Where from Human Rights?
By George H Muedeking
Do human rights inhere or are they conferred? America's founders thought they were embedded in the scheme of creation itself. The Declaration insists, "endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights."
Legal reflections surrounding the Roe-Wade abortion decision and the Court's subsequent support in further test cases exhibit the belief that human rights are conferred. Pro-abortionists assert a woman has an inherent "right to choose." This is not the case. In aborting, the mother exercises the "right to choose," but not for her life. She is choosing for or against the life of her unborn child. That is, she is conferring the right of life to her baby.
This enormous shift in the basic moral principle of right to life, upon which our nation was built and all human history is conducted, had to be made more palatable. It was done, particularly by Justice Blackmun, with the argument that since the philosophers and religionists of history couldn't agree on when life started in the womb, the conscience didn't have to bother with the question of the rights of the woman in the womb, but only with the wishes of that woman's mother.
Striking advances in intrauterine photography have exploded that comforting refuge. The womb-child is enormously alive!
Likewise, the most recent controversies, and the Supreme Court's negative decision on the Nebraska statute against "partial birth abortion" have pushed the issue up front again. Since the child is already "born" (all but the head of the baby has seen the light of day), we are bound to ask, "Does killing the child in abortion deprive that child of its most basic inherent right - the right to life? Or is that right simply "conferred" by the mother, so that the baby's life has no intrinsic value, but has only such value as the mother chooses to give it by finishing the birthing process?"
Astonishingly, abortion advocates like the National Abortion and Reproductive Rights Action League have now openly gone over the edge into infanticide. They have claimed that even fully formed infants who have survived abortion attempts can be disposed of. NARAL says that legally protecting the Now-born from a successful second death attempt conflicts with Roe-Wade, because that decision "clearly states that women have the right to choose prior to fetal viability."
The "culture of death" has so widely insinuated itself into our moral consensus - even among Christians - that we can no longer take the convictions of the Declaration of Independence for granted. A survey of nearly 10,000 abortion patients, conducted by the Alan Guttmacher Institute in 1994-95, revealed that Catholics were as likely as women in the general population to have an abortion, while Protestants were 69 percent, and evangelical or bornagain Christians were at 39 percent.
Perhaps it is time to revisit the human rights question? Can we do it as Christian theologians this time, instead of as political theorists? If so, we would begin with the recognition that humans have no rights. That is, existence in and of itself does not carry any guarantees or protections. An old radio can be junked; a building can be demolished; an ambitious dandelion can be excavated. Anything can be un-thinged without incurring any guilt, provided value has not been added to it, that is, conferred upon it from the outside.
Where then would that "wanted-ness, "that value, come from, particularly in the case of the biosphere? The Genesis narrative tells us: "God saw everything that he had made, and indeed, it was very good." Life is valued by God. Individual existences that possess life are of value to Him.
Gradations of "wanted-ness" are asserted in Genesis 1 :20. Rulership over fish, birds, wild and domestic beasts and "every moving thing," is assigned to humans. We call it "stewardship." Nothing of creation is waste-worthy. Jesus extends this to the Father's stewardship oversight of the plight of an individual bird.
The American patriarchs were correct in assigning endowed, that is, conferred rights given from the hand of the Creator, to humans as humans. They did not tell us why, however. The reason is, when we look upon each other we are looking at someone desired by the Creator. Our value lies in being of value to Him. Because only the human sector of creation is made in Elohim's image and likeness, humanity can be said to be gifted by God's protectiveness for what is His own treasure.
When Jesus names Him “Father,” we move even higher. Our rights reside in the value of family, of child privileges granted to no one outside the circle. We are in the domain of exclusivity rights.
These rights are not ours by virtue of our existence. Nor are they conferred upon us by the state, as so much of present legal theory holds when it embraces the relativity of law in general. Certainly "rights" are not ours at the whim of another human, as in the pro-choice model of abortion, or in the "post-modern" assertion that morals are but the imposition of the powerful. Rights are gifted to us, "endowed."
Can such rights be abrogated or taken back? Yes, but only by the gift giver. The value of a gift can be renounced, assigned to zero. This eventuality is what the American political theorists did not count on that God might take back His appraisal of humanity's worth to Himself. Then there would be no "inalienable rights" for us to assert over against each other.
The biblical Scriptures assert this did happen, but in a reverse dynamic. It was not that God redefined His evaluation of humanity. Humans themselves decided how much they ought to be esteemed by God. Adam and his descendants divided themselves off from the will and purpose of their Creator. "I'll do it my way," became their mantra. Humanity moved itself outside the family circle.
This daily decision the Bible calls sin, or "sinfulness." The Reformation theologians describe it as being "without fear of God, without trust in God, and full of evil lust and inclinations from their mothers' wombs." (Augsburg Confession, Article II; conflating the German and Latin translations).
No better illustration of our rights-less relationship to God can be found than in Jesus' parable of the Prodigal Son. Brazenly the younger son put in a pseudo-claim to the rights of sonship. "Give me the share of the property that belongs to me [when you expire]." This would be a legitimate claim only if the father were dead. But because of the esteem in which he held this overbearing and impertinent child, the father granted the request as though it actually were a "right." The reality: it precisely was a gift, pure and simple, because only the father's decease could activate the inheritance.
As does the rest of humanity, the prodigal spent his gift capital. As we, he tried to do it his way, to go it alone. He depleted his spiritual capital, abusing the blessings which the Father had lavished freely. All the while, he and we divert attention from the responsibility for our diminishing circumstances by whining about the responsibility of society to restore us ("but no one gave him anything. "). Give us our rights!
When he came to himself (what a phrase - where was he before?) the prodigal said, "I'm going home; I'm going to tell my father, 'I am no longer worthy to be called your son.' Just don't let me die.''' Will the father have him back?
Incomparable love! Amazing grace! While the rebel is yet barely perceptible at the end of that long lane, the "waiting father" hurries out to welcome and embrace him. "My son, my son!! You were dead and now you are alive again; you were lost and now you are found; you are back in the family. All the rights of sonship are yours again - the ring, the best clothes, the restoration."
Christian faith knows what moved that father's heart. 8t Paul ponders in Ephesians: "The great love wherewith He loved us." That explains it? No, it only describes its happening. That divine love is not prompted by any groomed appearance of the prodigal; he is in rags.
Christian faith knows what moved that father's heart. 8t Paul ponders in Ephesians: "The great love wherewith He loved us." That explains it? No, it only describes its happening. That divine love is not prompted by any groomed appearance of the prodigal; he is in rags.
It is exercised rather, says St Paul in 2nd Corinthians, because "God was in Christ reconciling the world to Himself. He made him to be sin for us, He who knew no sin, so that we might be made the righteousness of God in Him."
In His topsy-turvy way of doing things, when it was God's turn, He chose the Prodigal's own Elder Brother to make possible the restoration into the family. Our Elder Brother Jesus (Hebrews 2) sold Himself into the slavery of death on the cross (Philippians 2) so His brothers might be returned to the sonship they had so thoroughly abused (Genesis 37).
The children's rights in the Father's family are restored by what Jesus did for them on the cross. This was the act of making us, self-willed defiant children, reconciled to our Father.
So human rights are gifted back to us again. In turn, because they are gifts and we do not own them in any way, they can be shared with our fellow humans. We can say of each person, "You and I have been restored to the family of God. Our rights, so shamefully despised by us when first granted to humanity, are now restored, gifted back. Therefore, count on me to respect them as they are re-conferred on you. They are not ours; they are alone granted us by God."
AIDS Is A Catastrophe
By Sonia P. Omulepu*
[Editor's Note): When reading this tragic account, remember that AIDS is one of a few entirely preventable diseases. Simple practice of biblical principles of living, i.e., total celibacy outside heterosexual marriage, would stop this plague in its tracks. Would that our church's leadership would assert this fact courageously and faithfully.]
It is estimated that during the year 2000,3.8 million people became infected with HIV in sub-Saharan Africa, bringing the total number of people living with HIV/AIDS in the region to 25.3 million, an increase of nearly a million from the figures of 1999. Concurrently, 2.4 million people died in Africa of AIDS in the year 2000, up from 2.2 million people last year. (UN Program on HIV/AIDS and World Health Organization December 2000).
According to Dr. Peter Piot, Executive Director of UNAIDS, "the AIDS situation in Africa is catastrophic - the region continues to lead the list as the world's most affected region. It faces a triple challenge providing care for the growing population of people infected with HIV, bringing down the infections through more effective prevention and coping with the impact of 17 million deaths on the continent."
These mind-numbing statistics demonstrate the level of suffering of the people in that region and support the opinion that a whole generation will be lost to this pandemic. The International Labor Organization estimates that by the year 2020 five countries including South Africa will lose up to a quarter of its work force. In Botswana 30 percent of the adult population is HIV-positive. In Zimbabwe, and Swaziland the infection rate is 25 percent. Lesotho is at 24 percent. In Namibia, South Africa and Zambia the figure is 20 percent.
Thirty to sixty percent of infants will be born with the virus, and their life expectancy is less than two years, estimates Lester Brown of Worldwatch Institute.
Women and children are the most vulnerable, thus causing the ultimate decline of the population in [the] region. He states: "the wholesale death of young adults in Africa is creating millions of orphans. By 2010, Africa is expected to have 40 million orphans."
The Botswana Christian Council has taken a bold step to educate its churches on the conditions of its AIDS orphans through their project Africa Praying. Supported by the World Council of Churches, Africa Praying has produced a video to sensitize and mobilize the churches on the pandemic. It is estimated that there are 65-85,000 orphans in Botswana. According to Evelyn Appiah, staff person of the WCC, this initiative, the brain child of Dr. Musa W. Dube Shomanah, "is an inspiring project" that could be used by other churches in responding to the HIV/ AIDS pandemic.
United Methodist Church's Global Ministries Board is also actively involved in helping to relieve the suffering AIDS orphans. The Uzumba Orphan Trust, is such a program in Zimbabwe. Through its fund, children whose parents have died of AIDS are able to remain in their homes where caregivers are assigned to attend to their needs.
Uganda has become a model for other countries, says Worldwatch, as the infected adult population has dropped from 14 percent in the early 1990s to eight percent in 2000. In Zambia the government has mobilized the health, education, agricultural, industrial sectors and church groups, in an effort to curb the spread ofthe virus; the infected share of young females in some cities has dropped by nearly half since 1993.
Dr. Peter Piot, believes a broad social mobilization is essential in the response of AIDS, he said, "This is not a question of government action in isolation, but a question of mass, sustained action. Every church, every village, every association needs to be involved in this pandemic because every church and every village has been touched by it."
On December 9, 2000 the new Ecumenical Advocacy Alliance pledged itself to tackle the issue of HIV/AIDS, and to develop an educational approach as well as a specific strategy. In a communique of its meeting, the Alliance referred to HIV/AIDS pandemic as one of the gravest challenges to health and "to prospects of social and economic development and global security." HIV/AIDS' impact is a symptom of "systematic economic problems such as under investment in health and unequal access to effective treatment." As an example, for every US dollar spent on health care in Zambia, four dollars are spent on reducing international debt. The Ecumenical Advocacy Alliance will bring specific ethical and theological perspectives to the international policy debate. "The churches must accept that the virus affects us as a community. We are not called to simply offer charity, but we are challenged to see that we all belong to the body of Christ. The suffering caused by HIV/AIDS affects all of us. We are reminded to recognize that the crisis of AIDS is our crisis."
*Sonia Omulepu is Special Projects Officer and administrator of the United States Office of the World Council of Churches in New York. Reprinted from ECUMENICAL COURIER, Dec 2000
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LUTHER ON THE WORD
When confronted by an uncomplicated Christian who wants to know why a Bible passage like John 14: 6 can be ignored in our religiously permissive climate today, a cluster of religious leaders will assure the naive inquirer that the Bible has many interpretations and interpreters-so surely we cannot be bound by any particular words from the Bible. So Jesus' words "No one comes to the Father but by Me, " must be set aside. They are too exclusive and cause affront - never mind the question, "Are they true?" Asserting the revolutionary conviction that the "Word Alone" could direct the faith of the Church, Luther had also to commit himself to a specific attitude toward that Word: This is the will of the Father, that we be intent on hearing what the Man Christ has to say, that we listen to His Word. You must not cavil at His Word, find fault with it, and dispute it. Just hear it. Then the Holy Spirit will come and prepare your heart, that you may sincerely believe the preaching of the divine Word, even give up your life for it, and say, "This is God's Word and the pure truth." But if you insist that you be heard, that your reason interpret Christ's Word, if you presume to play the master of the Word, to propound other doctrines; if you probe, measure if, and twist the words to read as you want them to, brood over them, hesitate, doubt, and then judge them according to your reason-that is not hearing the Word or being its pupil. Then you are setting yourself up as its schoolmaster. In that way you will never discover the meaning of Christ's Word. (LW 23: 229)The ELCA-WHO DAT?
By Dr. George H Muedeking, Editor
Many moons ago I arrived at 5th Ave & 5th St, Minneapolis, as the new editor of the Lutheran Standard, the official publication of the American Lutheran Church. The building also housed the national offices of the ALC.
Quickly enough I had a major task thrown my way. Letters to the editor berated the ALC - principally for its secret Communist connections through the World Council of Churches; but also for its misdirected gospel that equated social justice with the good news about Jesus Christ. And always, for its substitution of a new liturgy and formalism for the vibrant relationship with the Deity we claimed to worship. This supine giant, the ALC, was as close to death as it could be. Would the Lutheran Standard either help perform the last rites, or inject the dying body with enough spirit to give it at least a Hezekiah-jolt (II Kings 20)?
I set about finding this "American Lutheran Church," so that I might respond to the letters. I looked high and low in that building. Would you believe it - I could find no American Lutheran Church. It wasn't there!
It wasn't anywhere. All I found was Dr. Fredrik Axel Schiotz behind the door labeled President. And Drs. Larson, Vice President; Schultz, Ex. Sec. Bd. of Trustees; Lechleitner, Ex. Sec. Div. of American Missions; Fricke, Ex. Sec. Div. of World Missions; and, and, and. But NO American Lutheran Church.
It wasn't anywhere. All I found was Dr. Fredrik Axel Schiotz behind the door labeled President. And Drs. Larson, Vice President; Schultz, Ex. Sec. Bd. ofTrustees; Lechleitner, Ex. Sec. Div. of American Missions; Fricke, ExSec. Div. of World Missions; and, and, and. But NO American Lutheran Church.
This Schiotz man? He was high in the councils of the WCC, president of the Lutheran World Federation, and preeminent church leader. Single-handedly he was bringing into unity the merging components of the ALC. In sharp contrast to his Scandinavian heritage, every emotion he ever had was written large on his face. This transparent leader was no communist or fellow-traveler, obviously. The same was true of all the other national office dwellers. Their integrity and their intense desire to keep the ALC at its business of sharing the good news of Christ was clear.
So where was this renegade ALC my correspondents were haranguing about? Where was the ALC itself, which the Lutheran Standard officially represented? The answer had to be: the only American Lutheran Church that existed was Dr. Schiotz, each elected and directing official, and each individual in the two and a half million members gathered in congregations across the world. The ALC was essentially just a name for a COLLECTIVE; it was not a THING.
This recognition changed the burden of editing the Lutheran Standard. From now on, I would not have to denounce "the ALC" for its lifelessness. There was no such THING, no live or dead ALC. There was only each individual pastor, perhaps lazying off his precious days; only each individual member allowing himself to be distracted from the single job Christ assigned his people, that is, to share the good news about the death and resurrection of the Savior. There was no ALC perverting the "whole counsel of God" in favor of only yelping for more social justice for everybody. There was only this writer, that program spewed out by an executive, or some religion professor regurgitating the theological cliches of the day.The ALC wasn't soft on abortion.
It wasn't violating the Biblical directives on feminine church leadership, or hobnobbing dangerously with the Catholics, or spoiling our worship with cognitive dissonances and emotive turmoil from its forced revisions of the Lord's
Prayer, the Creeds and the unsingable hymns of the new green hymnal.
No, not the American Lutheran Church. It was rather, the individual members of the Church Council, each one individually and separately, who had voted in these aberrations, along with the individual church officials who had talked the convention delegates into adopting them plus those individual delegates who had allowed themselves to be persuaded, and the raft of pastors who had so meekly accepted these new directions. That was theALC. Nothing else.
It should not have been so difficult for an editor with his graduate degree in Philosophy to have caught on to the fact that the ALC is no THING, or that the Republican Party or the United States or the Church are not things. They are but names for a conglomerate of individual existences having similar identified characteristics. They are collectives.
This distinction was uncovered a thousand years ago by the Schoolmen of the medieval universities. They remembered that Plato taught that IDEAS have an existence of their own in some eternal realm, and are real in their own right. Aristotle, however, insisted that individuals were identified by their similarities of quality and structure. He became the first scientist, grouping similarities and asking why. The School men reached down to Luther's day, and were called Universalists or Realists (Plato's IDEAS) and Nominalists (where a "name" is given to similarly qualified existences Aristotle's and Luther's position).
The Nominalists would have said for instance, a business corporation can be a legal THING, that is, a legal fiction, a "body" or corpus created in law to assess responsibility and accountability. But it is not a thing in itself. Though it can be sued legally, as if it were a person, one can walk the earth and not find a General Motors, but only dealers and mechanics and salesmen and owned artifacts like Buicks on the display room floor.
When St Paul talks about the Church as Christ's body, one can search the world and never find it. Instead, one will discover this member and that member functioning for the welfare of the other members, an eye helping the ear. (I Cor.12: 14ff). That is what "Church" is - an association of people named Christians. So Church exists as associations of two or three gathered in his name, on to millions confessing, "Christ is Lord." But the Church is not a THING, an invisible something superexisting beyond our perception.
As editor, I found this distinction helpful between a Church which the theologians and the Realists were always talking about, and the Church the Nominalists knew about. The ALC was best understood as a collective name for individuals who tagged themselves with that name because they supported certain mission, education, and social activist programs. And that was all it was. It truly was: Dr. Schiotz, ecclesiastics of many stripes, and members scattered abroad.
To think like the medieval Realists is much more convenient, of course. "Pastor, who in the world moved that baptismal font into the back of the church, instead of staying up front center to remind us that Baptism is our entry gate into the heaven lies?" "Well, at our last Council meeting, the Council decided to do that." ("And I hope they don't tell you I was the one who talked them into it.")
Contrastingly, when a Nominalist berates the "Evangelical Lutheran Church in America" for some deviation, extravagance or stupidity, he recognizes he is talking about nobody and nothing. The ELCA is a nothing. Use a contemporary example. As Nominalists we would say, "H. George Anderson is our presiding bishop. He and his cohorts at 8765 Higgins Road, Chicago, have pushed 5 million people who name themselves 'ELCA,' into swallowing an 'historic Episcopate' as' the unconditional requirement for full fellowship with the 2 and 1/2 million people in the U.S. who use the name, Episcopal Church USA."
As medieval Realists, the Higgins Road dwellers, however, pass off the responsibility for this act onto the ELGA. At its "Ghurchwide Assembly it punched a voter card. "It" resolved in Denver in 1999 to adopt the CCM with the Episcopalians.
Even their own machinations, however, testify against this attempted sleight of hand. Remember how the vote got passed? They protested over and over again to the members of the Denver Assembly that the voters had no responsibility to the people who had paid their fare to Denver. They insisted the Assembly members in no way represented the ELCA. Rather, the voting members were repeatedly assured by these leaders that they, as voters, were the ELCA itself. They were to consider themselves to be the only ELCA in existence at that moment, and so were free to pass this doctrinal heresy of the compulsory "hE." They owed nothing to those who paid their way to Denver, that is, to those 22 synod assemblies which had by motion flatly rejected the terms of agreement (the CCM) with the Episcopalians. All unknowing, those leaders therefore reinforced the truth that the "ELCA" is but a name for a gathering of responsible voters, not a THING in itself.
Getting straight on the difference between a thing and a name, has implications for our FOCL-POINT readers. We should quit pummeling, beating up on, even flaying the ELCA for its unbiblical, unconfessional, politically correct and self-centered behavior over against the precious Reformation truth, "Word alone, Faith Alone, Grace Alone." Don't waste your time targeting the ELCA. It's as vain as trying to nail a square of senior-club potluck jello to a tree. There is no such THING as "the ELCA," except as a legal fiction for assigning responsibilities and account-abilities.
There is only a given church official who has misled the faithful, a given assembly voting member who got manipulated from the platform, a given seminary professor who denies the reliability of Scripture, a given pastor who has forsaken the allsufficient Christ and His salvation in exchange for the mess of pottage that all humanity will be saved regardless.
Testify against that misleading by that particular person. For the nothing called the ELCA didn't do it. The ELCA is a no THING, it is NO-thing. It is nothing. Speak the name and testify instead against the true perpetrator, whoever he or she may be, of these ills that have befallen the people who call themselves the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America. And pray earnestly that more ELCAers will recover biblical, evangelical and confessional faithfulness to our Christian heritage.Perspectives
We Ain't Leaving: Roger Eigenfeld, chair of the WordAloneNetwork (WAN), says of his movement's resistance to the forced imposition of the Episcopalian's "Historic Episcopate" upon the ELCA:
"We know who we are - Lutheran Christians who boldly accept the sufficiency of Jesus Christ alone for our salvation. We also are knowledgeable about the Lutheran Confessions, and in particular, Article VII and the truth it states, that it is not necessary for the true unity of the Christian church that ceremonies, instituted by men, should be observed uniformly in all places. When it comes to the mandatory imposition of an historic episcopate upon the life of the ELCA we will boldly and confidently resist and refuse to comply.
"What this means is that we're not going to allow ourselves to be forced into a corner with nowhere to go. The options before us are significant and the possibilities for renewal of the ELCA are immense if we are willing to abide by the truth and stick together as a movement.
"It needs to be said again and again 'we ain't going!' This is our church and we are not going to let it be taken away by 1 ,039 voting members who decided on Aug. 19,1999, to change the theology of the ELCA and mock the Lutheran Confessions." Or, as Pastor David Householder so ably put it: . "Don't walk out - when the divorce comes, we get the house."
Moral Mandate
Prof. Joseph Olson of Hamline Univ has researched the election results:Counties won by Gore: 677-by Bush: 2434.
Population of counties won by Gore: 127 million-by Bush: 143 million.Square miles of counties won by Gore: 580,000 - by Bush: 2,427,000.
States won by Gore: 19- by Bush: 31.Murder rate per 100,000 residents in counties won by Gore: 13.2 - by Bush: 2.1.
Generation X: With ministry names like Tribal Generation, Jesus Freak, 24-7, and Culture Shift, it's obvious that the next generation has some different ideas about church.
. . . Generation X Christians are radically changing the church, according to Discipling A Whole Nation, an international church-planting ministry. The generation of 18 to 35year-olds, less concerned about structure and hierarchy, are disconnected from traditional churches and starting small, informal fellowships, the ministry reported.
. . . The churches meet in homes, coffee shops, warehouses, fast-food restaurants, industrial complexes, parks, and other unconventional places, according to DAWN. Most of them are not associated with denominations because they feel that traditional churches don't have much to offer. The fellowships spawn other worship groups, forming "clusters" throughout a region, according to DAWN.
. . . The new churches are spreading through Western Europe, where traditional churches are losing members, DAWN reported. There are about 2,000 such fellowships in Denmark, England, Germany, Ireland, Norway, Scotland, Spain, Sweden, and Switzerland, DAWN's Wolfgang Fernandez estimated. Similar movements are springing up in Africa, Asia, and the Americas.
The church planting movement reflects Gen X values, Karsten Wolf, a German youth leader, told Dawn. The small groups emphasize personal relationships and avoid formalities associated with traditional church services and denominational hierarchies, he said. Many are reluctant to refer to their services as "church" because of the association with what they see as dry liturgies and stodgy worship.
. . . Young people feel stifled in a traditional church environment and want the freedom to experiment, Fernandez said. He recognized this while attending a DAWN Congress in Norway when he noticed that pastors were discouraged but young people were vibrant.
. . . The young people "were excited and had many thrilling stories of hundreds of young people being won to Christ," he said. But the pastors "had no eye to see this new wave of the spirit of the youth. It didn't fit the framework of their seminary training and their ordination into ministry. They didn't see any [way it] fit with their services on Sunday mornings."
. . .The young Norwegians "were being given permission to be youth groups - but not church," Fernandez said. "These young people were crying out, 'Hey, we want to be the church, we want to do it differently, we want to baptize our own people we are winning to Jesus. And we want to be able to explain faith to them in a language that makes sense to them.' "
. . .The movement has the potential to create the church of the future, Wolf told DAWN. Generation X is the largest the world has ever seen, with a population of approximately 2 billion, including 80 million in the United States, DAWN reported. "The young people of today, in 10 years or less, will be the society of the nations. That's why, if we shape the new models of church today, we are shaping the church of the future," Wolf said.
March 2001
Dear Friends in Christ:
Change is in the air. Big change. Maybe even changes we've all been praying for.
Confessionally-minded people from all over the nation are coming together within congregations, regional gatherings, and national conventions to bring about change. If ever there were a time that you could have a direct impact on church renewal, this is it.
Now is the time to act boldly. Now is the time to get involved. Now is the time to support those organizations that are in the middle of the struggle for church renewal. It is truly a kairos moment. And with your contribution to FOCL, you can join with thousands across the church who are becoming agents of renewal at this time of change.
For over ten years FOCL has "encouraged biblical, confessional and evangelical faithfulness" within the ELCA. In fact, FOCL was one of the first to question the loosening theological moorings emerging within the leadership of the newly merged church.
Now, FOCL's message of hope and church renewal reaches well over 20,000 Lutherans around the nation through our web site and through our free quarterly publication, FOCL POINT. That's 20,000 reasons for your generous gift. 20,000 people who are armed with important information that they otherwise might never have.
In addition, FOCl continues to offer annual "Satis Est" scholarships to biblically and confessionally faithful individuals whose advanced studies will bring added help to the crusade for church renewal in the years ahead. We believe that we are making a difference. We think we are helping bring change to the ElCA. And if our mail is any indication, so do our readers.
Critical decisions about the future course of our church lie directly in front of us, in Phoenix this month as the WordAlone adherents gather, and in Indianapolis this summer when the Churchwide assembly re-convenes. There is so much to do, so much information to get out, so many people to mobilize, and we are counting on YOU to help.
So, during this season of Lent, we hope you will share with us in the proclamation that the Word alone is sufficient, and that Jesus Christ alone is our salvation and way to the Father. Please use the Reply Memorandum on the back of this page to send in whatever gift you can.
Yes, change is coming. This is what we've been struggling for. WE MUST SEIZE THE MOMENT. Won't you join us?
In Christ,
Alan Waite, Asst. Editor FOCl POINT