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Up one levelPrayers for Pentecost (C)
Richard Bansemer, former Bishop of the Virginia Synod of the ELCA, and author of the ALPB's devotional books O Lord, Teach Me to Pray based on the Small Catechism, and We Believe based on the Augsburg Confession, has graciously provided prayers of the church for the Pentecost season, series C. All of the prayers reflect the lessons of the day...
Scandinavian Theology, the Two Kingdoms, and Karl Barth's First Ecumenical Meeting
In the spring 2013 issue, Maria E. Erling reviews the ways in which Scandinavian theology in the mid-twentieth-century mediated Luther afresh to American Lutherans, who were looking for a new way forward after the crisis of German Lutheranism during the Second World War. Scandinavian Luther research was also helpful for disputes within Europe. The following article, originally published in Swedish and translated by Erling, “From the Contemporary Theological Context,” Svenskt Teologisk Kvartalskrift 23/1 (January 1947), reports on a World Council of Churches meeting in 1947 that led to improved understanding between Lutherans and Reformed on the subject of Luther’s “two kingdoms” doctrine. It was also the first ecumenical meeting that Karl Barth ever attended! The article ends with the seven theses jointly agreed upon by both Lutherans and Reformed...
Prayers for Lent and Easter (C)
Richard Bansemer, former Bishop of the Virginia Synod of the ELCA, and author of the ALPB's devotional books O Lord, Teach Me to Pray based on the Small Catechism, and We Believe based on the Augsburg Confession, has graciously provided prayers of the church for the Lent and Easter seasons, series C. All of the prayers reflect the lessons of the day...
Letter of Consolation upon the Suicide of a Pastor
I recently had the great sadness of needing to write this letter to a congregation whose former pastor, only having left the church a few months before, committed suicide. Since it is possible that other pastors will find themselves in this situation, I offer my letter here as one possible way of addressing the tragedy with a word of the gospel...
Ten Theses on Reading Luther
The interplay of past and present is a constant of church life—and of the rest of life, too. Swedish pastor and professor Peter Strömmer shares here his principles for bringing the Reformer into the present responsibly and fruitfully...
Prayers for Advent, Christmas, and Epiphany (C)
Richard Bansemer, former Bishop of the Virginia Synod of the ELCA, and author of the ALPB's devotional books O Lord, Teach Me to Pray based on the Small Catechism, and We Believe based on the Augsburg Confession, has graciously provided prayers of the church for the Advent, Christmas, and Epiphany Seasons, series C. All of the prayers reflect the lessons of the day...
Bible Problems
I stopped reading the Bible the moment I joined the Lutheran church. For I was exhausted. The American Evangelicalism in which I was raised taught me an intensely personal and immediate reading of the Scriptures. In my waffling adolescence, I augured clear answers for my own murky future. My favorite passage came from Jesus’ mountaintop sermon: “Do not be anxious about your life.” My assurance came from Jeremiah’s only good word: “For I know the plans I have for you, declares the Lord, plans for welfare and not for evil, to give you a future and a hope.” I loved James, and not only because my youth pastor had prescribed its balm. “Count it all joy, my brothers, when you meet trials of various kinds, for you know that the testing of your faith produces steadfastness.” Give me that joy! Give me that resolve! “If any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask God, Who gives generously to all without reproach, and it will be given to him. Let him ask in faith, with no doubting.” Each passage was addressed to me; every reading the occasion for an oracle. I had problems with the Bible...
Reflections on the Lutheran CORE Theological Conference
Well, to my knowledge, ELCA presiding bishop Mark Hanson was a no-show at the CORE theological conference, held August 14-16 at Calvary Lutheran Church in Golden Valley, Minnesota. But I may have missed him in the sea of 600+ faces. For three years running, these pan-denominational free conferences have come together to seek and find new directions for Lutheranism in North America. The energy, positive mood, scholarly depth, and churchliness of the offerings are hard to find elsewhere nowadays. This year’s theme was a Lutheran classic. Law and Gospel: what is their proper distinction and right relation? ...
Statement of the Lutheran Communion in Africa on "Marriage, Family, and Human Sexuality"
The statement of the Lutheran churches in Africa on MFHS takes place in the context and background of on-going discussions within the LWF communion of churches officially established in Lund, in 2007. According to the statement of the Africa region LWF preassembly meeting in Abuja in March 2010, the African churches participate in this process for the purpose of (a) strengthening the communion, (b) clarifying the generally shared position of the Lutheran churches in Africa, and (c) also to state clearly that this is not THE pressing issue for the Lutheran communion in Africa region. The Lutheran communion in Africa statement on MFHS is informed by (a) the processes that have taken place from African Lutheran leadership consultations, Lutheran Council in Africa, position papers from some LWF member churches in Africa, (b) processes taken by partner member churches from Asia, Europe, North and Latin America...
The Presiding Bishop's "Core" Convictions
I promised that I would review Presiding Bishop Mark Hanson’s Reconciling Works Keynote Address that he gave on July 7. The text was made available by the Bishop’s Office to Pastor Daniel Ostercamp of Webster, SD, who made it available to me. I will leave to others the critical analysis of Hanson’s remarkably rosy picture of the ELCA. I will also ignore the several self-justifications of his own partisan (or insufficiently partisan!) leadership that pepper the address. The theological question I posed in my previous post was whether the bishop would nurture God’s people with the word of God’s law and gospel and whether he would speak as pastor of the whole, which in Lutheran understanding (see Article 28 of the Augsburg Confession) is what a bishop is supposed to do...
The Presiding Bishop Steps Out
Some years ago the Luther scholar Scott Hendrix published “Luther and the Papacy: Stages in a Reformation Conflict,” an important study which demonstrated how Luther’s quarrel was never with the catholic faith as such but with “the papists,” modern innovators who had betrayed that faith universally held. Nevertheless, Luther respected the papacy as a pastoral office, according to Hendrix. Indeed, the primary source of his anger was the betrayal of the pope’s universal pastoral duty by Leo X and his successors. Hendrix showed that Luther’s underlying and consistent criterion in judging the papacy is that by divine right the papacy is a pastoral office “of nourishing people in the church with the Word of God.” This pastoral function is “the criterion for claiming legitimate authority in the church.” Luther’s outrage is directed “at the perversion of the pastoral office.” In fact, Luther “was protesting against the usurpation of the church by an unfaithful hierarchy on behalf of the faithful people, not against the church on behalf of the individual” as he was so often falsely understood. In just the same way I am angered to learn that ELCA Presiding Bishop Mark Hanson, who has never attended a meeting of Lutheran CORE, nor answered the repeated requests of myself and other confessional theologians to account for his partisan leadership, will address the annual meeting of ReconcilingWorks...
A Journey to Lutheranism
When I was sixteen months old, my parents had me baptized at a Presbyterian church. I have my baptismal certificate framed and hanging on my bedroom wall now. Unbeknownst to me, in my baptism, the Lord bound Himself to me and forgave me of my sins, and I was guided by the Holy Spirit. I remember learning the Old Testament Bible stories in elementary school. In my family, we always prayed before meals and at bedtime. I remember going to a few different churches; one we visited was a Unitarian church and I was impressed at that very young age that they did not talk about Jesus but ate pretzels and made masks during Sunday School...
Prayers for The Pentecost Season (Series B)
Richard Bansemer, former Bishop of the Virginia Synod of the ELCA, and author of the ALPB's devotional books O Lord, Teach Me to Pray based on the Small Catechism, and We Believe based on the Augsburg Confession, has graciously provided prayers of the church for the Season of Pentecost, series B. All of the prayers reflect the lessons of the day...
Lutherstadt Wittenberg
Martin Luther might have been astounded at the scene unfolding on the grassy plain behind the home of his friend and local pharmacist, Lucas Cranach. An impressive forest of young trees is emerging in Lutherstadt Wittenberg...
Prayers for The Season of Easter (Series B)
Richard Bansemer, former Bishop of the Virginia Synod of the ELCA, and author of the ALPB's devotional books O Lord, Teach Me to Pray based on the Small Catechism, and We Believe based on the Augsburg Confession, has graciously provided prayers of the church for the Season of Easter, series B. All of the prayers reflect the lessons of the day...
Prayers for The Season of Lent (Series B)
Richard Bansemer, former Bishop of the Virginia Synod of the ELCA, and author of the ALPB's devotional books O Lord, Teach Me to Pray based on the Small Catechism, and We Believe based on the Augsburg Confession, has graciously provided prayers of the church for the Season of Lent, series B. All of the prayers reflect the lessons of the day...
Prayers for The Post-Christmas and Epiphany Season (Series B)
Richard Bansemer, former Bishop of the Virginia Synod of the ELCA, and author of the ALPB's devotional books O Lord, Teach Me to Pray based on the Small Catechism, and We Believe based on the Augsburg Confession, has graciously provided prayers of the church for the post-Christmas and Epiphany Season, series B. All of the prayers reflect the lessons of the day...
Prayers for Advent and Christmas
Richard Bansemer, former Bishop of the Virginia Synod of the ELCA, and author of the ALPB's devotional books O Lord, Teach Me to Pray based on the Small Catechism, and We Believe based on the Augsburg Confession, has graciously provided prayers of the church for the Advent and Christmas Season, series B. All of the prayers reflect the lessons of the day...
Women in Theology: One Man’s Memoir
Time was when theology, theologizing, doing theology, studying theology, arguing theology was considered a man’s job, something like waging war, throwing down empires, toppling thrones, and establishing republics. The few women engaged in theological pursuits appeared Amazonian, mannish. The women at Port Royal, Blaise Pascal’s sisters among them, drew the hatred of pope and king, not just for their Jansenism. Anne Louise Germaine de Staël, whose salon was the center of the eighteenth-century literary world, flooded Paris’s bookstalls with pamphlets on republicanism and Protestant faith and was exiled by Napoleon, who believed the female’s principal function was to produce babies. Mary Ann Evans, translator of Strauss’s Life of Jesus, traveled under the name of “George,” and anyone who has seen a photograph of Dorothy Sayers will scarcely denominate her a sex symbol. Theology was a man’s job...
Three A’s for Advent: 3. Aurelius Augustine
I am Aurelius Augustine, the Bishop of Hippo, North Africa. I was born and grew up in the small town Tagaste, fifty miles inland from the coastal town of Hippo, but I went to the university in Carthage—the big city that the Romans centuries before had completely destroyed as only the Romans could. I was of a dark complexion because my parents were Berber Africans, but because of my father Patricius’s influence and my classic education, I was culturally Roman through and through. Nothing would destroy my identity with Rome, even though I spent most of my life in North Africa...