Katie and Martin's Blog about the LCA

Every now and then I like to draw attention to a blog that encourages the ordination of women within the Lutheran Church in Australia (LCA). You can find Katie and Martin's Blog at:
http://katieandmartin.wordpress.com

Here is their post for today.

The President Disallows Debate on Women’s Ordination     

April 23, 2013

Yesterday, at General Synod, the President again imposed his will on the LCA.  He has been true to his word that women’s ordination would not occur on his shift.

After the recommendation coming from General Pastors’ Conference that women’s ordination should be discussed at General Convention, that is exactly what occurred.  Pr Semmler had to allow discussion because of this resolution, but that’s all it was – a discussion.

To begin with, he gave the floor to a couple of men from the Dialogue Group on forming consensus to report on their progress, but they offered nothing to help delegates in their deliberations.  The main thing they reported was that they had to learn to listen to each other.

In the ‘discussion’ conservative pastors knew that they didn’t need to speak. This is also attested to by the fact that a conservative pastor commented to a youth on Sunday at NOVO (youth camp) that they (conservative pastors) had figured out a way to get around the women’s ordination issue. 

Around 18 people spoke in favour and 3 or 4 spoke against.

After Pr Semmler distributed one of his epistles to the Church against women’s ordination, the ‘discussion’ was brought to an end with the declaration that Pr John Henderson was the successful candidate for the position of bishop (nomenclature voted on earlier in the afternoon).   (Tues morning, Greg Pietsch was announced as the new Assistant Bishop.)

The following now need to be considered as we discern how the Holy Spirit would have us act:

• the disregard for laity,
• the lack of transparency,
• the refusal to debate St Stephen’s motion,
• the refusal to allow a vote,
• the refusal to facilitate the will of delegates,
• the dishonest claim that “in effect it is the people in the pews, rather than church leaders, who determine the direction of our church”,
• the duplicitous communication from Pr Semmler,
• the sly sidelining of an issue that is important to the vast majority of members (not just delegates), and
• the hypocritical use of Where Love Comes to Life as a General Convention theme.

The manipulation by Pr Semmler is so similar to that of Pres. Robert Preus in the LCMS who took control of the St Louis seminary that used historical-biblical research to inform their thinking. (You can guess that the conservatives wanted to use Scriptural literalism as their only source of inspiration.)  That piece of history, which led to Seminex (seminary in exile) is reported in Power, Politics, and the Missouri Synod: A Conflict That Changed American Christianity by James Burkee.  The following is a review from Amazon.com

Power, Politics, and the Missouri Synod follows the rise of two Lutheran clergymen – Herman Otten and J. A. O. Preus – who led different wings of a conservative movement that seized control of a theologically conservative but socially and politically moderate church denomination (LCMS) and drove “moderates” from the church in the 1970s. The schism within what was then one of the largest Protestant denominations in the United States ultimately reshaped the landscape of American Lutheranism and fostered the polarization that characterizes today’s Lutheran churches. Burkee’s story, supported by personal interviews with key players and church archives sealed for over twenty years, is about more than Lutheranism. The remaking of this one Lutheran denomination reflects a broader movement toward theological and political conservatism in American churches – a movement that began in the 1970s and culminated in the formation of the “Religious Right.”

In closing we note how the resistance to women’s participation in the LCA is dominated by clergy. 

 

The following comment from Burkee about the LCMS equally applies to the LCA: “Through (their) inability to draw lay support to the conservative movement’s delegate- and convention-focused strategy, the movement’s Pyrrhic victory had little to do with lay support.”

Reflections on Chimney Watch

            As to be expected, the national and international media have been publishing numerous articles on the election of the new pope. These articles highlight how many within the Roman Catholic Church desire change in their church. The problems are well-known: clerical sex abuse scandals and their mishandling by bishops and archbishops; bureaucratic infighting, turmoil, and scandal in the Roman Curia; the decline of Catholicism in Europe (and its potential decline in the US, were it not for mostly Hispanic immigrants); competition from Pentecostalism in Latin America; and ongoing calls for the church to update itself further, beyond the momentous decisions that were made fifty years ago at the Second Vatican Council.

            While traditionalists want to maintain the rules on clerical celibacy and a male-only priesthood, and some would even like to reverse many of the decisions from Vatican II, many liberal Catholics (most living within western liberal democracies) want the church to accept the conclusion of the magisterial sixteenth-century reformers, namely, that the apostolic Scriptures and ancient church tradition do not prohibit priests from being married. (Of course the Roman Church has been granting some exceptions to married men who are allowed to serve as ordained priests in extraordinary situations.)

            Following the lead of several twentieth-century Lutheran and Protestant churches, many Catholic laity and some clergy think the church should also allow women to serve as priests. As the Pontifical Biblical Commission concluded already back in 1976, there is nothing within the biblical texts, when properly interpreted, that would prohibit a woman from serving as an ordained priest. It needs to be pointed out that some nuns have been doing just that, clandestinely, for decades. As an example: when I lived in Portland there was a nun who had been authorized to administer the Eucharist within the institution she was serving. She kept a low profile. Nobody complained. Just the opposite. Many appreciated her pastoral, eucharistic ministry.

            Certainly Jesus Christ is the same "yesterday, today, and forever," but not every biblical statement or apostolic teaching means the same today as it did when it was first uttered. Because of the actuality of change in meaning over time, the hermeneutical approach that Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer takes to the US Constitution ("a living document within a living democracy") is better suited for biblical interpretation within the living church of Christ than the one taken by Justice Scalia, who views the Constitution as "a dead document," whose meanings are entirely bound to what the texts meant when the founders first wrote them. In Justice Scalia's view, the meaning of the Constitution does not change over time. (If that were actually true, we would not today think it "cruel and unusual" to put people in stocks or give them twenty lashes for certain crimes or hang horse thieves--all common punishments in the eighteenth century. Other examples could easily be given to disprove a strict "originalist" position vis-a-vis the Constitution.)

          Rather remarkably, some contemporary Roman Catholic priests and theologians sound a note that echoes the 28th Article of the Augsburg Confession, namely, that at least some apostolic commands that have been understood a certain way for a long time, can through cultural change and theological criticism be legitimately set aside. The sixteenth-century Augsburg Confession identified several: the eating of blood, the eating of non-kosher foods, the covering of women's heads during the divine service. The hermeneutical principles that AC 28 follows include the centrality of the gospel, the dictates of Christian love, and the need to avoid binding human consciences to transitory apostolic commands and human traditions.

          In other words, AC 28 reflects a hermeneutical position that parallels the hermeneutics of Justice Breyer. He identifies his approach under the category of "Active Liberty." AC 28 (and Apol. 28) identify the evangelical hermeneutic under the category of "Christian liberty" in service to the gospel. (See Stephen Breyer, Active Liberty: Interpreting a Democratic Constitution [Oxford, 2008]. His approach to the Constitution strikes me as a wonderful parallel to an evangelical-catholic approach to the apostolic Scriptures and their interpretation over time and cultural change.)

          Today we hear from within the Roman Church many calls for change. One veteran priest, active in an African setting, frankly stated to a mainstream correspondent that the church must evolve, that clerical celibacy ought to end, that women ought to be allowed to serve as priests, and that the church ought to recognize the importance of dissent. (See The Economist [March 9 2013], 61)

          How I would love to talk with that elderly priest! While I suspect that he and I might eventually run up against the age-old conflict between Augustine's doctrine of grace and his doctrine of the church, I also surmise that we might have a lot about which we agree.

          His comment brought to mind the editorial ("A Vatican Spring?") by another Roman Catholic that I admire, namely, Dr. Hans Kueng, Emeritus Professor of Theology at Tuebingen University, that was published in the Feb 27th edition of the New York Times. Dr. Kueng had been the previous pope's colleague (and friend) when they both taught at Tuebingen, but then Kueng had his falling out with a previous papacy over papal infallibility. Subsequently, Dr. Kueng and Dr. Ratzinger (aka Emeritus Pope Benedict XVI) grew more and more distant. (When Cardinal Ratzingen was elected pope in 2005, Dr. Kueng bluntly stated, "Er ist nicht mein Pabst.")


Here's an excerpt from Dr. Kueng's editorial:

Of course, the system of the Catholic Church doesn't resemble Tunisia or Egypt so much as an absolute monarchy like Saudi Arabia. In both places there are no genuine reforms, just minor concessions. In both, tradition is invoked to oppose reform. In Saudi Arabia tradition goes back only two centuries; in the case of the papacy, 20 centuries.

To this day the Curia, which in its current form is likewise a product of the 11th century, is the chief obstacle to any thorough reform of the Catholic Church, to any honest ecumenical understanding with the other Christian churches and world religions, and to any critical, constructive attitude toward the modern world.

There is no way to ignore the church's desperate needs. There is a catastrophic shortage of priests, in Europe and in Latin America and Africa. Huge numbers of people have left the church or gone into 'internal emigration', especially in the industrialized countries. There has been an unmistakable loss of respect for bishops and priests, alienation, particularly on the part of younger women, and a failure to integrate young people into the church. One shouldn't be misled by the media hype of grandly staged papal mass events or by the wild applause of conservative Catholic youth groups. Behind the facade, the whole house is crumbling.

In this dramatic situation the church needs a pope who's not living intellectually in the Middle Ages ... It needs a pope who is open to the concerns of the Reformation, to modernity. A pope who stands up for the freedom of the church in the world not just by giving sermons but by fighting with words and deeds for freedom and human rights within the church, for theologians, for women, for all Catholics who want to speak the truth openly. A pope who no longer forces the bishops to toe a reactionary party line, who puts into practice an appropriate democracy in the church, one shaped on the model of primitive Christianity. A pope who doesn't let himself be influenced by a Vatican-based 'shadow pope' like Benedict and his loyal followers.

A recent poll in Germany shows 85 per cent of Catholics in favor of letting priests marry, 79 per cent in favor of letting divorced persons remarry in church and 75 per cent in favor of ordaining women. Similar figures would most likely turn up in many other countries. Might we get a cardinal or bishop who doesn't simply want to continue in the same old rut? Someone who, first, knows how deep the church's crisis goes and, second, knows paths that lead out of it?

If the next conclave were to elect a pope who goes down the same old road, the church will never experience a new spring, but fall into a new ice age and run the danger of shrinking into an increasingly irrelevant sect. [End of Kueng excerpt]

As I read Dr. Kueng's editorial, I couldn't help but think that his words apply to my own church body as well, the Lutheran Church--Missouri Synod. We, too, have our curia (CTCR) that enforces church tradition and ensures that any dissent is rejected on the basis of church tradition. Like Rome, which also trumpets the importance of church tradition, the LCMS CTCR utilizes synodical traditions (statements, resolutions) to squelch all attempts at faithful theological reform.

At least the Roman Church accepts mainstream scientific knowledge (e.g, theory of evolution) and rejects fundamentalist biblicism ("creationism"), unlike the LCMS. But in so many other ways, the current LCMS mimics Rome when it consistently allows church tradition to trump critical, theological engagement with the biblical texts and our contemporary world. As a result, the method of the LCMS is identical to Rome: church tradition is the norm of doctrine and practice and serves as the sole basis for squelching dissent within the synod on matters like the ordination of women.

Pres. Harrison Issues an Apology

While I was away, preaching at a divine service in a nearby community on Saturday evening, Pres. Harrison issued a public apology. I learned of it late last night.

You may read it here.

I am grateful for this apology. I hope it is able to bring some closure to this particular public scandal. I certainly accept it and will do what I can to move forward positively.

That being said, I am still deeply troubled and offended by the public comments made by pastors connected with "Brothers of John the Steadfast" in Saturday's front-page article in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch newspaper. You may read that article here.

To read additional comments by members of "Steadfast Lutherans," go here.

I would hope that Pres. Harrison and the district president(s) of those "Steadfast Lutherans" who were quoted in the P-D article are working to admonish them for their loveless and scandelous words and to bring them to account for the harm they have caused individuals and the overall mission of the church.

One More Response to HRC

HRC keeps coming after me with his wrong-headed comments and questions. Instead of ignoring him or deleting his responses, I simply offer the following brief comments.

To get a better idea of his way of thinking, visit his blog at:

http://www.gottesdienst.org

HRC,
You obviously do not understand the nature of Christian faith. It is not a matter of believing a bunch of propositional statements about the Trinity or any other dogmatic formulation. Authentic faith is the trust that results from the preaching of the gospel about Jesus Christ, his death and resurrection for the forgiveness of one's sins. Dogma serves the gospel; faith is in the gospel, not in a collection of dogmas or dogmatic formulations per se, however good, right, and true they might otherwise be.

Your blog post attacking Pres. K's exegesis reveals your own misguided reading of Scripture on Elijah, Paul, and Jesus.

Did Elijah preach fire and brimstone to the unbelieving, non-Israelite, Gentile widow of Zarephath? He acted in love and restored the widow's dead child. He had compassion on the woman and her dead son.

Who among us today--after 1555, 1648, 1783, 9/11--is going to act exactly like Elijah did when he entered a mixed-faith setting with those prophets of Baal? If you could somehow get the LORD to light your wood in that mixed-faith setting, would you then seize the other religious leaders and take them out to the  nearest brook and murder them, as Elijah did? Do you not understand that not every action in Scripture is one that applies to our situation today. That particular incident occurred in the long-past historical setting of Israel's nationhood. What God allowed Elijah to do, he isn't allowing anyone who follows Jesus to do in our very different situation. The ancient nation of Israel is not identical to the church of Jesus Christ.

What do you make of the story in 1 Kings 19:9ff.? The LORD was not found in the strong wind that rent the mountains and broke the rocks into pieces, nor in the earthquake, nor in the fire. The LORD made himself known in the still small voice. "What are you doing here?" That sounds a bit like a gospel voice, but it is actually law.

I suppose if that were you, you could answer in a way similar to Elijah: "I have been very jealous for
the LORD, the God of hosts; for many in the LCMS have forsaken your covenant, compromised your altars..." And, in keeping with the biblical text, the living and true LORD would then say to you, "Don't worry about it. Return to the wilderness in which I have placed you.  Get out among the non-Christians and make a positive witness. I will make sure that not everyone bows before truly false gods of their own making."

Yes, elsewhere Elijah speaks a word of judgment to wicked Ahab. But that was only one word of the LORD and such a word isn't always given to us to speak in every situation.

I know of no pastor in the LCMS who could ever stay rostered if he prophesied along the lines of 1 Kings 21:19. Or did exactly what Elijah did with those Baal prophets. He'd end up on death row as the worst mass murderer in US history. At best we allegorize or spiritualize such words that are given in 21:19 or, better, we tie them tightly to the blood of Jesus Christ that cleanses us from all sins. And we note how that specific prophecy of Elijah did not come to pass because Ahab humbled himself. God showed mercy to Ahab.

Your comments about other religions, were you to share them in an interfaith setting, would not lead to the kind of repentance that AC 12 describes: contrition or terrors that strike the conscience when sin is recognized--AND FAITH, which is brought to life solely by the gospel. You might be able to get people upset and angry with you, but none of the words you indicate ought to be shared in such a setting would ever lead anyone to faith in Jesus Christ. Rather, your words come off as hypocritical and Pharisaical, as if being a good LCMS person, rather than a good Muslim or a good Jew, "because we believe in Jesus and a bunch of other things, and you don't," will get you to heaven.

Those who are grieving know the terrors that strike the heart. They don't need superficial, judgmental rantings about other religions and false gods in that setting. They need to hear the true and authentic gospel, the one that alone consoles the conscience and liberates people from the terrors of evil, sin, and death.

No one was speaking out against Pr. Morris until zealous Pharisees in the LCMS started attacking him for what he had done. As far as I know, no one who heard Pr. Morris condemned him publicly or rejected the words that he shared, except people in his own church body.

What about Paul? Re-read Acts 17. Consider the kind of witness he made to those religious people in Athens. He didn't condemn them, but sought to build upon the knowledge of God that they already had been given. Same goes for his participation in the services of the word and prayer in the many Jewish synagogues he repeatedly visited. He tried to be winsome, not religiously bigoted and hateful.

Your comments reveal a more serious theological problem in your apparent understanding, a soteriological problem. You are blind to the real scandal of Jesus, as if the parable that you quoted is about "non-Christians" and "Christians," when in fact the parable is about the rejection of God's word of grace and mercy, which alone produces the good fruits of love that follow from trust in Jesus.
How does that parable in any way relate to a pastor sharing the gospel within a civic setting? True, people can reject the gospel, but how does the pastor's own sharing of the gospel or a divine blessing in any way go against the teaching of this parable about rejecting the Son of God? If people reject what the pastor shares about the Son of God at the interfaith event, then they bear the responsibility for that rejection, not the pastor who shares the good word.

Could it be that the parable is directed against all Pharisaically-minded people? One could easily apply this parable to anyone who has been given the responsibility to care for others pastorally, through word and loving deed, but fails to heed the word. I'm thinking in particular of the exhortation that Paul gives in 1 Cor. 13 and the basic one that is given in 1 Jn 4. How are you heeding these admonitions, you who refuse to voice any compassion for the people who suffered the deaths of their children and loved ones from the actions of a crazed gunman?

How can any evangelical preacher proclaim that any one specific person who has died is in hell? What arrogance! What idolatry! That is not "rude," that is blasphemy! What an uncaring, hard-hearted, mean-spirited mindset. It makes the death of Jesus cheap, it limits his atonement, it denies the promise that Paul proclaims in Rom. 11:32 and several other places (1 Cor. 15:22-28, etc.), it rejects the hope that Peter gives in Acts 3:21, it ignores the central affirmation in John 3:16-17.

Christian Gottlieb Barth (d. 1862) once said, "Anyone who does not believe in the universal restoration is an ox, but anyone who teaches it is an ass." Those same labels should be applied to anyone who preaches, in whatever setting, that specific people and groups of people are definitely going to hell or are in fact in hell. To speak the way you have done is to put yourself in the place of God in a way that takes you well beyond the limited, finite calling you have been given. Yes, pastors and all Christians have the responsibility to speak God's words of law and promise, for the sake of leading people to the kind of repentance described in AC 12, but that is far different from proclaiming with certainty that God has in fact damned eternally those you think ought to be damned. You are not in a position to say "God damn you" about anyone who has died.

A Further Word to H. R. C.

In response to my earlier post about Rev. Harrison's embarrassing and misguided actions toward an LCMS pastor in Conn., "HRC" submitted this response:

Dr. Becker,

Do you think Muslims and Christians worship the same God?

What about Mormons and Christians?

Do you think Muslims are going to hell?

Just curious. . .

+HRC

You can read his own blog post on my post and the one of Dr. Kieschnick over at:
http://gottesdienstonline.blogspot.com/2013/02/ah-politics.html


HRC,
There is only one God. That fact is beside the point, as is the fact that people believe, teach, and call upon the one God differently and often wrongly.

By his actions, Pr. Harrison has brought disgrace upon our Lord, other Christians, and the tiny LCMS. He has refused to put the best construction on a pastor's caring, evangelical actions, and instead has publicly called upon him to apologize for them. I saw no reason for the pastor to apologize, although it is clear from his own letter of apology that his conscience has been sorely tested by the actions of Rev. Harrison.

From what I can tell, Pr. Morris has been trying to minister to people in a community that is deeply greiving the deaths of many children and several teachers, including a child from his own flock. Clearly, he has been bringing a gospel word and a pastor's heart to a grief-stricken community.

Apparently, only the pharisaically-minded, closed-hearted within the LCMS have been offended by this pastor's pastoral words and actions. He should not have been asked to apologize for what he has done. The letter of Pr. Harrison, now spread to millions around the world, is a scandal, a true scandal, the kind that has led others to be confirmed in their unbelief and hard-heartedness against Christ and those who bear His name. Look what the world is saying in response to these actions by Rev. Harrison. They have led many others to question whether they should continue to be a member in a church body whose president acts in this fashion.

Tonight I understand more clearly why some people put on their car bumpers the following sticker: "Lord, save me from your people."

Do you and others who support Pr. Harrison not understand that our Lord frequently put compassion for people ahead of strict obedience to religious laws and traditions, esp. those instituted by human beings? Could it be that Pr. Morris thought he could help with that mission of compassion by participating in that service? Matt. 7:1ff. seems apropos here.

Jesus, too, bore witness to God's love when he spoke among his fellow Jews in their synagogues, as did the apostle Paul when he shared the gospel in word and deed among Jew and Gentile alike. Jesus may have taught his disciples not to "throw their pearls before swine," but how else is the gospel to be shared with the world? How else could that divine love have been shared with troubled, misguided people had not the apostle Paul participated in the services of local synagogues or engaged in fruitful conversations about general revelation with pagans and others (cf. Acts 17)?

The One to whom those Jews and pagans prayed in partial ignorance, Paul bore clarifying witness through the gospel, in his words and his prayers. Is there any doubt that Paul worshipped the true and living God when he participated in the services of Jews or when he told pagans that the One they worshipped in partial ignorance he would make clear?

Don't take my word for it. Consider these words from  Dr. Luther:

"Not only a teaching of St. Paul, the prophet Elisha (II Kings 5:18-19) has also proven its truth with an admirable example in the Old Testament.  According to Moses and also against Moses (as our rebellious spirits would understand Moses) he permitted Naaman, the Syrian commander, to worship the true God in the temple of Rimmon, the idol of Syria.  Now if the first commandment were to be kept with Karlstadtian strictness, Naaman should not have done such a thing, nor should the prophet have permitted it.  For it is, of course, strictly forbidden to go into an idol's temple and worship before an idol while at the same time worshiping the true God. God strictly forbids the Jews to construct altars, images, or holy places for the purpose of serving and worshiping him without his command.  Even more strictly does he forbid them to serve and worship in the presence of other gods.  From this example one can see again that in the Old Testament also, true idols can do no harm as long as one worships while they are around, and only the true God is worshiped from the heart.  Yet our enthusiasts would ensnare us who are free Christians and tie us down so rigidly that we should not be able to put up with any idols without committing sin." (LW 40:95)

It seems to me that you need a refresher course in Christian freedom. I fear that too many within our synod display the kind of Pharisaical-Karlstadtian legalism and judgmentalism that Dr. Luther so rightly condemned. This kind of nonsense about "unionism" needs to stop. It is a wrong-headed, wrong-hearted notion. It has been a theological and missional mistake for decades. Plain and simple.

My thanks to Gil Pingel for drawing my attention to that relevant quote from Luther.