Esteemed elder, Carl Braaten, has been a leading Lutheran theologian for the past fifty years. He was instrumental in drafting the original Lutheran Core open letter to which former Presiding Bishop Herbert Chilstrom responded. See my original blog post on the exchange. To get to the point, Lutheran Core opposes the proposed gay marriage and gay clergy resolutions that will come before the ELCA in ten days, but Chilstrom supports their passage.
Now, Braaten has responded to Chilstrom’s response. Braaten’s letter to Chilstrom is posted on the websites of the Lutheran Forum and the Institute of Lutheran Theology. Neither is an official arm of the ELCA. The independent promoters and authors from each organization hail from multiple Lutheran denominations including the ELCA, Missouri Synod (LCMS), and other smaller Lutheran denominations.
For Braaten and his web hosts, ecumenism means moving toward the LCMS and the other lesser Lutheran groups and away from other mainline Protestant denominations. Braaten laments that for a generation the ELCA has been “moving in the direction of liberal Protestantism on many fronts.” He mocks the ELCA for rejoicing that “finally Lutheranism is making it on the big stage of American religion, like the other mainline Protestant denominations.” He would prefer a return to “the ancient traditions which shaped the development of catholic orthodoxy, which I believe our Lutheran Confessors affirmed in a positive way.”
Look back, not forward.
Yet, I think Braaten profoundly understands that the issue for the conservatives is not about sex at all. Gay marriage and gay clergy merely provide a convenient rallying point to try to stem the tide of modernity, to hold back the waters that erode the shores of orthodoxy, to return to “the good old days” when the Bible meant something black and white, void of nuance. That Braaten’s letter rambles from one remembrance to the next is telling.
Look back, not forward.
Braaten says, “the theologians who signed the CORE Letter (around 60 of them) hold the same views concerning the slide of the ELCA toward liberal Protestantism … It is clear that what ails the ELCA, in our view, is not all about sexuality. It is about the underlying pervasive theological condition … the ELCA is falling off a cliff into heterodoxies and heresies of its own … a Social Statement that is a theological embarrassment to anyone or any church that claims to be faithful to the Lutheran Confessions … God may well answer your prayer, however, by sending the ELCA into another Babylon, into exile.”
Whew! I guess we’ll be in exile with the Episcopalians, the UCC’ers, and soon others but definitely not the LCMS.
Carl was my systematics prof at LSTC. He certainly wasn’t the warm and fuzzy type but I respected him and learned a lot from him. Nonetheless I have been very disappointed to watch his drift over the years into the ELCA reactionary wing, especially since his retirement. Indeed, a common denominator of many of the names on this letter (including other profs of mine) is the status of retired or emeritus.
“Look back not forward” indeed. Like gay rights in the public debate, this is setting up in the church increasingly as a generational divide. To put it simply: they just don’t get it. Which makes the response from an elder leader like Chilstrom all the more remarkable. I thought one of the most telling points he makes (which I see on the conservative sites has really pushed some buttons) is that our ecumenical rapprochment with the RCC is now mostly a sham. To finally hear someone say this is, to me, so refreshing. The continuing romanticism about that whole effort is one of the best examples of how the reactionary group is living in the past–and an idealized one at that. The church is changing, they feel left behind, and they don’t like it.
I have heard so many variations on Lutheran nostalgia jokes and our pining for the past that there is probably a book waiting to be published with it all. Sadly, the joke is really on us. Who wants to be part of a church (or any organization for that matter) where many or most of the members, and even worse the leadership, believe that its best days were in the past? Yet I’ve heard that attitude throughout my ministry, not just from folks in the pews but from seminary profs and bishops as well. It’s hardly a surprise then that new people aren’t flocking through our doors. Adopting the Sexuality TF recommendations is one way to indicate we are looking forward and not backward and actually be (at least slightly) ahead of the curve. How nice it would be to actually be leading the parade for a change instead of chasing after it.
Thanks for the personal insight on Braaten and other Core signatories. It’s sad when able scholars lose sight of the organic nature of knowledge and instead become ossified in the status quo they learned and taught.
Braaten wrongly assumes an anti-Catholic bias on the part of Chilstrom; I suspect Herb knows firsthand the poor cousins status accorded the churches of the Reformation by the Vatican. When I studied at St John’s in the early 90’s, the progressive Catholic students I rubbed elbows with (and most of them were progressive) lamented the retreat from Vatican II and said nothing would change until a new pope arrived; little did they know that backward looking pope would serve another dozen plus years, and virtually the entire episcopate and college of Cardinals would be appointed by him. Chilstrom is not going out on a limb by stating the obvious.
One of my best friends is now Chilstrom’s pastor in St Peter, Mn.
Generational, indeed. One problem with theologians who do not “practice” is that their theology becomes exactly that: An attempt to apply “logic” to explain and describe the presence of God in reality. It is a circular endeavor, doomed to failure at the outset. There is NOTHING logical about sending your Son to walk among us for the purpose of dying to fulfill humanly unfulfillable laws. These are the same “elders” who demanded Jesus’ crucifixion, in an earlier generation. They are simply doing what humans tend to do: Codify, Correlate, Quantify, and, Judge – all in the name of “good” and “right.” (ain’t that called “righteousness?”) To me, lately, the word “theologian” means the exact same thing as the word “pharisee.” The two are exact synonyms.
My guess about his divorced children is that, they of course, “repented,” so he will rely on the guarantee of forgiveness to weigh in their favor. We all know divorce is just one of the “lesser” sins anyway, so its no big deal.
Now if Dr. Braaten had a child who was gay, maybe being gay would somehow find its way to the “lesser” sin list. As a parent of such a child, I had to go through an emotional and philosophical wringer for a long time before I came to a point of inner peace about it. The difference for me, as a lowly pew-sitter, was that I never had any doubt at all that God could care less about her “gender-identity.” For some odd reason, I knew and know that she is just as loved and forgiven as I, Dr. Braaten, his divorced children, and everyone else who is a Christian in heart and mind.