First, the famous speech at the Diet of Worms. Some of this is, perhaps, a little embellished but the guts of it is certainly true. And Joseph Fiennes’ portrayal of Luther is just brilliant.
Next, my favourite Luther quote ever - for what I hope are obvious reasons!
We should preach the Word, but the results must be left solely to God’s good pleasure . . . I opposed indulgences and all the papists, but never with force. I simply taught, preached, and wrote God’s Word; otherwise I did nothing. And while I slept, or drank Wittenberg beer with my friends Philip and Amsdorf, the Word so greatly weakened the papacy that no prince or emperor ever inflicted such losses upon it. I did nothing; the Word did everything (LW 51:77).
Enjoy.
]]>I recognize your authority in formulating positions for your own flock in Minnesota. That is one thing. But for you and others to campaign for an amendment that imposes your stance on all citizens in Minnesota, including other Christians, believers of other faith groups and nonbelievers, is overstepping your bounds.
Only liberal Protestants are allowed to do that.
History is our teacher.
Eight hundred years ago, Pope Innocent III presided over church and state in most of what is now Western Europe. He left no room for dissent. Non-Catholics, including Jews, Muslims and nonbelievers, were even required to wear clothing that distinguished them from the church’s faithful.
Which has to do with the referenda how?
The genius of America is that we separate church from state. As we say in our Pledge of Allegiance, we are committed to our flag “and to the republic for which it stands.” As any dictionary will tell us, a republic is “a nation in which citizens elect representatives to manage the government.” By placing the marriage amendment on the November ballot, our legislators in St. Paul have ducked their responsibility. They have already enacted a statute that forbids same-gender marriage. Attempting to embed it in the Constitution is simply wrong.
It’s wrong, I’m sure, because it is much harder to overturn a constitutional amendment than a statute. It’s amusing to see Chilstrom go all republican. Can anyone doubt that if the referenda proposed amending the Minnesota Constitution to enshrine a right to gay marriage that he would be 100% behind it?
By word and action, you leave the impression that there is little room for dissent in your church. Yet many of us recall that Raymond Lucker, your predecessor as bishop of the Diocese of New Ulm, challenged your church to begin thinking about the need for married men and, yes, even women, to be ordained as priests. He clearly understood that one could be a good Roman Catholic and still be open to change.
Why Chilstrom thinks that it’s appropriate for him to stick his nose into internal Catholic affairs (such as determining who may dissent and on what issues) is anybody’s guess, though of course liberal Protestants have a track record for busy-bodiness that is second to none. I’m also not sure what it has to do with a referenda on a public policy question, but maybe Chilstrom is suggesting that the archbishop of Minneapolis is unauthorized to state the church’s teaching on a given moral issue.
In our ELCA, we engage a wide spectrum of clergy and laity in developing statements to guide us in our thinking about complex social issues. When those statements reach our national assembly, they require a two-thirds vote for approval. But no one’s conscience is bound by those statements. Dissent is fostered and welcomed.
Which may be why the ELCA is a declining, spiritually impoverished, intellectually bankrupt organization that takes its responsibility to lobby for Democratic Party policy positions more seriously than it takes spreading or teaching the gospel—because it thinks that truth is up for democratic vote. On the other hand, what difference should it make to the Catholic archbishop what they do in the ELCA. Chilstrom is clearly one of those people who is constitutionally incapable of seeing things from a perspective other than his own, and so assumes that he has the right to tell the Catholic Church how it should do things.
This raises the question: If there were a call from Roman Catholic members in Minnesota to vote on an issue of significance, would you allow for such a vote? And if a simple majority voted in favor, would you accept that vote as final? It’s clear that such a vote would not even be permitted in your church.
He makes it sound like this is a bad thing. He also makes it sound as if there is something illegitimate about this. Is he really so dense that he doesn’t understand that they do things differently in Rome than they do in the ELCA?
Why then have you worked so hard and spent so much of your church’s resources to bring this issue to a vote in Minnesota, where the vast majority of us are not even members of your church?
So not only can he not tell the difference between Catholicism and liberal Lutheranism, he can’t tell the difference between Catholicism and the state of Minnesota, where all citizens—not just liberal Protestants—may participate in the political process and advocate anything they please.
]]>Ministers of the Word, therefore, if they would be counted faithful and prudent on the Day of Christ, ought to be very sure that St. Paul did not speak empty words or prophesy of a thing of nought, when he said: ‘There must be heresies among you, that they which are approved may be made manifest among you.’ Let the minister of Christ know, I say, that as long as he preaches Christ purely, there will be no lack of perverse persons, even among our own people, who will make it their business to cause trouble in the Church. And he may comfort himself with the thought that there is no peace between Christ and Belial, or between the Seed of the woman and the seed of the Serpent. Indeed, he may rejoice in the trouble he is caused by sects and the constant succession of seditious spirits. For this is our glory, the testimony of our conscience that we are found standing and fighting on the side of the Seed of the woman against the seed of the Serpent. Let him bite our heel and never cease biting; we for our part will not cease to crush his head through Christ, the first to crush it, who is blessed for ever. Amen.
Martin Luther, Preface to His Lectures on Galatians
]]>There is no way, short of a miraculous and full-scale changing of hearts and minds, for North American denominations to survive the homosexuality crisis. Denominations like the PCUSA, ELCA, RCA, UMC, and Episcopal Church will continue. They won’t fold their tents and join the Southern Baptists (though wouldn’t that be interesting!). I’m not suggesting most of our old, mainline denominations will disappear. But I do not see how any of these once flourishing denominations will make it through the present crisis intact.
And the sooner denominations admit this sobering reality the better.
He describes the various options being pursued by liberals, conservatives, and moderates (or middle-of-the-roaders, or compromisers, denominational institutionalists, whatever), and concludes:
I understand that many good Christians love their denominations deeply. I love mine too. I don’t want to see the RCA crash and burn, or fall apart. I recognize that many Christians are loathe to consider any option that involves anything less than staying together no matter what. They want to hope against hope that everything will work out and there will be some way for everyone to get along. But it is no virtue of Christian hope to trust God for contradictions. He cannot make circles to simultaneously be squares. We are not losing confidence in our almighty God if we admit that many of our denominations face intractable problems. We can’t “unify” our way out of this mess or press people to stop having mutually exclusive convictions for the sake of our institutions, pensions, or pride. The fact is there is no third way, no fourth way, no tenth way out of this controversy that leaves all the pieces in the same places they are now. Groups will split. Bodies will rearrange. Parts will realign. Maybe not this year. Maybe not on your watch. But soon enough.
So my plea is for these denominations to make a definitive stand. Make it right, left, or center, but make one and make it clearly. Insist that member churches and pastors hold to this position. And then graciously open a big door for any pastor or church who cannot live in this theological space to exit with their dignity, their time, and their property. Because sometimes the best way to preserve unity is to admit that we don’t have it.
Read it all for the details. I think DeYoung is spot on: denominations need to decide, and then act in a gracious and loving fashion toward those who disagree, particularly if they decide to leave. The current reality, in which the mainlines are in the process of destroying any witness they might have left with never-ending infighting and court battles over property, can only result in their ultimate demise.
]]>Destruction of the embryo in the mother’s womb is a violation of the right to live which God has bestowed upon this nascent life. To raise the question whether we are here concerned already with a human being or not is merely to confuse the issue. The simple fact is that God certainly intended to create a human being and that this nascent human being has been deliberately deprived of his life. And this is nothing but murder.
A great many different motives may lead to an action of this kind; indeed in cases where it is an act of despair, performed in circumstances of extreme human or economic destitution and misery, the guilt may often lie rather with the community than with the individual. Precisely in this connection money may conceal many a wanton deed, while the poor man’s more reluctant lapse may far more easily be disclosed.
All these considerations must no doubt have a quite decisive influence on our personal and pastoral attitude towards the person concerned, but they cannot in any way alter the fact of murder. (Quoted in Eric Metaxas, Bonhoeffer, 472, paragraphing added)
Exactly the right balance. Clarity on the act itself, and yet a sensitive awareness of motivations and influences. What a striking observation - “God certainly intended to create a human being…”.
It has long been my view that mothers are more often than not also the victims in abortion, duped by our culture and (in particular) devilishly evil organisations into thinking that what they do is acceptable.
]]>Protestant Christianity, if a new PhD dissertation is to be believed, has fragmented so much of the framework within which life was lived in former times, that today we are utterly confused because we have so few rules for living life.
We have become plagued with increasing doubts about who we are.
“It all sounds very sad. But on the other hand, it is good that the Protestant tradition tells us something about what we should do instead of us having to search for who we are,” says Matias Møl Dalsgaard, who has a PhD in philosophy from Aarhus University, and whose dissertation ‘The Protestant Self’ has just been published as a book.
We have “few rules for living,” but Protestantism “tells us something about what we should do.” Just not in the form of rules. Suggestions only, please.
For centuries, Lutheran Protestant Christianity in Northern Europe and the US taught our ancestors that there was nothing they could do to make God think better of them. Neither good deeds nor giving money to the church was seen as having importance in the eyes of God.
Not for non-Christians, anyway. But our good deeds are of value to God when they are done in Christ. Some guy named Luther said that:
So a Christian who lives in this confidence toward God, knows all things, can do all things, undertakes all things that are to be done, and does everything cheerfully and freely; not that he may gather many merits and good works, but because it is a pleasure for him to please God thereby, and he serves God purely for nothing, content that his service pleases God. (Martin Luther, Treatise on Good Works)
At least I think that was Martin Luther. It might have been Luther Vandross, though.
Protestants are free from obligations to God. They don’t have to live according to strict rules. Instead they have been charged with a rather nebulous task.
“Protestants are commanded to live an ordinary life together with other people. It is a tough task because Protestants are not told specifically how to do this,” says Dalsgaard.
I suppose it is “nebulous” if one has been sitting one’s whole life in a Scandinavian Lutheran church, waiting for the pastor to offer the Word of God rather than his or her personal opinions on the political issues of the day.
Throughout history, Protestant Christians have tried to manage their freedom in the best possible way. Over time, this has permeated the culture in countries that subscribe to the Protestant tradition, even though Christianity has gradually slipped into the background.
In Denmark, Sweden, the UK and Germany, this freedom meant that around 500 years ago, citizens started to become what is termed ‘modern’.
And at this point I started to feel like I was reading one of those compilations of college essay sentences, the ones that tell us that “in the Middle Ages, everyone was perpendicular” and “the Civil War was fought between the states, like March Madness.” Of course, this article is translated from Danish, so it might actually be about breakfast for all I know. On the other hand, it is also based on a Ph.D dissertation. But I repeat myself.
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The first Anglican church in Western Canada, St. John’s Anglican Cathedral is poised to make history again with the appointment of a Lutheran pastor as priest of the cathedral and dean of the diocese.
Rev. Paul N. Johnson, an ordained minister in the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Canada, takes over as incumbent priest of the cathedral and dean of the diocese of Rupert’s Land in January 2012, becoming the first Lutheran minister to hold those offices in Canada and perhaps the world.
“This is the first time, as far as we know, that a Lutheran will be serving an Anglican diocese as dean,” says Johnson, 56, who spent seven years as assistant to the national Lutheran bishop and is now interim priest at All Saints Anglican Church.
“To me it’s a very positive sign of movement in the right direction between the churches.”
Johnson’s posting comes a decade after the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Canada and the Anglican Church of Canada signed the Waterloo Declaration, which provides for full communion between the two denominations. Both groups recognize each other’s baptisms, sacraments and ordinations, which means a Lutheran pastor can serve in an Anglican parish and an Anglican priest can be called to a Lutheran church.
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]]>There was a church service this morning from the Presiding Bishop of the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Denmark, the Right Rev Peter Skov-Jakobsen, who urged Christians “not to make faith into a ghetto” and said the understanding of faith or the church could not be furthered by “hiding behind an anxious defence of the Bible and outdated view of gender roles or an unrealistic view of freer sexual morals”.
why did no-one tell me about Lutheran Satire earlier?
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Increasingly desperate denominational leaders are, in the meantime, hoping to make the leaving process more difficult, for rather obvious reasons, at the August ELCA Churchwide Assembly. You can read about the proposed changes at this blog post from late last year over at Lutheran CORE’s blog. Note this section also:
]]>The ELCA announced Nov. 3 that nearly 300 congregations have already completed the required two votes to leave the ELCA and 140 additional congregations have taken a first vote but have not yet taken their second vote.
What would you do? Hopefully not this..
I simply can’t find the words to describe it.
***Warning*** - complete and utter trainwreck, but you just can’t tear your eyes away.
For extra points, what don’t they talk about?
2010 Christmas greeting from Anglican and Lutheran leaders from Anglican Church of Canada on Vimeo.
Anyone else want to hug? No, didn’t think so - unless it’s a porcelain bowl.
]]>An Upper Arlington-based church that was one of the 10 largest in the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA) officially has left the denomination after disagreements over homosexuality.
Most members of the 5,800-member Upper Arlington Lutheran Church, which has three campuses, were troubled by what they viewed as the liberal drift of the ELCA, the largest Lutheran denomination in the U.S.
The entire article is available here.
Hat tip: Kevin Maney+
]]>See what you think… (nb there’s a short ad before the main video)
CMI explain...
]]>The following famous quote attributed to Dr Martin Luther, widely used by creationists, turns out not to be by him at all.
“If I profess, with the loudest voice and the clearest exposition, every portion of the truth of God except precisely that little point which the world and the devil are at that moment attacking, I am not confessing Christ, however boldly I may be professing Christianity. Where the battle rages the loyalty of the soldier is proved; and to be steady on all the battle-field besides is mere flight and disgrace to him if he flinches at that one point.”
...
Most of the instances of the quote on the internet, where a source is given, state it as page 81ff of Briefwechsel 3 (i.e. in full: page 81 and following of the third volume of Briefwechsel (correspondence) from D. Martin Luthers Werke, the German (Weimar) edition of Luther’s Works.)Even though Martin Luther said many similar things, these are not his words.
However, we were able to obtain a copy of the pages of Martin Luther’s writing in question (kindly supplied by a supporter, Dr Péter Szentpétery). When I read them in the original German (my mother tongue), it was clear, even allowing for the loosest of loose translations, that this could not be the source. There were some similar sentiments, but quite differently worded.
...
The research of a Pastor Mark Henderson indicates that it comes from a 19th Century novel by Elizabeth Rundle Charles,2 called The Chronicles of the Schoenberg Cotta Family (Thomas Nelson, 1864). Its author was a pious Anglican who was also the writer of a few hymns.The same conclusion is reached in a recent (2009) article in a Lutheran journal by a Bob Caldwell, titled, “‘If I profess:’ A Spurious, if Consistent Luther Quote?”3
The novel is set in a real historical framework of actual persons and events, but the main characters and storyline are fictional. The words of the “battle quote” in the novel are attributed to a fictional character in the book called Fritz, in a long section detailing his relationship to Luther and the Reformation.
Until a few weeks ago, the Rev. Gail Sowell was pastor at two Lutheran churches in the small Wisconsin town of Edgar. That was before members of both congregations jumped headfirst into the simmering debate over gay clergy in the Evangelical Lutheran Church of America.
“It was pretty gruesome,” Sowell said, recalling shouting matches inside the sanctuary; the mass resignation of one church’s council, save one member; even whispers around town that she was a lesbian. “For the record, I’m not,” she said.When the smoke cleared, the congregation at St. John Lutheran Church narrowly voted to not leave the ELCA. Across town at Peace Lutheran, they voted to leave and fired Sowell. “Fortunately, I’m thick-skinned,” she said.
Not all ELCA congregations have seen that level of turbulence over the ELCA’s decision last August to allow pastors in committed same-sex relationships to serve openly. But by most accounts, it has been a confusing and murky time in the nation’s largest Lutheran denomination.
Several hundred congregations are moving toward a permanent split with the ELCA and more will likely come, but the number is still a small portion of the 10,000-church denomination.
but the number is still a small portion of the 10,000-church denomination….
Give it time. Give it time.
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This is like a recording of four 2-minute General Convention speeches from lay deputies, only it is far more articulate and clear and less ranting and there are far fewer tears and histrionics too. Make this an equivalent to one of the “reports” given by a chair of one of the Committees—only again, far more articulate, clear, theologically astute, less ranting, fewer tears and histronics, etc, etc.
]]>HARVEY, ND - The congregation of the First Lutheran Church of Harvey, ND, has cast the first of two votes to split from the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America.
Two-thirds of the congregation voted in favor of the split last month. The congregation must wait 90 days before the second and final vote.
The proposed split follows a national church policy that allows gay and lesbian people to serve as pastors or in other church leadership positions.
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