Reclaiming The ELCA
by David Preus*
The ELCA came into being on a great wave of enthusiasm. Those of us on the 70-member Commission for a New Lutheran Church (CNLC) assumed the ELCA could continue all programs of the previous church bodies. We even added new programs. We were wrong!
Now, six years later, the ELCA has not made Lutherans more effective in mission, and there is a huge crisis of confidence in the ELCA. Criticism of the ELCA is rampant. Individuals and congregations arc shifting their loyalty and their money from the ELCA. The enthusiasm of 1988 has disappeared. It must be reclaimed.
Such a reclamation project will require a concentration of support for the missionary and confessional priorities of the church. I have three basic recommendations for this.
1) Take heart from the great strength of the ELCA congregations and institutions.
In thousands of congregations the Word of God is being preached, the Sacraments administered, the people of God are assembling for worship and are carrying their discipleship into their communities. Youth are nurtured in the faith of the church, the sick are visited, and the poor remembered. Ecumenical attitudes are positive in most local communities. A solid core of theologically astute, committed laity and clergy is in place.
The institutions of the church provide outstanding ministries, superb contributors to Christian formation and to genera] human well being.
Further encouragement lies in the fact that the most contentious issues in the ELCA do not involve direct attacks on the Ecumenical Creeds or the Lutheran Confessions.
Church governance and personal and social morals are important. But the unity of the church can stand strong disagreements in such areas. Lutheran strength is substantial.
2) Take seriously the causes for present dissatisfaction and prepare strong measures to remove them.
The ELCA is awash in controversy, distrust, uncertainly, and flagging support for its programs The reasons are many. The following seem most compelling to me.
A) So much was made of the ELCA being a "new" church that members lost their sense of identification with the churches they had known and trusted. A sense of "belonging to" the ELCA and "ownership of the ELCA program is missing. Great efforts are needed to show that the ELCA honors and values the traditions and loyalties of the previous church bodies.
B) There is a widespread perception that the ELCA brought a shift in priorities. Missionary priority has diminished while commitment to an agenda for social and political action has increased. While it is boom time for missions abroad and in the U.S, we in the ELCA are cutting back. The church's missionary priority must be made unmistakable.
C) There is awareness that the ELCA does not gi vecentral prominence to historic Lutheran theological themes. Biblical and theological illiteracy is epidemic in the church. There is strong feeling there has been serious erosion of biblical authority, that the Bible is not being used seriously as the "norm for faith and life." A resurgent Lutheran theological witness is a necessity.
D) Synod and churchwide assemblies appear more interested in claiming church legislative majorities on contentious public issues than in providing theological resources tohelp members do their own wrestling. The national church is seen as accepting "the world's" agenda (social issues). By requiring a final legislative vote on divisive social statements, the ELCA divides its members into "winners" and "losers." "Losers" do not wish to provide financial support to causes they believe to be wrong.
E) Congregations do not feel they are perceived as "the basic unit of the church". There is little sense that national and synodical church arms are accountable to the congregations. Delegates to assemblies are informed that they should not think of themselves as representatives of congregations. Congregations are made to feel unrepresented. It is understandable congregations feel like cash cows to be milked.
F) Synod and national church are increasingly viewed as "government," complete with self-standing legislative bodies (assemblies) and regulatory offices (national and synod offices), rather than as the congregations' extended mission arms.
3) Take actions that will restore and expand ELCA mission enthusiasm, Lutheran confessional faithfulness, and congregational centrality.
A) MISSION ENTHUSIASM: Drastic budgetary shifts are needed to bring national program moneys into support of the missionary vocation of the church. This will require radical elimination or reduction in other current programs and offices.
The church can find other ways to perform such ministries, or they are of lesser priority and beyond the church's resources. The following are illustrations.
• Close Lutheran lobbying offices at national and state legislatures. Informed members and self-supported voluntary associations like Bread for the World can meet this need.
• Radically reduce the Division for Church in Society. Stop expensive task force studies. Declare a moratorium on churchwide social statements unless a clear case can be made that our confessions require them.
• Radically reduce personnel and program for institutional ministries. Colleges and Social Ministry Organizations can be served regionally and locally.
• Close the Office of Research. Farm out necessary research projects.
• Radically reduce personnel and program for Ecumenical Affairs. Table all churchwide proposals for ecumenical agreements on the grounds that they are promoting disunity in the ELCA. In particular, the ELCA linking of the Lutheran-Reformed and Lutheran-Episcopal proposals is an obvious political move to require Lutherans to accept an Episcopal system of church governance. There is no urgent support for such a move among ELCA rank and file, and strong theological and practical opposition to it. Local ecumenicity is the critical matter, and this is proceeding very well without national action.
• Close the Commissions for Women and Multi-Cultural Ministries. Inclusiveness goals can be achieved without special national offices.
• Radically downsize national and synodical offices. Rethinking national and synodical operations in accordance with narrowed program priorities would result in fewer administrative and program staff.
• Reclaim national and synodical assemblies for the priority tasks of the church. Require that the great majority of assembly time be given to the missionary, educational, and service tasks of the ELCA.
• Call on church institutions to be the church in their areas of endeavor. Make "church relationship" more than a vestigial recognition that the church originally founded the institutions.
B) CONFESSIONAL FAITHFULNESS: This is crucial! ELCA members must know, claim, and pass on their theological heritage. It is the unique and great gift that Lutherans have to share with the church ecumenical and society at large. Theological rootage is what identifies Lutherans and enables us to live with each other in spite of broad differences of opinion. Lutherans without their theology are adrift.
ELCA congregations, institutions, synods, and national offices need to engage in a teaching-learning program focused on major biblical and confessional Lutheran themes. Justification by grace through faith in Christ, Law and Gospel, the Two Kingdoms, a Theology of the Cross, the Priesthood of All Believers, and the authority of the Word are not esoteric ideas designed only for professional theologians. They are theological insights, drawn from the Scriptures, that fuel Reformation Churches. These insights enable the church to have powerful lay and clergy equipped as ambassadors for Christ.
We live in an age of vague religiosity that leaves us vulnerable to a host of evil spirits. Lutherans have the theological resources to challenge them. Lutheran theology is designed to enable the clear Word of God to be preached and taught. Without a strong, united, confessional core, Lutherans will be tempted to division over peripheral matters.
C) CONGREGATIONAL CENTRALITY: Local congregations are the sine qua non of Christ's church. God gathers believers through an endless web of local congregations.
"Creeping Congregationalism" is not the ELCA problem. Rather it is the debilitating sense that congregations are seen as subservient to "higher" levels of the church. The following suggestions would go far in helping ELCA members to see congregations as the basic centers for ELCA mission.
• Synodical and national office personnel understand themselves and make themselves known as extended staff of congregations.
• Clarify that ELCA interdependence of churchwide, synod and congregational expressions of the church does not mean that each level of church life is equally "basic." Congregations create synods and church bodies in order to evidence their unity and extend their ministries. Congregations frequently have lived without regional or national church expressions. Synods and church bodies, however, cannot exist without congregations.
• By word and deed make it a fact that ELCA life is ordered from below, from the congregations. Neither pyramid corporate structures nor medieval hierarchical styles are suited for a church that believes in the priesthood of believers.
• Involve congregations in nominations of national and synodical officers, councils and boards. Provide synodical election of national church council members in order to heighten local responsibility for national programs.
• Drop the quota system for electing delegates to synod and national assemblies. Use of quotas has alerted the church to the need for inclusive representation, but at the cost of injustice and a grass roots sense that congregations are not trusted to select their most qualified people. Minority under-representation can be met by establishing a cadre of at-large delegates to be elected, if needed, by synod or national church councils.
• Call upon congregations to be "communities of moral deliberation." The ELCA should deal with contemporary social/ethical issues through congregations rather than through special offices and churchwide assemblies. Congregations would be given access to theological arguments for various points of view provided by the church's theologians. Church members would make up their own minds without political attempts to stampede church assemblies into "win-lose" votes. The ELCA would operate by convinced consensus, rather than by legislative majority.
• Require congregations to determine what proportion of benevolence support goes to synods and what proportion to the national ELCA. Congregational "ownership" of extended ministries is imperative if those ministries are to flourish.
A "new" ELCA has to start with that which unites us and which identifies us as Lutheran Christians. The above recommendations aim to do that.
* Dr. Preus is the former and last President of the American Lutheran Church, one of the churches that merged to form the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America. This article also appeared in the Lutheran Forum, 28: 3, Reformation 1994.
Losing The Ball On The One Yard Line
by Robert Benne, Ph.D.*
The San Francisco 49ers arc engaged in an elegant, effective beautifully coordinated drive toward the goal. Their momentum almost guarantees that they will reach the end zone.
However, an astounding thing happens. They reach the one yard line and then – one of three very odd things occurs. They fumble, they punt w they call a long time-out. The first possibility is tragic; they've done everything well, but lost the ball when they were close to completing the drive.
The second possibility is irrational; the 49ers punt to the opposing team when they have every chance of scoring a touchdown. Now the punted ball sails into the stands but is returned to the Twenty yard line. The opposing team regains the ball and also recovers lost ground as the result of the crazy decision to punt only one yard from the goal line.
The third scenario is about as strange as the second. The team calls a time-out that effectively destroys the momentum built un on the long drive. The opposition and their fans are given relief but the 49ers and their fans are frustrated and angry. Even more strangely, the 49er’s announce that the lime-out will last for the foreseeable future. They are tired of conflict and they fear that if they press ahead with the drive the opposition will leave. They assume that their own frustrated fans won’t leave or withdraw their support.
The working Draft
The football game i.s an analogy for the new sexuality working dial! iifnmdn Sexuality, Oct. 1994) oiTeicd by the tiLCA's Division Im Chnn.lt inSuciely. Bach football .scenario Mjg.sesis ;in interpretation for what happened in the . new draft. The first doesn't wash. There wasn't any tragic fumbling of the ball. But I can't deeide whether the second or the third makes more sense out of the ELCA' s behavior.
My best hunch is that the Church intended to call a long time-out (the third scenario) but as in the second possibility, actually punted to the opposition.
Before reflecting on what should have been done, it is important to affirm what has been done. Areal theological argument was made in this second draft. Obviously Lutheran theologians were ;it work. The contrast was marked between this second draft, and the first which was vigorously challenged by ELCA members. The second draft contains a sustained and coherent argument instead of the series of choppy, sporadic interventions of interest-group concerns found in the first.
The second represents a seriously Lutheran proposal instead of one that is marginally Lutheran and non-confessional. It operates out of theological and biblical sources instead of bowing time and again io the Zeitgeist. It flows from a living religious tradition instead of repeatedly committing itself to social science. This is not to say there are no weaknesses or problems.
While immeasurably stronger in its teachings on marriage, the draft doesn't mount a strong positive argument for sexual intercourse being kept within marriage. Nor does it highlight the sexual delight that properly can be a part of married life.
It avoids Lutheran doctrinal "Orders of Creation" language, though it does recognize the orderly complementarity of male and female. lt lapses into the prevalent feminist ideology that insists that all sexual misconduct is an exercise of power and therefore is presumed to be the man's fault.
It does not explain why we need a secular set of principles out of that ideology in order to prohibit what traditional Christian ethics has always called sin. And, ofcour.se. the draft's recommendations forsocial policy are stridently liberal. For example, the Church should support an end to all discrimination based on sexual orientation This presumably means that the Church is to the left of the Clinton administration when it comes to gays in the military.
Let's Punt!
The major problem, of course, is the loss of nerve to press the argument in the documentto its consistent conclusion with regard to gay and lesbian sexual activity. Indeed, the draft is accurate and eloquent when it states the classical ethical position ontheseissues(p. 19). The overwhelming momentum of the document should lead to the traditional conclusion on gay and lesbian issues, but it stops short. It calls a lime-out, which, in fact, is a punt.
My own experience of this may be interesting. I was reluctant even to read the statement, but when I finally did, I read with delight. I began at the beginning and got moreexcited as I went. The ELCA has finally made a coherent, orthodox argument, I thought to myself. But then came the jolt of page 21, where the statement simply lists the counterarguments to the traditional perspective, and then says we cannot or ought not decide at this time. What a shock! Such hesitation just didn't fit.
Is it because of the highly contested nature of the issue in the ELCA? The Church has had many contentious issues it has toughed out, some would say, with great arrogance. Quotas, inclusive language (now expanded to exclude masculine pronouns for God!), the ban on investment in South Africa, the use of pension funds for political purposes, etc., were all pressed on a resistant grass-roots. And these were not "core" issues, that is, issues thai ought to occupy the center of mission for Lutherans.
Core Confusion
Now that we are at a core issue – the issue of the divinely willed sexual complementarity fulfilled in marriage – we get hesitant. We refuse to press the argument forward. In so doing we. again manifest one of the characteristics of a declining religious tradition: we become dogmatic about peripheral issues and confused about core issues.
Can anyone believe that the classical Lutheran teaching on these matters will ever be forthrightly reaffirmed by the ELCA? That is very unlikely. The dissenters now have time to marshal their forces and persuade an already theologically confused and declining Church that it is "unenlightened" to refuse to legitimate homosexual sex. We now have seminary professors writing books about the sin of "heterosexism." Soon that will enter the litany of sins to be forgiven in various avant-guard liturgies and confessions.
So, under the cloak of calling time-out for reflection, we have really punted the ball to the opponents, and they will get the ball at the twenty yard line sometime in the future. And, given the composition of leadership in the ELCA, the drive will move in earnest in the opposite direction.
What would I like? I would like to see the argument brought to its consistent conclusion. The classic Christian teaching on sexual morality should be clearly and confidently articulated. We should not compromise the ideals which have been handed down to us from the apostles. Let's be clear and uncompromising on normative ethical matters.
But then we can be subtle, nuanced and generous with regard to those persons who don't live up to the ideal. In short, we can be genuinely pastoral. A good deal of time should be spent in the draft precisely on the pastoral strategies that would be most helpful in dealing with persons who straggle with the church's teaching. We are all sinners and fall short of what the will of God commands. But let's not alter our standards because some fall short and want to change the standards.
* Dr. Benne is Jordan-Trexler Professor of Religion, Roanoke College, Salem, VA., and author of the new Fortress volume: THE PARADOXICAL VISION: A Public Theology for the 2lst Century.
Perspectives
The Advancement of Theological Education
Can't you just imagine the improved theological insights granted to gulliblcclergy who hurried to the presentation by Chung Hyum-Kyung, erstwhile lecturer at the WCC 7lh Assembly, and then featured at a prestigious lecture series in the Bay Area this last January? Her confession at the WCC, and advertised as bait for the latter appearance, was that she no longer believedin an "omnipotent macho warriorGod who rescues all good guys and punishes all bad guys." The Christian congregations can certainly use more such feminizersù that is, if they want early ruin and theological irrelevance.
The Advancement of American Society
Charles Colson, winner of the Templeton million dollar prize for the advancement of religion, reminds us: "Growing up without a father is now the single most reliable predictor of crime. A Heritage foundation study found that high crime rates correlate less with race, poverty, or bad neighborhoods than with children growing up fatherless. The numbers are staggering: 60 percent of rapists, 72 percent of adolescent murderers, and 70 percent of long-term prison inmates grew up in fatherless homes." (Jubilee. 3/95).
So she was merely ahead of her times when she said, "[Our] success as a society...depends not on what happens at the White House, but on what happens inside your
house." – Barbara Bush, at the Wellesly College commencement, 1990.
The Ecumenical Process
Robert S. Folkenberg, the president of the General Conference of the Seventh Day Adventist Church, one of the fastest growing churches in the world (from 0 to over 8 million since 1863), put the ecumenical question this way in Ecumenical News International, 5/9/95: "Implicit in the word 'ecumenism' is: you give up something you believe and I give up something I believe so that we both become lukewarm in our togetherness.
Let's dialogue, but let us not necessarily ask each other to set aside something that you have found to be true within God's Word, and sacrifice it for some good which is hard to define when it means that you are something less than you really want to be."
His words are worth pondering for an ELCA poised to plunge into intimate church relationships with the Anglicans and the Reformed. We may gain awed respect from a power-impressionable cultureùbut at the cost of "being less than we really want to be"?
Anything Goes?
Readers will recali from the last issue of this newsletter, FOCL President Gordon Selbo's irenic plea to the homosexual lobby in the Synod to desist from the confrontational, divisive and blatantly defiant of that which keeps us together as Christ's body. His query is worth repeating: "In the game of life one plays by the rulesùin family, school, sports, government. Why not in the church?"
READER RESPONSES
Dear Editor:
I greatly appreciated receiving the Summer 1994 issue. The article by Dr. Ben Johnson, "Theology and the Bible," contributed to the quality of your quarterly newsletter. Both my wife and I concurred with his pertinent remarks and comments as to the nature and message of the Bible. I shall treasure it all my days.
Pastor Bruce Adams Glcngowerie, S.A., Australia
Dear Editor:
In response to my article in the last F0CL-P01NT two correspondents have written that Ross Merkel was elected dean of the East Bay Conference prior to his removal from the ELC A clergy roster. 1 thank them for the correction.
The thrust of my article remains valid, however. Merkel's office as dean was not terminated by action of the synod, the conference, nor his own resignation. And of course, the San Francisco Conference continues to defy the ELCA constitution with its election of a non-ELCA pastor as dean.
Gordon Selbo, President, FOCL
Dear Editor:
A comment on your Autumn 1994 issue. Yes, the church must remain faithful and must remain confessional. When it does so, [it] recognizes that "(It is not necessary for the true unity of the church) that human traditions or rites and ceremonies (or organizing principles) instituted by men should be alike everywhere." (Aug. Conf.. VII). The ELCA is a human and not a divine institution. If the ELCA establishes quotas of one kind or another, that is the ELCA's business.
I appreciated Burtness' article, but while . . . he carefully delineated that the Lutheran confessions and the Scriptures are norms, which norm the understandings of believers in different times, he is unwilling to allow those norms . . . to fulfill their appropriate roles . . . We cannot use the norms as fact or absolute, or we are addressing situations of an earlier age that no longer apply.
I find offensive that Lutherans who should know better, on the one hand rail against the acceptance of all faiths and at the same time advocate for public prayer in the schools.
Bishop Mark B. Herbener Northern Texas Northern Louisiana Synod, ELCA
Dear Editor:
When I am chosen as bishop of the ELCA, the following set of principles will be put into effect. I will strive to:
1) Strengthen and renew the church's adherence to the Bible and the Lutheran Confessions as the sole basis for its life and work, even if this means loosening some ecumenical ties;
2) Increase church membership and restore the church's influence in community life;
3) Streamline the church's bureaucratic structure by eliminating regions and commissions. Essential functions will be reassigned to existing boards;
4) Restore pride in the ministry in order to attract the best men and women to church callings;
5) Eliminate the quota system in order to give equal power and opportunity to all church members;
6) Emphasize stewardship of life and resources, to give the church the wisdom and the means to expand its witness and mission outreach.
If it happens that I am not chosen as bishop, I freely invite all candidates to adopt this platform as their own!
Dr. Albert P. Stauderman Singer Island, FL
Latvian Church Repudiates Women's Ordination
The Evangelical Lutheran Church of Latvia {ELCL) is the first Lutheran World Federation church to discontinue its practice established in 1957 of ordaining women to the pastorate. Archbishop Janis Vanags said it was decided on "hermeneutic grounds", as well as by the majority of the ELCL pastors. Those currently ordained will no longer have the right to administer the sacraments, but can be given the status of "evangelists."
Vanags told Lutheran World Information [7/95], "The arguments for and against women's ordination are well known. The problem is ultimately on a hermeneutic [biblical interpretation] level. The first ordination was performed by Archbishop Matulis in 1957, for which he was heavily criticized....In 1989 the practice was confirmed during the last 20 minutes of a stormy meeting... .My own attitude toward this subject was certainly one of the main reasons for my election in 1993. So the rejection of a woman's ordination was supported by the majority. A survey among pastors also showed that even before 1993 most of them were against [it]."
When reminded that the Swedish synod recently decided that no one may be ordained who rejects women's ordination, Vanags responded, "They argue with reference to human rights, but not theologically."
Dr. Walter Sundberg, Speaker Fall Reformation Rally
RALLY WITH SUNDBERG!
Pastor Gordon Selbo, president of FOCL, announced today that Dr. Walter Sundberg, Luther-Northwestern Seminary, St. Paul, will be the featured speaker for the annual FOCL REFORMATION RALLY, lo be held in a number of Southern California locations theweekendofOctoberl5,andinNorthcrn California the weekend of October 22nd.
Sundberg, the author of more than 60 professional articles in the fields of church history, Christian education and systematic theology, has chaired the history department at his St. Paul institution, taught at Princeton and Philadelphia Lutheran Seminaries, at Augsburg and St. Catherine Colleges, and has been an instructor for the U. S. Army Chaplains Programs. He is a magna cum laude Ph.D. graduate of Princeton, and has studied at the University of Tiibigen in Germany. He is coauthor with Roy Harrisville, Jr. of the new volume on the historical critical method of biblical understandings, The Bible in Modern Culture, published by Eerdmans.
He will headline FOCL's first Reformation Rally thrust into Southern California, where he will be heard at four venues in Orange, San Diego and Los Angeles counties. Specific locations will be given in the next issue of FOCL-POINT. In Northern California his major appearance will be at the traditional REFORMATION RALLY site at Good Shepherd Church in Sacramento at 5 p.m., Sunday, October 22nd. Other appearances are slated for the annual Lutheran Men in Mission convocation at Mt. Cross, and at Grace Church in Palo Alto. Additional northern venues will also be announced in the next FOCI-POINT.
Sundberg is one of a number of brilliant young theologians who have in an admirably scholarly manner resisted the incursions of theological and biblical laxity in the ELCA. As co-editor of THE ROSE, a personal-faith magazine published for ELCA members, Sundberg points out how this laxity erodes a confident Lutheran witness on the ecumenical scene, and hastens the capitulation to moral and theological activists who sacrifice their Lutheran theological heritage for the patina of political correctness.
The FOCL movement with its churchly goal of a "call to the center" has won national and international recognition It strives particularly to reeducate the Lutheran laity in the precious faith entrusted to them. This faith, FOCL believes, is in evident danger, as the ship of the church lurches under the winds of alien doctrines and life-styles that threaten its survival.
President Selbo urged the Lutheran clergy and lay persons of California to attend one of the many Rally sites that will be operating on the two October weekends.