aaronschian@yahoo.com Phone: (607) 972-5792  & Rev. John Bestul Phone: 408.252.0345 Email: pastorjbestul@lcos.org 

Schedule Class begins the first day at 12:00 p.m. and concludes at 12:00 p.m. the final day.
 

Majority rules. . .

As everyone in politics knows, elections have consequences.  Majority rules -- except, of course, when you are not in the majority.  Then it is okay to gripe and complain.  So the world has heard plenty from those who did not elect Trump.  What is curious, though, is that there are plenty of places where the majority is ignored.  One area is when it comes to women competing with trans in sports or sharing locker rooms or restrooms.  I know plenty of women.  While some complain that the whole rub against trans is white, gray haired men who have a phobia or fixation on this subject, the reality is that every woman I know believes for themselves and their female family members that trans do not belong in their sports or in their changing areas or in their toilets.  It is almost universal.  Some say it is an American issue and that Europe is much more, shall we say, progressive on the issue.  Well, who cares??  Really, who does care?? If some Europeans are more casual about nudity or trans in female areas, what does that have to do with us?  Why should women in America take a pass on their opinion simply because Europeans have a different take on it?

Majority rules is a basic tenet of democratic governance and with it a certain measure of protection for minorities.  It has served us well at least until now.  Now we face an issue where an almost statistically insignificant number of trans have the right to make females uncomfortable in athletic competition, changing areas, and restrooms.  By the way, I have yet to hear from any of the hundreds of women I know that they have any interest in being in men's restrooms.  In fact, some find the whole urinal thing a mystery and I have more than once been asked why men settle for it -- much less why any women would be interested in entering that space!  Within the subject, it is worth remembering that we live in an age in which it is not rare but very common to find plenty of restrooms which are constructed to serve an individual alone or a family helping a child take care of business.  It is not simply about access (as it was when restrooms were defined by the color of your skin).  When race segregated restrooms and such, it was about access.  There were no choices.  It was universally acknowledged that access was the issue -- not equal availability nor equal accommodations.  This, however, is about a principle.  Trans want to be accepted as the same as those who have their biological sex and the bathroom and athletic competition issues have become the litmus tests of their acceptance.  The trans movement must understand that they their path to acceptance will not be aided by trampling on the rights of the very women they want to be seen as.  

Majority rules with accommodations made for the minority.  Everyone has to use a restroom.  It should not be that hard.  Surely we have toilets enough for everyone except those who want the issue to be about something more than a toilet.

To hear the voice of the Spirit. . .

To hear the voice of the Spirit speaking, you have to know what the Spirit has said.  In other words, to know what God is saying now, you have to also know what God has said in the past.  Scripture is this living record of God's acts and pronouncements.  God has already told us that He is yesterday, today, and forever the same.  Unlike us, God does not reinvent Himself over and over again.  He is who He is.  He is who He was and who He will be.  They are not new or different but the same.

Francis seems to have gotten this wrong.  For this Pope, the past is at best a record of what was and is certainly not a guide for the future.  Francis is all about doing things new and never looking back.  It does not matter what you think about the Tridentine Mass, for a current Pope to say what served the Roman Catholic Church for 400 years is now verboten tells you more about him than it does about that Latin Mass.  His common complaint about those who are backward looking is that they are a detriment to the forward movement of the Church just about says it all.  God is doing a new thing and the Spirit is making a break with the past.  But what does that mean?  In all practicality, it means that nothing is sacred, nothing endures, and everything is open to change.  Who can survive in a church or in a faith like this?

In every age the voice of hope for God's people was a voice calling them to return -- to return to Him, to return to the Scriptures, and to return to faith.  But not now.  Now, it would seem, the Spirit is looking to break with the past and to make a new beginning in which what was old heresy just might be new doctrine and what was old doctrine just might be new heresy  While such a radical opinion might have lived on the fringes of the faith in the past, today it lives within the beating heart of Rome and Evangelicalism together.  There is little stomach in much of Christianity for a yesterday, today, and forever faith but there is much interest in spirituality without religion and a faith without a doctrinal identity.

If you want to hear the voice of the Spirit, you need to listen to Christ and the voice of Christ is His Word.  “Those who love me will keep my word, and my Father will love them, and we will come to them and make our home with them. . . . " John 14:23.  The promise of the Spirit is not some guide to help us go where we have never gone but to bring to remembrance all that Christ said.  (John 14:26)  Alas, the reality is that we have itching ears which would rather listen to the thinly varnished echo of our own wants, values, and desires than to what our Lord has said of sin and forgiveness, loss and redemption, life and death.  The message of God does not revolve around woke dreams of a new world in which happiness and personal fulfillment reign supreme but of the earthly struggle to deny yourself, take up your cross, and follow Jesus to the everlasting life.  The gospel of personal fulfillment requires little faith but the path of those who deny themselves, take up their cross, and follow Jesus can only be lived by faith.

If you are going to church on Sunday morning and hear talk of God affirming your feelings or desiring your happiness or aiding your own ideas of personal fulfillment, you are not going to the Church our Lord Jesus established nor are you hearing the real Gospel of Christ crucified and risen.  Such a church may help you feel better about yourself but it cannot redeem you from sin or rescue you from death or raise you to life.  The Spirit does not have a new voice or an old one.  Only the true voice of the Good Shepherd whom the Father has sent in His name to gather and redeem His lost sheep and lead them home to Him.  The reality is that Francis, like much that passes for Christianity today, has become uncomfortable in the clothing of holiness and has decided to sell a gospel of self-indulgence in which truth is relative and the judgment of people is more important than the judgment of God.  If this Pope wanted to visit the home of one of Italy's biggest voices for abortion to call her to repentance, God be praised.  The fact that he brought her flowers and chocolates only compromises his own witness and leaves the rest of us wondering if he has drunk the koolaid of modernity and bartered the unchanging Gospel of Christ for what feels good in the moment.  Such a Gospel will surely sell but it will not save.

Perhaps AI has a purpose?

 

Click here for information from the Microsoft website.  Click here to go to the Vatican site itself.  This use of technology confronts some of the stunning achievements of man without the aid of artificial intelligence or computer guided drafting.  Both in building and in art, St. Peter's is an amazing achievement.  Construction of St. Peter’s Basilica began in 1506 under Pope Julius II and wrapped up 109 years later, under Paul V in 1615.  One of the contrasts of our age is that we have neither the desire nor the patience to begin something whose ending we would not live to see.  It is a mark of the ages before us that people with faith and with vision sought to construct something they would not live to finish or complete.  I wish it could be said that as a people we had the same will and fortitude to accomplish such a project.  Sadly, I fear we do not.  We can barely keep up our interest in maintaining such grand ideas begun in stone.  Perhaps this project will help us remember the great works of art and architecture which once defined the will and faith of a people who were willing to begin something which must be finished by others.  No matter what you think of Rome or of Pope Francis, this is an amazing and commendable project giving the world a chance to see in detail what most never see at all.

In love with the feeling. . .

It is often said that people are more in love with the feeling of being in love than with the love itself or the person whom they profess to love.  We are in love with our feelings.  Could it be that we are in love more with the feeling of believing than the believing itself?  I think it is fair to say that the world is searching for meaning and for a certain feeling about that meaning and some of them call it God and faith.  I also think it is fair to say that many of those are more in love with the idea of God than any reality and with the feeling of believing more than the messiness of doctrine or what is believed.

Though it might be applied to the spiritual but not religious crowd, I do not think it is limited to them.  In every community is a group of Christians who are constantly searching for a better church and moving from one group to another.  It seldom has much to do with the tenets of belief but almost always has to do with the feelings they get from the church -- or, more precisely, the worship.  The actual faith or creed is nearly extraneous to the experience of the church and its worship or the feeling of believing that these serve or fail to serve.  We love the idea of believing but we seldom want to be bothered by what Scripture says or the creed confesses or the catholic and apostolic faith has proclaimed through the ages.  It is very easy for us today to believe in the idea of God while rejecting any particular deity of any particular faith.  It is also very easy for us to insist we are Christian while rejecting much of what Christianity lives or dies upon and has throughout history.

I find it ever so curious that most Christians seem to give a higher weight to the experience or feelings of people than anything concrete or objective.  How else can we so quickly adopt the idea of gender in opposition to the sexual characteristics of the body and the identity of the chromosomes?  How else can we so readily jettison what sacred and secular cultures have known and valued in the marriage of one man to one woman?  How else can adapt a spiritual idea of life after death that more resembles the circle of life than it does 1 Corinthians 15?  Doctrine is so confining and belief so constricting.  We want the feeling but we cannot stomach the surrender of our autonomy to anything -- not even to God!

Is there much of a difference between loving the feeling of belief and then leaving worship empty because we did not believe we were fed or we got nothing out of it all?  Is there much of a difference between loving the feeling of faith but then insisting that no one and no church has the corner on truth and that each of us has some measure of the truth or that our truth is the only truth that matters?  

Americans seem to be some of the last holdouts in love with the feeling of believing.  Europe seems by and large to have reached some comfort level with the absolute rejection of the faith of their fathers.   Sure, everyone rallies around a cultural icon like Notre Dame in its hour of need but does anyone really care about what is preached or taught within its walls?  I am pretty sure the French people own the symbol but are not all that encumbered by doctrine and it often seems like Pope Francis is the same -- except with respect to what he thinks is important.  On that even he is doctrinaire.

It is wonderful when our hearts burn with passion and fire for the Lord.  Is it normal?  I don't think so.  I think the norm is not passion but emptiness, the constant and ongoing struggle to remain in faith when everything in your mind, heart, and body aches to abandon it.  Like Peter of old, we have no where else to go.  It is not that we don't want to go somewhere else -- we all do -- but we are held in the grasp of God's grace and the providence of His revealed will through the hearing of His Word and the nourishment of our Lord's body and blood.  Lord, I believe; help my unbelief.  Now that is normal.  It does not always feel good and often feels lousy but it is the only real thing there is in a world and life that is passing away.

The elephant in the room. . .

On the local news channel a month ago was a story on the declining number of 18 year olds heading to college after graduation from high school.  It was replete with the usual stuff -- high cost of education, availability of alternative training for jobs in high demand, and such.  What you did not hear about in this story was the elephant in the room.  The real reason that there are fewer 18 year olds heading to college is that there are fewer 18 year olds.  That is the thing nobody wants to talk about -- at least not the liberals and progressives who dominate the media.  We are missing children in general and not specifically children who want to go to college.  And it is not getting better.

The Pew Research Center survey of registered voters in June of 2024, only one in five Biden/Harris supporters thought that “society is better off if people make marriage and having children a priority.”  Now, lest you think that only Democrats or only liberals or only progressives feel this way, you need to open your eyes.  Our children have learned well the lesson that life is for you and your happiness and it does not matter their politics or their religion, children are increasingly less a part of the future these youth envision for themselves.  And if they do see a family in their future, they see a child and not many children.  

Everyone wants to live rich and meaningful lives but the problem is that fewer and fewer of our youth and our adults believe that marriage and family are part of the rich and meaningful lives they wish to live.  It has shown up in the ever smaller pool of 18 year olds who are headed to college but it will not be changed by talking this age group into giving up their dreams of an enjoyable, well payed job and a life filled with techno toys and the digital tools so essential to their lives.  We will have to aim at younger children to convince them that marriage and family are key to their happiness, to a rich and meaningful life, and an essential part of how they seem themselves both now and down the road.  Furthermore, a risk adverse culture which equates friendship with a screen relationship will need to be convinced that their best lives are personal and interpersonal and in person.

We have gone from a culture in which marriage was presumed to be in everyone's future to one in which it may not be in anyone's future.  As one author put it, the scene today among young singles might make older generations presume that they are the last of those who value marriage and family above all else.  Indeed, as a popular tweet put it, “do married people watch gen z dating and feel like they caught the last chopper out of Nam?”  The future will not look like the past but the past will not have a future unless we teach our children that marriage and children are the shape of things to come not only for the world but for them. 

The taming of a holy day. . .

I suppose it can still be said of Easter that it is a holy day about the critical issues that face ever generation of humanity and every individual person -- life and death.  Whether you believe in Christ or His saving death and life-giving resurrection or not, it is pretty clear what the focus of Easter is about.  I fear that the same can no longer be said about Christmas.  It has not only lost its focus in the Biblical account of the conception and birth of God in flesh, it has become something worse.  It has been tamed and is now anything but powerful.  This holy day has become harmless.

Christmas and Epiphany have become the malleable raw material to which each culture and family attach their own meaning and value.  We have watched the holiday grow and prosper but at the cost of the holy day of our Savior's birth.  Because Christmas (and Epiphany) are no longer strong days with a clear and consistent message, they have become a diverse recipe of family, friends, fun, food, favors, and feelings.  The day has been stolen right from within the stable and replaced with any value, purpose, and meaning people choose to attach to it.  There is no real Christmas (or Epiphany) anymore but only the one imagined and defined by the people as they have chosen to do so.  Because of this, the holy day is rather impotent and meaningless.  It no longer has the power to united and bind and has become the domain of the individual and the individual family.  This day no more needs Christ nor Mary even if the shepherds and angels may still have a small part.

The original Christmas was not this kind of day.  It was in every sense of the term an apocalyptic moment.  No, not the kind of apocalypse bantered about today for the next big weather condition or economic crisis.  I mean the old-fashioned kind of apocalypse in which the once long hidden is now finally and fully revealed.  Shepherds and angels did not have bit parts in this story but were major players in the new thing God was doing.  They watched and sang and beheld the mystery long promised but now revealed.  They invited others as they had been invited to come and see.  It would seem that today there is nothing to come to see and instead is a hand pushing you move along and not to linger.  But linger is exactly what we ought to desire when God opens the heavens to reveal His clothing of flesh and blood.

Though some may lament the lost of the full 12 days of Christmas, there are many more who are, well, over it almost as soon as it has begun.  That is the sadness of it all.  We have not simply invited others to come with us to Bethlehem to see what the Lord has done, we have surrendered the holy and grand mystery of this moment so that people may decide and define it as they so choose.  In the end we are left with little to last past the packing up of the snow men and the return of gifts we did not want.  An example of this was a lighted Christmas tree decoration in my neighborhood.  It was a tree, at least the lights were an outline of a stylized tree, but it could be set to glow orange and black for Halloween and, for some reason, purple and green for Thanksgiving.  Then it conveniently glowed red and green for Christmas.  This is the perfect Christmas decoration for the times -- it lights up whatever you wish to emphasize and so it allows Christmas to become what you want it to be -- no offense to the Baby first-born of Mary.

Christians have also surrendered to the holiday.  Overall, Christians themselves fail to see themselves as believing in or offering the world much more than a system of moral teaching (about which you can disagree) and a vague hope of some justice for the costs of this life to be enjoyed after death (maybe as simple as the completion of the circle of life).  There is not much left to be holy.  God is the sense of time and promise fulfilled by the God who comes as one of us and instead is left some sort of imagined idea of good will, be nice, and why can't we be friends.  It is not that it has been a failure.  It has been so successful that we have adopted the very thing we say we abhor.  It is all about us and God is a footnote in the menu of traditions that give shape to our celebration.

Christmas is apocalyptic.  No, not in the sense of some terrible bad thing which occurred but in the original sense of that term.  It is about revelation.  In many and various ways God spoke to His people of old through the prophets but now, in these latter days, He has spoken through His Son.  This is the only peace on earth that matters.  If we could get this far to the table, we might just have something to chew on placed before us.  God came in our flesh to rescue us sinners and redeem us to everlasting life.  In just a few weeks, of course, Epiphany will end on the Mount of Transfiguration and we will journey down to the valley of the shadow below.  If Christmas can offer us anything for the journey, it will be that the night shone with apocalyptic wonder as that which was hidden from Eden was made plain.  Christ is the face of God!

Taxation without representation. . .

I am by no means a congregationalist.  The strange experiment of the Missouri Synod Lutherans trying to find a middle way between a hierarchical structure and a congregationalistic one has proven to be odd and often unmanageable. Either people assume that doctrine and confession are local or they assume that property and finances are national (district) and sometimes it seems that is how things are phrased.  In reality, doctrine is not supposed to be congregational but bound together as a Synod under our constitutional confessional standards and doctrinal statements and resolutions.  Along the same lines, the Synod is not supposed to have authority over congregational property or how it chooses to spend its money.  There are no bills sent out nor do district or national judicatories have the power to coerce the congregation into giving it a say so over its property or to force them to pay up.  It is not perfect and it is often misunderstood but it is certainly better than the hierarchical options when it comes to property and finance.

Rome has the power to close church buildings, merge congregations, sell off property, and assess taxes upon the parishes and schools of the dioceses.  It is arbitrary and often coercive.  For example, parishes have been closed or consolidated and their assets used against the sexual abuse claims of the diocese.  Because the property and money belong to the bishop, I can see why victims and insurance companies pursue these assets but the sad reality is that most of these parishes are also victims and not perpetrators of this abuse.  So they are twice victims -- having endured those bad priests and bad bishops who protected them and now losing everything in order to compensate the victims.  Ouch.  Furthermore, the bishops use the whole system of property ownership and finances and taxes to the parishes to force compliance -- which might not be so bad in the case of promoting orthodox doctrine but which is used to shut down Latin Mass type parishes and those who lean to the right in church matters.  Inexplicably, those who lean the left seem to enjoy relative immunity from this coercive system.

The Episcopal Church in the US has a long and storied history of taking property away from the local parishes when those parishes have sought to preserve their confession and leave the diocese.  Over the years I have chronicled the millions spent on lawyers in pursuit of property when whole congregations have voted to leave for the ACNA or an independent status.  It is another example of the rather arbitrary and egregious way jurisdictions have manipulated things while never paying a thin dime for the actual construction or maintenance of said properties.  The Evangelical Lutheran Church in America also has mechanisms in place to prevent parishes from leaving for more orthodox pastures and uses the rules to keep the property and assets in punishment of those who have the nerve to reject their liberal and progressive agenda.  In the past I have reported on synods which have sold Lutheran properties to Muslims instead of to the people who voted to leave the ELCA.  It is shameful.

In the end there must be a better way.  On the one hand, Missouri seems to have little ability to prevent a congregation with some money but no people from continuing while Rome and the Episcopals have the power to punish a majority for not towing the party line.  It is a terrible state of affairs and it would seem that common sense is an uncommon commodity in all of this. 

Who needs reality?

Now, don't get me wrong.  The smart phone that entered mainstream life about 15 years ago does many things well.  But it has definitely put its mark on us, our culture, and our religion.  The fruits of its most enduring qualities have not necessarily been good.  You do not need to be Luddite to acknowledge that the promise of this little handheld screen with its portal into the digital life has had its downside.  

The US Survey on Drug Use and Health tells us some statistics that have accompanied the smartphone era -- anxiety has risen 52% among people ages 35-49, 103% among those 26-34 and 139% among those 18-25. An American College Health Association survey found that, between 2010 and 2020, anxiety rose 134%, depression 106%, anorexia 100% and substance abuse 33%. Not to mention that diagnosis of ADHD cases rose 72%, schizophrenia 67% and bipolar disorder 57%.  Now perhaps you could chalk some of this up to increased awareness and attention to such things or you might just wonder if smartphones have contributed to these chronic ills.  On top of this we could mention that there has also been a decrease in politeness and the social graces and an increase in intolerance, rage, and almost cultic devotion to certain internet personalities whose views are variously defined as bigoted, racist, misogynist, and phobes of all kinds, (definitely me excluded!).

But his is not about culture or society or parenting or the individual health of our people.  This is about how we in the Church have tried to warm up to the screen and adopt it into the worship and educational life of our people.  This is about how we have tried to have our cake and eat it too -- warning about some things but in large measure making the screen a semi-sacramental means for our own purposes of instruction, interaction, and devotion.  How is that working?  That is the point.  It is not working.  In a religion in which the emphasis is on the real, the digital competes and even overshadows reality.  That is exactly the problem.  People do not need the real as long as they have the digital.

The screen church does not supplement the real church but competes against it.  The imagined reality of the screen does not work with the goal of the Gospel but replaces the truth with opinion and preference and justifies it all in the same way consumer preference dominates nearly every other aspect of our daily lives.  Churches have adapted to the smartphone by using it as a means of checking in to church activities and connecting with each other as members.  Churches have accepted the screen as a replacement for the printed page of the Bible, hymnal, and prayerbook.  Churches have allowed the false idea to prevail that alone with your screen is not simply a substitute for in person worship but it equates with what it means to believe and live out your Christian life -- a digital version, anyway.  We have raised a generation which has grown up with the screen, the internet, social media, and the digital frame of daily life.  Churches have adapted to this and attempted to use the screen to supplement the reality of Sunday morning and our lives together in Christ only to find out that the assistant became the central medium and the reality of the personal became secondary.

I will tell you up front.  I have the Bible on my phone and the PrayNow app but I do not use these often nor do I depend upon them.  These tools or aids are not helping us but are competing with the very reality that has defined us as church since the beginning.  It is not simply that the constant dings of the apps on our phones distract us but the screens offer us something that is not real in place of reality.  Witness how quickly rumors replace facts burning up the wires and wifi of the unsocial social media until no one knows what is true and what is false anymore and we cannot be convinced of either by fact.  Christianity is not a religion of opinions but of truth and fact.  Every aspect of the Christian faith imparts to us a greater reality than we can experience with our senses and know apart from the ministry of the Spirit.  Yet the sad fact remains that most of us no longer believe that truth matters as much as opinion and most of us refuse to allow the existence of a truth which would conflict with our heart felt opinions and desires.  How does this aid and assist the Christian Gospel?  We have let our illusions about our technology tell us that screens are safer than in person worship and interaction but tell that to the 85% of porn users who tune in via those small screens.  

We refuse to believe a preacher who warns us of these digital screens and their competing reality because we are not guilty.  Is that true?  Are the only ones addicted to their screens the heathen and the only porn views pagans or are they some of the same people we call Christian brothers and sisters?  What would happen if we had a screen free worship service?  Imagine that!  An hour or two without hearing a text message ding or the most embarrassing ringtone known to man or eyes distracted by that little computer key to the outside world that lives in your pocket or purse?  But instead of warning, preachers try to incorporate these devices and give folks the chance to text their questions or alternative opinions to the one expressed in the pulpit (well, really it is a bar stool on a stage).  I am a daily user of technology but I am also a voice of warning telling anyone and everyone that it is not helping and is really hurting us -- especially as Christians!

The Experiment Has Gone Bust. . .

Although there are pockets of life here and there, by and large the Anglican experiment seems to have reached the end of its life.  It was that, an experiment: a church created out of political purpose which could never decide if it was Catholic or Protestant (except with respect to the authority of the Pope), and which attempted to accommodate nearly every theological view within its tent.  We are even now witnessing the death throes of the various forms of that body in nearly every one of its Western incarnations.  The manifest signs in the US were when those who wished to be serious about the faith tried to leave and the remaining structures were willing to spend whatever it took to keep the buildings after long ago giving up on the Scriptures and the Creed.  Welby's resignation is but one more crisis for a Church of England that found itself in turmoil over and over again -- but over the wrong things.  They are more interested in their carbon imprint than imprinting people with the Gospel and retain the ceremony as cover for the lack of doctrinal content to their faith.  Canada's version has all the same signs of death.  Yes, there is Africa but it would seem the Africans have tried to choose between the vacuous shell of Protestantism and the appearance of catholicity.  Time will tell if they have chosen rightly or if this is but one more stop on a bus leading to an ignoble end for Henry's gamble.

The latest comes from The Telegraph where apparently priests were warned against carols that might offend, such as O Come, O Come, Emmanuel which made the cut as being potentially offensive for suggesting that other religions are “outside of God’s grace”.  Additionally, Lo, He Comes With Clouds Descending had been flagged for containing “problematic words” because it affirms that Jesus Christ is the “true Messiah”.  In an email sent out to the diocesan priests in Birmingham, they were were reportedly told: “Try to use language that won’t add further confusion or tension or take away anything from the good news of the Nativity.”  The Church of England has come under criticism in recent years for promoting woke ideology rather than the Gospel and for a CoE launched a project to discuss the potential use of so-called “gender neutral” language in reference to God last year.

There is a lesson in this.  All around us Protestantism of nearly all stripes struggles to maintain an identity.  Is it the more conservative fundamentalist version or the liberal left or the progressive evangelicals.  Will the real Protestants stand up?  And everyone rises!  They are all legitimate for without a regard for catholicity, the Sacraments, or reverence for God and His Word, there is not much left except clinging to a text or swimming with the stream of culture.  We have all seen it.  We all know it.  There is little in Protestantism and its many faces that bears a resemblance to anything down through history or to the Scriptures as living voice.  Yet they will plug on.  Digital expressions of their religious entertainment have pumped temporary new life into their dying iterations but what need is there for a church except as producer of content -- certainly you do not need a building or a band.  Eventually, it will end up as a mere digital ghost of its once more personal self.  Then what?  Has this experiment gone bust, too?

Rome seems inexplicably tied to the progressive and liberal wing of Protestantism.  It treats the sacraments and worship rather casually (unless, of course, you want to do it in Latin) and seems to have adopted the skeptical view of Scripture normally associated with those who do not believe it is the Word of God.  The Pope seems have a vendetta against those who take the faith seriously but will send flowers and candy to a renown abortionist and made sure that the Vatican calendar hosted a LGBTQ+ pilgrimage offer.  The College of Cardinals is not a real college but an old boys club filled overwhelmingly with the new faces that Francis thought looked like him.  It's only real duty seems to be to vote for Francis' successor and he has done everything in his power to orchestrate the views of that successor so that they will mirror his own.  All the while, of course, mass attendance continues to decline, marriage is seen as optional, children in the womb as yesterday's trash, and diversity of doctrine a hallmark of authenticity.  Is Rome an experiment that is waiting to explode in the lab?

The Missouri Synod is hardly anybody in the vast sea of Christianity but even isolated and insular Missouri will have to decide who the Synod really is.  Are we the Protestants who occasionally wear fancy dress or are we the evangelicals who value friendship over truth or are we the remains of an ethnic history or are we the progressives just a little bit behind the rest or do we guard the catholic and apostolic faith like our Confessions say?  At this point in time, it is still up for grabs.  Is Missouri an experiment that has gone bust as well?  I wish that there were enough clear signs to say we knew the future.  Even though we are not the ELCA, we have lost many numbers over the last 50 years and are a shadow of our once more robust self.  I remain convinced that Missouri could be the exception.  I just do not know if Missouri wants to be.  It may take longer to sort it out for Missouri than to signal now for the practical end to Anglicanism but the slowness may be a blessing in disguise.