By Rev. Dr. George Muedeking
As editor of the American Lutheran Church's official publication, the Lutheran Standard, my predecessor, Dr. Schramm, gave each ALC convention a name. I discontinued the practice, but many attending the 1995 ELCA Assembly asked, "What are your impressions of this meeting?" I share some of them with our FOCL-POINT readers, in lieu of the news reports which are otherwise available.
This Assembly was a living theater of the early 20th century's three-ring psychoanalytic circus. Freud and Sex: Adler and Power, Jung and Religion – they were all there.
Freud and the Assembly
Sex issues popped up like eradicable weeds. The ELCA Church Council tried to keep them down by sanitizing the ground beforehand. It told the Assembly that the infamous document, "The Church and Human Sexuality," whose release by the Commission for Church in Society in 1993 had precipitated a firestorm of protest throughout the Church, would not be offered for approval. So also with its 1994 rewrite, "Human Sexuality." No "Social Statement" on the subject would be reinitiated until after the ! 997 Assembly. Reason: the ELCA is too "confused" [read: divided 80%-20% against approving homosexual behavior, premarital and extramarital sex, and promoting condoms to prevent Sexually Transmitted Diseases].
Delegates grasped at the Council's proposal as a way out. Those who represented the radicalizing of sexual mores were glad to get a few more years to reeducate all the unenlightened Midwestern Lutherans (see Robert Bene's article, "Losing the Ball on the One Yard Line" in the last issue of FOCL-POINT). The others were pleased as well. They trusted that the Scriptures, historic church ethics and theology, and society's uniform experience regarding intact families and proscribed forms of sexual extravagances, will be convicting enough to determine acceptable parameters of human sexuality.
Not all delegates were happy with the Council's recommendation, however. From a 40 minute go-around over the very first Assembly resolution to hit the floor, the homosexual lobby pushed its opinion that the Church was forfeiting its ministry toward this group with its Scripture-based and centuries-long warning against homosexual behavior. The way to ministry, these advocates held, should rather be to welcome them and affirm their behavioral inclinations asa"gift of God."
To impress the delegates, a homosexual worship celebration of Holy Communion was mounted in the church edifice next door, during the Assembly hours, with – believe it or not – one of the ELCA's own bishops as the promotional preacher.
But this unremitting effort to get the Assembly to legitimate and endorse this life style came apart dramatically. One Texas delegate, announcing that he had brought along his homosexual partner, moved that the Assembly approve not only homosexual, but also "bisexual," behavior. He explained that his proposed substitute resolution would "include people of all sexual orientations."
It suddenly came clear that the ELCA was being propelled beyond the simplistic assertions that "committed loving relationships" between same-sex partners were all the ELCA was being badgered into endorsing. Alarmed delegates then rushed to the microphones, pointing out that necrophilia, zoophilia, and pedophilia would also be detailed for subsequent Assembly approval, were the Assembly to unchain the Freudian libido in this fashion. One agitated African-American woman delegate summarized the issue: "We want our children to be HOLY!" And thus SEX was maneuvered back into its cage for the time being – but only for sure until "after 1997."
Adler and the Assembly
The Assembly also went to validating Adler's humans as being essentially a brood of power-seekers. Many celebratory Assembly events underlined this year as the 25th anniversary of women's ordination, Lutheranism has always accepted the Bible's comment that "God is no respecter of persons." It has affirmed that by our baptism all are ordained to "the priesthood of believers."
Despite this, thejudgment was often voicedin these celebrations thatwomen's ordination is a matter of equality and justice, as though Christ's women are not accorded equality before Him. The issue then must be understood more carefullyùdoes ordination confer an Adlerian power-base otherwise unavailable to the baptized believer? Evidently it is thought so to do, both by the many speakers who applauded women's rise to the clerical status, as weli as by those who carped repeatedly that authority positions in the clergy ranks were still largely agrey-hairedand undeserved masculine advantage.
How intense is this search for power by thefeministmovementinthis Church, was demonstrated by the rise of April Larson to the final runoff ballot for Bishop of the ELCA. She is bishop of the smallest of the ELCA's synods and possesses only a biennium of ecclesial leadership experience.
This thirst for Adlerian power was not confined to gender, however. When the Church Council proposed a triennial over a biennial Assembly, objectors called attention to the distrustthroughout the ELCA of the national office leadership cadre. A three-year interval would only augment this disconnect. The Assembly agreed, and turned back the proposal, despite the reminder from ELCA Secretary, Lowell Almen, that each Assembly costs $1.5 million from budgeted funds.
In addition, another 25 per cent of the total cost is given in grant funds from outside donors, and ELCA staff time devoted to preparing for an upcoming Assembly goes uncalculated in these costs.
Ultimate power of persuasion and leadership of the ELCA lies with the Bishop of the Church. On every count, the need to fill this power-position occupied the major interest of the delegates. The election of H. George Anderson, who had both seminary and college presidency incumbencies, both ALC and LCA ecclesiastical expertise, and asolid theological career as achurch historian, convinced the delegates that church-power would rest most becomingly on his head.
That he chose to conclude his acceptance address with the hymnic Te Deum, "Holy God We Praise Thy Name," with its total affirmation of the historic Church'sdoctrinesofthe Trinity, bodes well for the direction of his leadership, hinting that it will exhibit a perceptible appreciation of Lutheran conservation-theology and practice.
Jung and the Assembly
Psychoanalytic Jungianism was at the Assembly also. As Jung had corrected theexcess of naively viewing the human being as only either a sex-drive or a power-drive, so this Assembly endorsed Jung's conviction that religion is the ultimate driver of and explanation for the human enterprise.
Jung, of course, was no traditional religionist who got his bearings from orthodox Christianity. Like the opponents of early Christianity, he was a "Gnostic," one who possesses the secret psychic wisdom, gnosis, which is denied to the traditional Christian Church, its creeds and its run-of-the-mill members. So in this Assembly, there were frequent outbursts of Gnosticism. A bishop opined, for example, in relation to the substitute resolution advocating bisexual behavior, "I sensed my confusion and uncertainty. If we are to err we should err on the side of grace. So I accept the substitute."
This was, of course, an appeal to secret wisdom, denied to a Church that holds dear the Holy Scriptures which everywhere and in all instances, denounces and repudiates this life-style. It apparently never occurred to this ecclesiastic that grace would best be exercised not by affirming these activities, but by warning and alerting those who practice them that forgiveness is available from a grace-filled God, and that it must be sought. Just as grace is available and must be sought by every other sinner who trespasses the Biblical mandates.
To escape the Gnosticism trap, it was of no help for the Bishop of the Church to include in his farewell address the lengthy admonition that the ELCA must"usethe Bible with care," exploiting the old chestnut that we do not "worship the Bible in the ELCA." This also is Gnostic esoteria, alleging that only the elite have the gnosis to tell us what we may believe from our Bibles. It comes with minimal sensitivity in aChurch that in its constitution accepts that very Bible as its normative mentorfor faith and life.
Meanwhile, FOCL-POINT readers, eager to affirm the blessings of God visited upon the ELCA, will rejoice that it was not only Gnostic religionists who walked the halls of the Minneapolis Convention Center.
Stalwart lay delegates especially, but also brave and loyal clergy, rose up again and again, sometimes in noticeably hostile environs, to reassert the ELCA's commitment to the Holy Scriptures as the sufficient guide for the Church's faith and life. Repudiating Gnosticism, they testified that their own and their Church's embracing of the God-relationship must be mediated through the Scriptures as the "means" of grace.
Paul and the Assembly
Moving through all this psychoanalytic theater was a pervasive desire that the conflicts and divisiveness which have characterized this Church since its formation, must be mitigated. The election of H. George Anderson as bishop of the church, a man who vowed "to listen" to the Church, and whose administrative and ecumenical experiences vouchsafed a practiced collegiality, was solid affirmation of this intention to unify the Church. Staving off every hasty attempt to position the Church over against the explosive issues of sex, ecumenical commitments with the Reformed and Anglican denominations, sacramental practices, and Church Orders, the delegates opted for the hope that by the 1997 Assembly in Philadelphia, the Church would have found a unity in faith and practice that until this moment has escaped it in its role as a Lutheran voice in a suspicious and increasingly self-directed culture.
Pessimistically one could then have named this the "wallpaper convention" – every body about the business of papering over the cracks and fissures; optimistically one will name it the "Pauline Philippian Assembly"ù forgetting what lies behind, we press on toward the upward call of God in Christ Jesus.
More Reformation Rallies Slated For October
FOCL's determination to make historic Lutheran "conservation-theology" available to all of California has received a big boost. Dr. Walter Sundberg, church history faculty at Luther Seminary, who is this year's Reformation Rally speaker, will appear not only at three events in Northern Caiifornia during the weekend of Oct. 22, but will also speak at three sites in Southern California on the weekend of Oct. 15.
Sundberg is one of a number of brilliant young theologians who has resisted the incursionsof theological and biblical laxity in the ELCA.
He has authored more than 60 professional articles in three fields of theology, is co-editor with Gracia Grindal of THE ROSE, a personal-faith magazine published for ELCA members, and co-author with Roy Harrisville, Jr. of the new volume on the historical critical method of biblical understandings, The Bible in Modern Culture, published by Eerdmans.
Sundberg's Northern California appearances will be at St. Ansgar Church in Salinas, Friday, Oct. 20th al7p.m. and at Grace Church, Palo Alto, for its two Sunday morning services at 8 and 10:30 a.m. and the9:15 a.m. Adult Forum. The annual FOCL REFORMATION RALLY itself will be staged at St. Timothy Church, 5100 Camden Ave., San Jose, at 5 p.m. on Sunday, Oct. 22.
The earlier annual Northern California rally site announced in the last issue of FOCL-POINT to have been at Good Shepherd Church, Sacramentoù has been relinquished this year and moved to San Jose. Concern not to interfere with the final night of Billy Graham's only North American Crusade appearance, meeting in Sacramento that same evening, prompted the change of place.
FOCL board president, Gordon Selbo also noted that the new rally site in San Jose will giveloya! Lutherans on the Peninsula and the East Bay the opportunity to join this annual FOCL "call to the center" of the Lutheran faith.
In Southern California, Sundberg will speak at Mission Church, Laguna Niguel, on Sunday morning, Oct. 15th, and conduct a discussion with area Lutheran pastors on Monday morning at Concordia University, Irvine, under sponsorship of the Lutheran Bible Institute in California. The Southern California Reformation Rally will be held at Grace Church, Huntington Beach, at 5 p.m. on Sunday.
The FOCL movement with its churchly goal of "encouraging biblical, evangelical and confessional faithfulness to the Christian heritage," 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.