Angry white men

OR

The biggest problem facing the ELCA

The Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA) of which I am a member, was created out of a merger of 3 other Lutheran bodies in the late 80's. At that time, I would guess that over 95% of the leadership was white men. In our wisdom, or lack thereof, we decided to make the leadership of this new ELCA look like America.

The problem was that Lutherans are lily white and we had no women at that time in leadership positions. But we forged ahead and ended up placing all of the competent women and minorities in top slots but that wasn't enough to fill all of the positions, so we used all of the below average women and minorities and when that wasn't enough we placed incompetent people as leaders in the new church. Note: now that we are 20 years old, we have plenty of competent women pastors but we still have a ways to go with our minority population.

Guess what? We created an Army of angry white pastors. Most of them are now about my age (64), or older,  so they will go away, but not soon enough in my opinion.

Their reaction was hateful, vile and vulgar. Because they could not be open about their disdain for women and minorities, they had to pick another issue to rally around. They chose the new ELCA's attempt to use inclusive language as the focal point of their rage.

Unless  "father, son, and holy ghost" was used to invoke the Trinity, they would use words like apostasy, invalid, and heresy to attack the speaker. They appointed themselves protectors of "confessional Lutheranism." Lutherans are, by definition, confessional we because subscribe to certain confessions of the church.  These supercilious twits failed to see that they were being redundant.

These angry white guys even formed their own society, the STS or Societas Trinitatis Sanctae.  A pastor friend of mine went to one of their weekend seances (retreats) and told me that it was a bunch of angry guys (a few women) playing dress up (black robes) and wallowing in their hatred of the ELCA all the while "contemplating" and "praying." They say we live in a time of "doctrinal confusion and moral uncertainty." How arrogant to define a problem that only they can solve. Just who is confused by our doctrines? Are they suggesting that they can bring "certainty" to this morally ambiguous world that we Lutherans embrace?


You can imagine which team this angry mob plays on in the ordination of gays issue. To date the ELCA has lost about 200 congregations - out of 10,000 - to this faction. Enough said about this very noisy but inconsequential "pimple on the butt" of the church, to use a metaphor from Paul. 

Faith or Superstition

If you accept Jesus as your personal Lord and Savior you will go to heaven. If you refuse to do this you will fry in the lake of fire known as hell.

If you look in a broken mirror or walk under a ladder you will have bad luck.

Both of the statements above are superstitions. Lutherans know this. Yet in our age, we keep it to ourselves. Here in the Bible belt, the Jesus superstition is used as a club to whack people over the head into submission. This is a con which has been used for centuries and the people of the church of Jesus Christ must say it is wrong.

My late friend, Wes Seeliger, wrote an essay that put this con in the terms of the mafia's protection racket. The way the protection racket works, a gumbah and a thug walk into a store and declare to the owner that that he lives in a very dangerous neighborhood. Glancing at the thug standing next to him, the gumbah tells the store owner that someone might break his kneecaps for no reason at all. 

Then comes the con. The gumbah says, "but we have the solution." Again glancing at the thug, he tells the store owner that his friend here will protect him. And he will do it for a "small" fee.

The con of eternal life is no different.  The pastor tell the congregation, "you have a problem," glancing at the picture of a stern Jesus (very white in white clothes). You are going to hell. BUT we have the solution, again glancing at Jesus. Accept everything we have to say about this monster and you will go to heaven.

Is there a difference between the mafia's protection racket and the "accept Jesus and get a ticket to heaven" racket? 

I think not.

We Lutherans know this. We should say so. 

It is interesting that the muslims run this con by promising 72 virgins in the sweet bye and bye. They use the carrot as opposed to the Jesus stick.  

What is a Christian?

This is a good place to start.

When I can get people talking about religion, I ask this question. Here in the bible belt, the answers are centered around words like belief, acceptance, personal Lord and Savior, and so forth.

Roland Bainton, in his seminal biography of Luther, "Here I Stand," said that in Luther's mind, the essence of Christianity is to be like a little Christ to your neighbor. I agree.

Christianity is that simple and that profound at the same time.

The Calvinists want a rule book (scripture) to define how to love your neighbor.

Luther had a tart reply, "no one needs to tell lovers how to love each other."

Using this definition, not all Christians call themselves Christian. When Ghandi was alive, people would say that the greatest living Christian is a Hindu.