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Up one levelHere I Walk: An Ecumenical Pilgrimage
A few years back my husband Andrew and I noticed the upcoming 500th anniversary of Luther’s 1510 pilgrimage to Rome. We thought it would be really cool to retrace his steps. But the questions of “how?” and even more “why?” (besides the coolness factor) remained unanswered. Now, however, we have answers, and we’re gonna do it… in just a few days. We leave August 22 from Erfurt...
Amish Ecumenism
My parents are friends with an Amish family in upstate New York. Those who know my legendarily outgoing father may not be terribly shocked, but I must confess that this one even caught me by surprise. I don’t know a whole lot about the Amish but I remember learning that their theological identity is to live out literally St. Paul’s command to “be not conformed to the world” and to heed the warning of the author of James that to “befriend the world is to have enmity with God.” Friendship with “English” like my father and mother breaks down those worldly barriers. Nevertheless, there I was standing in the dark, smoky kitchen of an Amish family...
Two More Significant Ecumenical Speeches at the LWF Assembly
First, during the worship after the public apology and forgiveness between Lutherans and Mennonites, Larry Miller, the General Secretary of the Mennonite World Conference, gave a brief testimony, which included this admission: “At times, our versions of martyr stories have reduced complex history to simple morality tales of good and evil, in which historical actors are either Christ-like or violent. At times, we have remembered Lutheran reformers primarily for their arguments and actions against Anabaptists, thereby minimizing the broader theological contribution of these reformers to the Christian church and, indeed, to our own movement...
After the Apology
I can say already that I will be proud for the rest of my life that I was able to take part in the action of the LWF in repenting of the sins of the past against the Anabaptists. It was an extraordinary event. I am proud that the Lutheran family was capable of confessing its wrong and asking for forgiveness. But I was not expecting the response from the Mennonites, which was every bit as extraordinary...
Tell Your Congregation About This One
I'm in Stuttgart, Germany, at the moment, attending the 11th Assembly of the Lutheran World Federation (assemblies happen every six or seven years; the LWF was founded in 1947). Among all the other business on the table, it's an ecumenical action taking place here that will be the main thing remembered and have the biggest impact on the whole church in the years to come. In recognition of the fact that some Lutheran reformers, including Melanchthon and Luther himself, advocated the use of violence and even capital punishment in dealing with Anabaptists, whose present-day descendants are called Mennonites, the LWF is making a public statement of repentance and remorse, asking forgiveness from God and from the Mennonites. It is hard to convey the enormity of this action in the ecumenical world...
Certainty and Hope
It always seems to happen when I schedule a baptism for a family that I don’t know very well. They’re late, and on a Saturday when I have so many things to do, the 11 am baptism has already led to other cancelled appointments and as the hour nears 11:30, if they show up at all I will be late for my own daughter’s birthday party. Calls to the cell phone go unanswered, and the voice-mailbox is full so leaving a message is as hopeless as everything else involving this baptism seems to be...
Why Does Sin Feel So Good?
One of the great joys of working in a Lutheran school is the exceptional perspective that the children often bring to matters of theology. Recently a student asked me, “Why does sin feel so good?”...
Let the Little Children…?
It remains a matter of intense ongoing debate whether the right thing to do in the face of last year’s churchwide assembly is to stay in the ELCA or pack it in and start afresh. As I’ve said before, I don’t think any option is good, but of the bad options I think staying is the better. But even among those who generally share this view with me, I hear a recurring worry: what about my children?...
How to Get Fired Constitutionally
Just in case anyone wants to know. These are the duties of ordained ministers serving congregations in the ELCA, according to the Constitution of the ELCA. Failure to perform any of these tasks could, presumably, lead to removal from the roster or the ministry. Take note of #3 and #4 particularly...
The Rostered and the Ordained
Consider the curious case of Pr. Rebecca Heber. Pr. Heber has been an ordained pastor for 23 years, most recently in the Florida-Bahamas Synod, and she serves on the National Steering Committee for Lutheran CORE. On April 21st of this year, Pr. Heber was on her way to vacation when she received an email from the bishop’s secretary of the Florida-Bahamas Synod informing her that she needed to submit her annual request to the Synod Council to extend her On Leave From Call status...
A Few More Thoughts on Baptism and Godparents
In the past two months I’ve spoken with a couple of groups about baptism, prompting me to think more about the subject of godparents as I wrote about in the current issue's "Joyful Exchanges." These have been in settings of state or folk churches in Europe, so circumstances are rather different, but many of the concerns I heard would be familiar to Americans: people show up to get their babies baptized and never darken the door of church again; we try to educate them about baptism but they just don’t care; it’s impossible to get confirmands excited about affirming a baptism they don’t remember; it’s just plain more exciting to baptize people past the age of accountability than squalling infants. And yet, the deep theological conviction remains that the baptism of infants witnesses to a profound and necessary truth about God’s dealings with us...
Joyful Exchanges in Two Novels and an Unjoyful Exchange in a Third
C. S. Lewis’s late novel Till We Have Faces is unlike his other and generally more famous novels. He wrote it while married to Joy Davidman and her constant feedback was part of his writing process. It is neither about explicitly Christian people as in the Space Trilogy nor does it contain direct Christian parallels as in the Chronicles of Narnia. It is a story of ancient pagans, drawing on the Greek myth of Psyche but told from the perspective of Psyche’s possessive sister Orual, who does not like the way the gods deal with human beings. Her own distrust infects Psyche and leads to Psyche’s exile from the god’s home. The story is altogether a tonic and not a little terrifying vision of divinity. Aslan’s furry goldenness tempers the fact that he is not a tame lion, but there are no comforts of the incarnation here...
Joyful Exchanges in Christology and Ministry
The very early theologian St. Irenaeus built his interpretation of the Christian faith around the idea of recapitulation: who Adam was and what he did wrong is replaced and made right by Christ. Irenaeus derives the idea, of course, from Romans 5. The primal exchange in the whole human family should have been for the good—our forefather Adam setting a pattern of righteousness for all his descendents—but it turned out for the bad, and his death became our death...
The Joyful Exchange across the Centuries
As I mentioned in my editorial “Joyful Exchanges” in the summer 2010 issue of LF, the joyful exchange is one of the “softer melodies” floating along through the history of the church. Here are the examples I’ve turned up so far from theologians other than Luther...
Robert Louis Stevenson, Ecumenist
When I picked up a copy of Robert Louis Stevenson’s Travels with a Donkey in the Cévennes, it was not with the slightest expectation that I was in for a religious read—certainly not from the writer best known for his pirate thriller Treasure Island. I knew only that it took place in France and was beloved enough by the English to have eventually led to the creation of a “Stevenson Trail” where devotees can follow his footsteps, though presumably with fewer mishaps, a lighter load, and no recalcitrant donkey in tow. What I in fact found was the heartfelt plea of what I can only describe as an early ecumenist...
Rehabilitating Martin Stephan
Few people celebrate when their own history gets rewritten. That Jefferson may have fathered children with his slaves causes discomfort to the pristine historical narratives of our youth. That Joseph Smith may not have been an upstanding man for most of his life causes the Mormon church to rush to polemical defense. That Luther did and said things that at the very least don’t translate well into 20th century life has caused no less discomfort to Lutherans. It is certainly an uphill battle then, that descendants of Martin Stephan face in seeking not only to rehabilitate a man who would become the Missouri Synod’s deposed bishop, but to call into question the saintly narrative that has become the life story of Missouri’s founding pastor and first president, C. F. W. Walther...
Jesus in the Testaments
One of the great gifts of biblical scholarship in the last century or so has been better knowledge of the Jewishness of the New Testament figures and authors. This movement has done much to demolish the obnoxious and at times dangerous view of Judaism as a backward religion that Christianity morally, if not outright sociologically, supersedes. For Gentiles two millennia later, this knowledge brings our New Testament to life, explaining much that is perplexing and highlighting details that don’t convey the same meanings to Gentile readers. What is peculiar is that alongside this “re-Jewishing” of the New Testament has been a hands-off attitude toward the Old Testament for Christians...
St. Augustine and the Cynics
Some years ago I was a teaching assistant for a course on St. Augustine’s Confessions, one of my favorite books. It turned out to be one of the most discouraging experiences of my life. The fault was not Augustine’s, and in some way not even the students’, but the horrible sham of an education that the students had acquired somewhere in their past...
The Social Ministry Question for the LCMS at the July Convention
With the release of the names of the top nominated candidates for Synod president, the Missouri-Synod’s favorite pastime has officially reached its playoff season. Judging from the uptick in the blogosphere action, the heated political battle for Synod president will likely garner most of the attention in the days leading up to the July convention. I have always found the great concern about who is elected Synodical president to be a bit misplaced. Ultimately, with the strong congregational emphasis of the LCMS, the only real Synod-changing power the president has is the ability to remove District Presidents for theological boundary violations. While this may change the openness of Missouri’s theological climate, for better or worse depending on your perspective, life in the individual parish will go on exactly as it has for most parishes and pastors regardless of who is elected come July...
The Bible in 66 Verses
I can’t imagine that this has never been done before, but the idea popped into my head one day and it seemed like an interesting exercise to try. The rules I imposed on myself were that each book of the Bible had to be represented by one single, whole verse (no convenient deletions, like we do with the psalms in worship), and no more than that one verse (inspiring lines spanning two or more verses were out)...