By Rev. Brad Jenson

What is the Church? Answer; "The church is the assembly of all believers among whom the Gospel is preached in its purity and the holy sacraments are administered according to the Gospel," (Augsburg Confession, Article 7).

QUESTION: What is the ELCA? Answer: It is, in part, a religious pseudo-congress.

In Indianapolis, at its recent Church Wide Assembly, the ELCA, amongst other business, conducted its foreign and domestic policy. On the legislative docket in Indianapolis were the following foreign policy resolutions: "Economic Sanctions against Iraq and Cuba," "Stand with Africa," "Support for the Haitian People," "Global Warming," "Asylum Seekers and Refugees," "Israeli-Palestinian Relations," and "Support for the People of Vieques, Puerto Rico." Then there was the ELCA's domestic policy agenda: "Racial Hate Crimes," "Temporary Assistance to Needy Families," "Late-Term Abortion," "Congressional Voting Representation forthe District of Columbia," "Health Care Policy," "The Family Farm," "The Birmingham Pledge," and "Peace." These resolutions percolated up through synodical assemblies to the churchwide assembly.

Why a Congress?

QUESTION: Why gather in a church assembly to function as a pseudo-congress? Answer: There are four reasons given below, in ascending order of importance.

First, after World War II, Lutherans in the United States developed a bad conscience about alleged "Quietism" among many Lutherans in Germany during the Nazis regime-even though the religious situation in Germany at that time was quite complex and it may not have been primarily, or at least not singularly, a matter of theological "quietism.''

Second, the decade of the 1960s-when many of today's mainline Protestant leaders were coming of age-was a time of hyper-activism. Many of these activists as well as their younger counterparts-who come out of seminaries having been taught by the old activists-continue to be drawn to issues which come down the pike as concerns of the secular, political left. Activists old and young convert such secular concerns into resolutions for consideration at synodical and churchwide assemblies.

Third, discussing and supporting such foreign or domestic policy resolutions plays a psychological role as a mood enhancer for liberal-minded assembly-goers. Never mind that such resolutions are often quickly forgotten-sometimes before the end of the assembly! What is important is that it felt so good to be in favor of whatever-it-was.

Fourth, and for Lutherans the most important, is the confessional reason for such resolutions: The loss of both awareness of and confidence in the Doctrine of the Two Kingdoms as professed in the Augsburg Confession, Article 28 and in many other writings of the Lutheran reformers. Furthermore, this doctrine is often confused with the so-called American "wall of separation between church and state." But the Two Kingdoms doctrine is a distinction, not a separation.

The Confessional Results

The practical confessional effect of operating within the Two Kingdoms doctrine is to avoid the pitfalls of quietism on the one hand and hyper-activism on the other. The Two Kingdoms doctrine allows one to understand how the religious left and the religious right are both kissing and hissing cousins. They are kissing cousins in the sense that they operate with the same theological principle, which drives them to attempt to control the state. They are hissing cousins in the sense that they feud over what direction (right or left) to exercise that control.

When he was still a Lutheran, Richard John Neuhaus spoke at the first Call to Faithfulness Conference held at St. Olaf College, Northfield, Minnesota, and made this helpful statement: "On social and political issues where it is not necessary for the church to speak, it is necessary that the church not speak. Where it is necessary to speak to public policy, the church speaks proscriptively and not prescriptively.2" This is not quietism, nor is it hyper-activism. It is an excellent statement about how the Two Kingdoms doctrine ought to function in practice.

For example, it was necessary for the Church to speak against Nazism and the Holocaust during World War II, against the denial of civil rights to African Americans during and prior to the 1960s, and against apartheid in South Africa in the 1970s & 1980s. It is necessary today forthe Church to speakagainst partial birth abortions, against racism, and againstthe rapid erosion of marriage and the family-the consequences of which are increasingly measured in violence and death. Such speaking is proscriptive which means that the church speaks against something.

But when the Church speaks in this way, it does not speak p rescripti vely (i.e., it does not call for support for particular pieces of legislation or other government action). Even when it is not necessary for the Church as a whole to speak, individual Christians are free to participate in public policy issues as they see fit-as citizens-but not in the name of the Church.

For Freedom We Are Set Free

A return to the Doctrine of the Two Kingdoms would help the ELCA focus more clearly and effectively on the task of sharing the Gospel with an increasingly unchurched culture in this country and around the world. But such a return is not merely aconceptual matter because the ELCA-along with all mainline churches-is in bondage to the spirit of political correctness and cannot free itself. Political correctness is not only a political movement which has obscured the Doctrine of the Two Kingdoms in Lutheranism, it is a bondage which can be described in Pauline terms as the Church having turned back "to the weak and beggarly elemental spirits, whose slaves [the Church] wants to be once more," (Galatians 4: 9}. Since the church wills this bondage, don't look for things to change anytime soon. So, watch for further mood enhancers in the next pre-assembly CWA packet, as ELCA assemblies continue to play-act as a congress conducting foreign and domestic policy and feeling so good about doing so.

Pastor Jenson serves at Kenwood Lutheran Church, Duluth, Minnesota