It seems an almost yearly occurrence that one reads about a Lutheran pastor who leaves the ecclesial confines of Wittenberg for either Rome or Constantinople. While much ink gets spilled about why they have left and what their leaving says about the current state of Lutheranism, one interesting detail seems to have gone unnoticed. Why is it that those who come out of the ELCA (most notably Leonard Klein, Philip Max Johnson) have tended to gravitate toward Rome, while those who have left the LCMS in recent years (most notably John Fenton) have made their way to Constantinople?

One way to approach the question is to understand that any conversion is not simply a “going to” it is also a “leaving from.” A shift in ecclesiastical jurisdiction is an indictment on the ecclesiastical jurisdiction that one leaves; it is an attempt to meet a felt need that is not currently being met. While there is no doubt a myriad of issues that go into any change in ecclesiastical community, central themes do emerge in the commentaries of those who have found new communities.

Those who have left the ELCA for Roman Catholicism often raise the issue of authority, particularly moral authority. They point to their frustration with the seeming moral decline of the ELCA and the inability of Lutheranism as a whole to deal effectively and substantively with these deeper issues. It should not be all that surprising then that they go to the ecclesiastical community that has the most clearly defined sense of authority. Eastern Orthodoxy is not as attractive because even though there is a conciliar magisterium, as in Lutheranism, making this work in a practical way has proven difficult.

Those who have left the LCMS for Orthodoxy often point to the embrace of contemporary worship and the diversity of worship styles within the LCMS as a sign of her declining orthodoxy. They lament the LCMS’s embrace of modernism. Thus what is seen in Orthodoxy as a weakness by those who leave for Rome, namely an effective lack of an authoritative modern magesterium, is a strength for those who leave for Orthodoxy – an unchanging liturgy for an unchanging church because change in contemporary Orthodoxy is almost impossible. Rome on the other hand, in addition to the challenge presented by the later 19^th Century dogmatic pronouncements of Papal Infallibility and The Assumption of Mary, has the same struggle of modernist influences in the church as Lutheranism, Pope Pius X not withstanding.

Blessed Arthur Carl Piepkorn is reported to have said that every new denomination that comes into being is a repentance sermon for the church. It arises to meet a felt need that the church is not currently meeting. The same, I would argue, could be said about brother and sister clergy who leave Lutheranism for other ecclesiastical jurisdictions, and where they go can say as much about the state of our denominations as it does about those who leave.