Braaten Warns Laity in Synod Visit
by Alan Waite
Dr. Carl Braaten rocked a Sacramento gathering of pastors and lay members with a scathing address critiquing the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA). He told a Reformation Service capacity crowd at the Lutheran Church of the Good Shepherd, "We are in a fierce struggle for the soul of Lutheranism... We are doing battle over an agenda that has to do with what we believe about the triune identity of God, salvation through Christ alone and the Great Commission of our Lord to preach the Gospel to the nations."
Currently serving as director of the Center for Catholic and Evangelical Theology, Braaten drew a lively response from the audience in a lecture sponsored by the Fellowship of Confessional Lutherans (FOCL).
The theologian urged ELCA members to become involved in what he termed "the theological struggle of our time to define the meaning of being Lutheran in America."
Considered for decades to be one of the most progressive leaders in Lutheran reform, Braaten observed, "Lutherans today are rapidly joining the parade of Protestant pluralism and the agendas of today: therapeutic religion, church growth, multiculturalist ideology, inclusivity quotas, New Age spirituality, entertainment evangelism, lowest common denominator ecumenism, liberationism, crusades of every ilk, and a plethora of 'politically correct' concerns."
Speaking of ELCA lay members, he asserted, "They are asleep while their church is being taken hostage by a belief system incompatible with the Christian faith."
Braaten's lecture coincided with the release of the first draft of the ELCA Task Force on Human Sexuality's document which caused a firestorm of protest nationwide. According to the ELCA's Chicago headquarters, nearly 50,000 callers flooded Task Force-Director Karen Bloomquist's office within the first two days of the study's release. Referring to that study in his Sacramento address, Braaten stated, "There is an alternative – flush it!"
Among his eight "challenges" to "being Lutheran in America," Braaten listed Radical Theological Feminism. He noted that, along with other excesses, it has taken to asserting that Christ's atonement is "a prime example of child abuse."
The Sacramento event concluded with a question-answer period where Braaten exhorted lay persons to remain in the ELCA, learn about the basics of Lutheran doctrine and the Confessions, and join in the struggle for confessional fidelity within the church. "Be alert, be vigilant, and be involved," he urged.
Since Braaten's visit to the Sierra Pacific Synod, over three dozen videos of his address have been sold, with many people committing to show the tape in informal in-home gatherings within their congregations. Video tapes are available for $12.00 each, by writing to the FOCL office at 3707 Chamberlain Way, Carmichael, CA 95608.
The Church in Crisis
We are in a fierce struggle for the soul of Lutheranism. We contend both against flesh and blood, but against the powers and principalities that are stronger and more numerous than we.
We are doing battle over an agenda that has to do with what we believe . . . Old stuff – but, solid biblical confessional Christianity.
Many folk, however, are asleep in the church. They sleep while their church is being taken hostage by a belief system incompatible with the Christian faith
In 1961, Winthrop Hudson, Professor of Church History at Union Theological Seminary in New York, ended his book, American Protestantism, on a note flattering to Lutherans. He wrote, The final prospect for a vigorous renewal of Protestant life and witness rests with the Lutheran churches. Among the assets immediately at hand among the Lutherans are a confessional tradition, – surviving liturgical structure, and a sense of community."
Thirty years later, Mark Noll Professor of Church History at Wheaton College, reiterated Hudson’s point. He said, "What Lutheran theologians share is a pure doctrine that could bring welcome refreshment to the American church."
Would anyone care to tell these men that the emperor has no clothes? Lutherans today are rapidly joining the parade of Protestant pluralism and reductionism. Can anyone seriously argue that Lutherans have retained enough of the vitalities of those biblical and catholic elements in their foundational charter, the Augsburg Confession, to revitalize the declining mainline denominations in America?
Where would you look for the confessional theology that keeps faithful continuity with the great tradition of western Catholic and eastern Orthodox Christianity? Would you look to the seminaries, to what the bishops say in their pastoral letters, or to the bulk of materials emanating from church headquarters? If you did, would you find anything to distinguish Lutheranism substantially from other Protestant denominations that also trace their lineage back to the Reformation?
I would like to touch briefly on some of the "Flashpoints" of the encounter between the Gospel and contemporary culture in America. It is clear that in this encounter, the churches are conspicuously unsure of what it means to be the Church, the One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church. Churches are selling their souls to the highest bidders. They are content to attract consumers with a product whose appeal is success, not faithfulness, self-esteem, not discipleship, techniques, not truth.
The theology of the cross has been replaced by the theology of glory. If the aim of the Church is to grow, the way to do it is to make people feel good about themselves. Of course, when people discover there are other ways to feel good, they leave the church they no longer need. The "relevant" church is sowing the seeds of its own destruction.
The first flashpoint is the Challenge of Radical Theological Feminism. This ideology is attacking our Christian doctrine of the Triune God: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
Pastors are finding strange and heretical ways of confessing the name of the Triune God. Our bishops had to become so exercised about this that they propagated – without any particular authority to do so – that anyone baptized in the name of some other god (than Father, Son, and Holy Spirit) has not received a valid Christian baptism. This ideology is attacking the names of God, the God of Israel, the God who is the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.
About a decade ago I first noticed in our own seminary chapel that the language for naming God is changing. At one service they prayed not to "Our Father," but to Abba/Ima, "Papa and Mama." Often pastors will begin the worship "in the name of the Creator, Redeemer, and Sustainer" – in order to dodge the particular identity of the name of God according to the Scriptures.
A second flashpoint is the Challenge of Religious Pluralism. It teaches our young people that there are many ways of salvation, as many ways as there are religions. Christianity is only one among all the religions in the world, and Jesus Christ is only our particular Lord and Savior, but not the universal Lord and Savior of all humanity.
Religious pluralism says there are many roads that lead to God, many paths that lead to the top of Mount Fuji, many flavors to the same kind of ice cream. This challenge undermines the uniqueness of Jesus Christ and the Gospel of salvation in His name alone. We are going to have to make this problem a number one issue, for it bears upon the survival of our Christian fidelity and loyalty to the One we call our Lord and Savior.
The third flashpoint is the Challenge of Historical Relativism. This says there are no absolute authorities, a position which immediately undermines the authority of the Bible. Once you undermine that authority, the Church is completely at sea without a rudder.
Historical Relativism says history is no place for absolutes. Not even Jesus Christ, not even what God reveals according to the Scriptures, is absolute for us. So we are involved in a kind of floating crap game, trying to guess what God might reveal to his Church today, because the Scriptures are but relative to their times.
In the now infamous study document on Human Sexuality, put out by an official Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELC A) task force, the Bible is not accorded authority on matters of faith and morals. The Bible, to this task force, simply provides an input for our reflection, according to our suitable interests, according to what feels right to us in our own time and place.
Another flashpoint is the Challenge of American Cultural Religion. Call it Neo-gnosticism.
Gnosticism is the name of that ancient religion that challenged the Christian Gospel which proclaims that there is hope, life, and salvation, not in the various divinities and religions, but in Jesus Christ alone. American culture religion is a new form for this ancient heresy, whose essence is to say that God doesn't come to us externally, but God is deeply embedded in the soul of each of us. It tells us to find health by looking inward.
This is really mysticism! It is everywhere in California, everywhere in our culture. People are to be guided by their feelings. What does it feel like inside? When people don't like some Christian doctrine, it doesn't matter whether it comes from the Bible or the Christian tradition. If they don't like it, or if it doesn't feel good, get rid of it!
This Neo-gnosticism calls for the inward look. Go inside your own soul and if you go deeply enough, you will find a point of identity with God, because at that depth God and the soul are one. You were born with God inside yourself.
The next major flashpoint is the Challenge of Ecumenical Reductionism, the idea that all Christians ought to forget their differences and relativize their distinctive doctrines so that we may all be one, under one cozy tent. Mind you, the word is reductionism – ecumenism at its lowest common denominator. It means Lutheranism should forfeit all its tough doctrines in order to accommodate anyone who doesn't want to abide in them.
If you take into account the predecessor church bodies, the ELCA has been involved in ecumenical dialogue for more than three decades. Within the next two to four years, we will have to make some fundamental decisions about which way we will go ecumenically, because Lutherans no longer stick to themselves the way they did in the 19th century. We are living in an ecumenical age, and Lutherans will have to make some decisions as to what kind of ecumenical alliances or affiliations are true to our own confessional identity and heritage. We must beware of the reductionism that says that if other people don't agree with us, we just forget about those differences and walk away from the argument so that we can be ecumenical nice guys.
The Challenge of the Cult of Egalitarianism is another flashpoint. It says we are all created equal, and so everything must be relativized and ironed smooth and flat in the church. This belief attacks the fundamental institution of the holy ministry. Egalitarianism holds that the B ible is equal to all other interesting and important doctrines of antiquity. It means in turn that pastors have no more authority in the church than any chauffeur or the laity in general. Bishops, pastors, and the Confessions have no authority except that which we bestow upon them by the will of the people by a democratic majority vote.
Egalitarianism works in the public sector; we live in a democracy and we don't want it any other way. But the Church was not born to be a democracy, my friends. We do not vote on what is true and good and revealed of God within the Church. Certain absolute givens for the Church are constitutive and foundational. We have no business voting on whether we like them or not. They come to us from God, they come from the Scriptures, they come through the tradition, and they are supposed to be administered by those who are properly called, commissioned and ordained.
To the cult of egalitarianism, the pastor becomes at best a representative flunky of the will of the people. And therefore the authority of the pastor in the Church is so relativized and so marginalized that the pastors are afraid to preach the truth. They've lost their sense of divinely instituted authority. They have to please the people, they have to massage their members' egos, and that is why so much preaching has so little divine power in it anymore. It is simply the opinion of an individual who went to school to be educated to be able to relativize all the distinctive doctrines of the Church.
The seventh flashpoint is the Challenge of New Age Mysticism or New Age Spirituality. Our young people are completely at sea; people are on all kinds of spiritual journeys. They are signing up for all kinds of programs that promise to provide spiritual nourishment for their souls, to fill the void in their lives. The main movement that promises wholeness and say – "But it worksùpeople like it." So they bring about a syncretism of Christian elements and of New Age elements, hoping to feed the people. But it is Christ-less.
The last flashpoint is the Challenge of Liberationist Ideologies. They declare that you can work out your own salvation through your own activity. It is socialist and activist, found everywhere in our theological educational programs today.
Its appeal is seductive, for the concept of liberation is the general theme of our epoch. Everybody wants to be liberated. So some theologians are saying that this is what the Bible means by "salvation" and"shalom." They radiate, "Isn't it wonderful? We now have a new word to use. It's only unfortunate that so many people still don't understand that liberation is already found in the Bible under the old term, salvation."
But don't be fooled. Liberation and salvation are not the same thing. Liberation is what we do for ourselves in order to see justice and equality advanced for our own people. It does not equate to what the Bible means by salvation. Salvation can only come from God above, from outside ourselves through Jesus Christ and through His death on the cross. Salvation is not something to which we can contribute. We are saved by grace alone.
These eight challenges to the Church prompt us to ask, "What then are we to do?" Is there a recipe, a formula to use for involving us in the battle to secure faithfulness once more throughout the Church?
Here are two suggestions for how we may be alert, vigilant and involved.
First, be assured that lay people care. In a lot of places in the Church, unhappily, lay people have gone to sleep, and the pastors have put them to sleep. For them the word is out, "Don't speak up in church, don't rattle anybody's cage, don't say anything unless it's at room temperature. Keep everything calm and quiet so the people will continue to put their money in the offering plate and everything will go on as usual." Nevertheless, be assured, the people can be awakened!
Second, remember that Lutheranism is a confessing movement within the church universal. Lutheranism was never meant to be a separate independent church. It was never Martin Luther's intent to start a new church. We do have a Lutheran denomination, of course. But it is really a Lutheran movement for the sake of the Gospel. It is not a Lutheran Gospel.
We have no Lutheran Christ, no Lutheran salvation. We are a Lutheran movement out of Germany, Norway, Sweden, Finland, and Denmark, found today on all the continents. But remember, Lutheranism is not a church, but a movement for the sake of the whole church, the one Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church. So we do not battle alone when we seek to overcome these challenges that confront us and that Church.
*This article is excerpted in two parts from an address given at the Reformation Rally sponsored by the Fellowship of Confessional Lutherans (FOCL) in Sacramento, October 1993. Dr. Braaten is well-known across Christendom for his incisive theological writings, and is presently the director of the Center for Catholic and Evangelical Theology. Part 2 will be found in the next issue of F.O.C.L. POINT.
AIDS AND JUDGMENT
by Harold 0. J. Brown*
(Editor's Note: HIV+ (= AIDS) is one of the few epidemic diseases almost completely controllable by a simple change in behavior patterns. As in other Sexually Transmitted Diseases, by avoiding drugs, prostitution and homosexual acts, the scourge would not appear in over 98% of the cases. Grave concerns about the visitation of Divine Judgment therefore emerge immediately, as Dr. Lechleitner's letter in this issue's "Reader Responses" indicates. Yet it is a concern that has been notably absent in the literature of the Mainline churches. One of the few authors who has dealt seriously with the theological problem, in addition to Lechleitner, is Dr. Brown, whose essay follows.)
The World Health Organization predicts between 40 and 110 million HIV-infected people by the end of the century. Professor Inge Scharrer of the Christlicher Aids-Hilfsdienst (CAH) agreed and warned that the disease may be as devastating as the Black Death of the Middle Ages, which wiped out more than one-third of the population.
At the same time, the president of the Evangelical Church of Hessen and Nassau, Helmut Spengler, reaffirmed the frequently stated conviction that AIDS is not a "scourge of God." Spengler charged that many Christians have deeply hurt AIDS victims and homosexuals by their negative comments and left them feeling marginalized. CAF, founded by conservative German Protestants, was criticized by the Deutsche Aids-Hilfe as an "evangelical swindle," with "antisex" fanatics trying to deprive dying gays of their upright gait" (i.e., of their human dignity).
In view of the fact that AIDS inexorably condemns the sufferers to an early and usually a very miserable end to their life on earth, it seems rather strange that any concerned group should seek to insulate the "About to die" from the Christian promise of forgiveness and eternal life. If experimental drugs should not be withheld because they are not certain to be helpful if there is even a possibility that they might be, is it reasonable to try to keep the Christian message from the dying if there is any possibility that it might show them the way to eternal life?
Liberal Protestants will of course speak of life after death, but generally in terms of uni versalism (when we all get to heaven). The evangelical difference is that salvation is not seen as universal, but as tied to repentance and conversion. The concept of repentance relies on the concept of sin, and while Christians generally will agree that "All have sinned and come short of the glory of God" (Romans 3: 23), it is the conservatives, who take the preaching of the Law seriously, will talk about specific sins.
The Christian message of hope, when presented by evangelicals, is always associated with a call to repentance that asks the convert to repent of specific sins. Wrongdoing (sin) is precisely what much of mainline religion absolutely refuses to admit with respect to AIDS when it has been contracted sexually, especially through homosexual conduct.
A deep-seated psychological reason for refusing to talk about the possible or actual wrongness of homosexual acts is the fact that sinful human beings are very uncomfortable with the concept of a God who judges. "This is the condemnation, that light is come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil" (John 3:19).
When Paul writes, "Men committed indecent acts with other men, and received in themselves the due penalty for their perversion" (Romans 1:27, NIV), nothing could be more straightforward than to interpret AIDS as being such a penalty. This is the conclusion which many immediately drew in the first stages of the discovery of AIDS, when Kaposi's sarcoma was linked so frequently to male homosexuality. This interpretation of AIDS was quickly denounced as the most extreme example of "homophobia," the demonization and marginalization of homosexuals.
Most Christians, conservatives as well as liberals, have tended to reject the concept that AIDS is the "scourge of God" upon homosexual behavior. Liberal Christians do so because they largely repudiate the concept that homosexual acts are sinful and therefore take it for granted that no penalty can be due. (Liberals generally have difficulty with the concept of sin when applied to anything individuals do, although they readily see it in social phenomena such as racism, militarism, and environmental pollution).
Conservative Christians hesitate to make this identification for other reasons, first because in general they reject the concept that a specific sickness represents the judgment of God for a specific individual. Most conservatives interpret Jesus' words about a man born blind (John 9:3) this way. In addition, no person of ordinary human decency and compassion would want to aggravate a dying person's emotional distress by accentuating his sense of guilt Nevertheless, it is a general Christian conviction that God's forgiveness is freely available when there is repentance, and repentance comes only when there is a conviction of sin.
Paul Ricoeur argues in his monumental study Finitude and Culpability, it is not merely common but rather logical and natural for humans to feel defilement and guilt when they engage in sexual behavior that is not approved by the God of the Covenant. Pastoral workers discover, more often than not, that a homosexual who has contracted AIDS in fact feels tremendous guilt, as well as often being overwhelmed by a sense of the unfairness of the universe or of God.
Some counselors seek to comfort them by saying, in effect, "You have no guilt. Simply accept yourself." From a traditional Christian perspective, no parson, evangelist or counselor has the right to say this to anyone, sick or well, for – as noted aboveùall have sinned. In addition, Catholic chaplain and theologian R. L. Bruckberger has pointed out that people who are in deep trouble are generally only too aware that they are sinners and such trivialization of their condition gives scant comfort.
Although the Law of God condemns – "slays," as Paul says – it also explains the predicament of which a fatal illness may make one painfully conscious. With this explanation and interpretation comes the possibility of conversion and faith.
To preach the Law in isolationùto talk about sin and guilt without the offer of forgivenessùis to be untrue to the Scripture in general, and, in Christian terms, to the Gospel in particular. The answer, however, is not to ignore the Law or to gloss it over with bland reassurances, "Simply accept yourself as you are."
Failure to preach the Lawùwhich involves condemnation of sinùmeans failure to provide the basis for repentance and hence for forgiveness. It ought to be possible to avoid thumping the table about the "crime against nature," and thus creating the false impression that homosexual acts are the worst of sins, or worse yet, unforgivable, without falsifying the biblical doctrine that they are indeed sinful.
It is not necessary to assert that AIDS is a divine j udgment upon a particular individual who has practiced homosexuality in order to maintain the biblical teaching that homosexual conduct is contrary to God's design for human life. The truth [is] that individual (mis)conduct is usually the way in which AIDS is contracted and the fact [is] that homosexual behavior is labeled as sinful in Scripture.
It says something strange about the modem secular mentality when the fact that acts which traditional Christianity and Judaism condemn, transmit a most horrible and totally incurable disease, society draws the conclusion that the acts are precisely not to be condemned, hardly even to be criticized, and that those who suffer from the disease so contracted are to be admired as martyrs or heroes. We are reminded of the vision of John in Revelation, when after a series of plagues have wiped out a third of mankind, "The rest of mankind that were not killed by these plagues still did not repent of the work of their hands. Nor did they repent of their murders, their magic arts, their sexual immorality or their thefts (Rev. 9:20-21). This is the phenomenon that the old theologians called obduratio. or in biblical language, hardening of the heart.
* Harold 0. J. Brown is the editor of The Religion and Society Report, published by the Rockford Institute Center on Religion ana Society, from which this 12/92 article is excerpted by permission.
Reader Responses
SODOMY INVITES GOD'S JUDGMENT
DEAR EDITOR:
Pastor Selbo is to be congratulated ["Red Herrings," Spring '93] for calling the Church's attention to the only decisive question for us who wrestle with the homosexual issueù What does the Bible say about it?" So called "gay" sexual behavior has a more precise name in the Bible: it is called sodomy.
Sodomy fouls God's gift of sexuality. Cleansing will come, however, either by grace to the penitent or by judgment to those who promote this behavior.
Perimeters for sexual expression are biblically clear. In obedience to God's purpose, sex nourishes life, enriches companionship, provides joy, enhances endowments and adapts to maturity. So God's judgment is often a result of the wrong use of a created blessing.
The sodomite demands immediate, irresponsible and unlimited gratification of an undisciplined sex desire (the Bible calls it lust"). This God forbids, and in disobeying the divine mandate, sodomy invites God's judgment. AIDS is an example.
There would be no AIDS epidemic if there had been no sodomy. God's judgment on this pathology is triggered by the sodomite's disobedience. The Word of God is plain enough: "Let no one deceive you with empty words, for it is because of these things that the wrath of God comes upon the sons of disobedience" (Ephesians 5:5-6). Unhappily, just as a drunkard's traffic accident may wipe out a whole family of blameless travelers, so AIDS can spread to many innocent people, to transfused blood patients, offspring and unoffending spouses.
Church members who promote sodomy should heed the warning of Hebrews 6: 4-12: "It is impossible to restore again to repentance those who...commitapostasy, since they crucify the Son of God afresh...and hold Him up to contempt." There will be a final sorting, just as Jesus says in Matthew 7:21-23: "Not everyone who says to me 'Lord, Lord' will enter the kingdom of heaven, but he who does the will of my Father who is in heaven."
The deluded, ignorant, and the uninformed who are victimized by deceptive propaganda, have Christ's invitation, "Come unto Me; I will give you rest and my yoke (obedience) is easy and learn of Me." And those infected by this virus, who love (obey) God in faith, though they die, they live. Not even AIDS can separate them from God's love in Christ (Romans 8: 39).
Dr. R. D. Lechleitner, Santa Rosa, CA
F.O.C.L. MAY BE ANSWER TO MY PRAYERS
DEAR EDITOR:
With the direction the Lutheran Church currently seems to be heading, it is imperative that I find an alternative to all the liberal agenda or I must leave this denomination. I am at least a third generation Lutheran and I really believe that the church in which I was raised is hard to be compared to the "church" of the '90s.
Last week when I heard the news on ABC regarding the findings of the ELCA task force, [Human Sexuality ] I became physically ill. It was hard for me to continue driving to my destination. In the following days I found myself praying for an organization in my denomination that might share some of the same opinions I have. I hope your organization justmightbe God's answer to my prayers.
Marilyn Scheidel, Pleasant Grove, CA
LET'S TAKE BACK OUR CHURCH! DEAR EDITOR:
I am enclosing a check for $20.00 to help out a little with your expenses. Some of us lament the things that are happening to our Lutheran Church and to some of the leadership. As you realize, some of our pastors have left the ELCA rather than work among those who go along with the new emphasis. My emphasis continues to be that we should stay in there and help turn back the tide. In some effective way we should combine our forces, reassert our leadership, and take back our church. Many like myself have given our lives for our Lutheran Church and do not like to lie down and allow the liberal captors to run off with our church.
The best solution is to reassert our leadership, carefully solicit the following of the silent majority within our ELCA, and then prayerfully win back the guidance of our church. We need a ground swell of discontented pastors who will work together within the confines of our ELCA and gradually win back our church before too many of our members run off to other denominations.
Dr. Virgil Bjerke
Holy Spirit Lutheran Church,
Lakewood, CA
THE NEW CHRISTIAN VIRTUE
IS CONFESSIONAL FIDELITY IMPORTANT?
The great Reformation leader John Calvin wrote, "The Christian faith is based on three precepts: The first is humility; the second is humility; and the third is humility" [The Institutes of the Christian Religion II.2.11]. Jesus put it like this: "He who is greatest among you shall be your servant; whoever exalts himself will be humbled, and whoever humbles himself will be exalted." To authenticate his words, He humbled himself and died the cross-death of a slave, so that He might be exalted above every name that is named.
Never let it be said we can't improve on Jesus and orthodox Christianity, however. According to the Lutheran, the recent ELCA women's convention was informed by the new and first female bishop in Lutheran history, Maria Jepsen from Hamburg, that "Women in the church have practiced humility too long"[!!]
What an especially invigorating new manifesto this will be to help us reshape our Christmas season. We may now cancel out that benighted Virgin Mary who thought the Lord should be magnified because "He has regarded the low estate of his handmaiden." And we have permission to clamp our lips tight when the Te Deum invites us to sing, "He humbled himself to take the womb of a virgin." Merry Christmas, baby Jesus; too bad you got it all wrong.
F.O.CL. POINT calls for faithful adherence to Christian doctrine. Pity its compatriots in the so-called Lutheran state churches. In Denmark the lead bishop, ErickSvendsen, and the church affairs minister, A.O. Andersen were asked to remove two parish council members who deny the Christian faith: one a believer in reincarnation, the other a scientologist. Andersen refused, announcing the better Lutheran doctrine to be: "If one is good enough to be a member of the Church of Denmark, one is good enough to be elected to a parish council."
The tragedy lies in the fact that statistically 62% of the Lutherans of our country would also see no problem in his decision. They too believe according to Search Institute findings, that they will go to heaven because they have been "good" people.
That doctrinal infidelity in the church has come to this result in Denmark could be expected. For according to the news service of the Church of Denmark, arecently published study (1992) found only 20% of Denmark's Lutherans believe in resurrection, whereas 14% believe in reincarnation. Among young people (ages 18-30) 18% believe in reincarnation and only 15% believe in resurrection.
If our own Lutheran spiritual leaders follow the trend to deny the all-sufficiency of the Holy Scriptures in determining our Christian faith, can we look for anything but the same results?