Category Archives: Theology

Paul and Romans, chapter one

I often refer to Paul as enigma when I explain why I was drawn to write a novel about him. His writings about a gracious God and Christian egalitarianism–no longer Jew or Greek … slave or free … male and female—have informed and inspired theologian and laity alike over the centuries. But, charges of anti-Semitism, apologist for slavery, misogynist, and gay-bashing homophobe are also levied against his writings. The simple explanation, of course, is that Pauline views were shaped by the cultural context of his ancient world, the 1st century mix of Greco-Roman Hellenism and Hebrew religion.

A recent post on Christian Century blogs (my other blog, Spirit of a Liberal, is also part of the CC blog network) digs much deeper into the cultural influences at play in the oft cited clobber passages at the end of the first chapter of Paul’s letter to the Romans. Professor James F McGrath of the religion department at Butler University offers a succinct but salient commentary into the Romans verses in which “Paul talks about homosexuality not as a sin, but as a divine punishment for sin.”

In Paul’s time, the thinking about nature, gender and intercourse was that men are by nature active and women by nature passive. What would seemed [sic] shameful in this ancient honor-shame cultural context was the transgressing of such gender roles, with men demeaning themselves by taking the passive female role, and conversely women taking on the active role which is by nature male.

Note the link between a misogynist understanding of gender and 1st century homophobia—a relationship that remains present today. Fear of the feminine characterizes both misogynists and homophobes.

Another cultural influence, perhaps Stoic (Tarsus was home to a major Greek university of the Stoic school of philosophy), suggested that same gender sexual behavior was due to an excess of passion. Consistent with the Stoic ideal of all things in moderation, self control was preferred to impassioned emotionalism, and homosexual behavior was understood to be an unrestrained progression of passion beyond heterosexual promiscuity and well beyond cool and dispassionate Stoicism.

Of course, Paul the Pharisee would also have been well-educated in the abominations of Leviticus so his various cultural influences would have coalesced into the untested assumption that same gender sexual behavior was unnatural. The concepts of sexual orientation and mutually affirming and loving same-gender relationships would have been entirely alien to his now 2000-year-old cultural preconceptions.

It is appropriate to repeat the oft-stated assertion that it is unfair to ask 21st century questions of a 1st century man.

A look back at Holy Week

As a blog that wrestles with denominational politics, it was pretty quiet here last week, and that’s a good thing. I’m sure the temperature will rise again on ELCA, Lutheran CORE, NALC, and LCMC controversies, but Holy Week was an appropriately peaceful interlude. The one item to note from last week was the positive news from the ELCA that 2010 has seen forty-one new mission “starts” according to an ELCA press release.

These new starts represent what America is becoming, as 23 (of the 41 new starts) are among immigrant populations … Of the 41 new starts 12 are “worshiping communities” authorized by the ELCA’s 65 synods. These are communities with ministry potential.

Several of these are residuals of ELCA congregations that voted to leave but with a remnant of ELCA supporters pursuing an ELCA mission start. Lilly, one of the frequent commenters on this blog, reports on such a group in her Wisconsin community.

Before moving on to the inevitable skirmishes, allow me one look back at Holy Week at my
ELCA congregation (Bethel) and the rest of the Northfield ELCA community. Thursday morning, the normal “Blue Monday” gathering of six or eight ELCA clergy was rescheduled as a “power lunch” to coordinate weekend events. The Maunday Thursday service at Bethel was a dramatic skit themed around Da Vinci’s “Last Supper” masterpiece. While the thirteen actors portraying Jesus and the disciples held their Da Vinci pose, each in turn stepped to a microphone and offered a monologue. I portrayed Andrew. The skit ended with Jesus sharing the bread and wine with his disciples who then stepped in front of the table and shared the meal with the congregation. Good Friday evening at Bethel featured a Stations of the Cross presentation. Saturday, most of the local ELCA clergy gathered for a traditional Easter Vigil in Boe Chapel on the campus of St. Olaf. Bethel’s new associate pastor–Charlie Ruud (a St Olaf graduate)–was honored to preside over the eucharistic liturgy. Dramatic readings were accompanied by the pipe organ riffs of St Olaf music professor John Ferguson and rising incense followed by candle lighting and bell ringing. A combined choir concluded with Handel’s Hallelujah chorus. The Hallelujah chorus also highlighted each of the three Easter Sunday services at Bethel.

After a week of familiar Lutheran liturgies, I borrow a Youtube video from Lutheran Pastor and blogger John Petty which is a delightful sampling of Eastern Orthodox Easter music, Christos Anesti, Christ is risen.

Liberal and religious??

When I began this blog eight months ago, I chose the title, “Spirit of a Liberal”, and its theme, “a blog of progressive, religious themes” as intentional, in-your-face statements. I favor unfettered intellectual inquiry, on the one hand, but also embrace the mystery, on the other. I reject the hatred and bigotry clothed in Christian themes (“who wants to be lumped in with all the other Christians, especially the ones you see on TV protesting gay marriage, giving money to charlatans, and letting priests molest children?”) while accepting the moments of spiritual fulfillment in my own life. Calvin was mostly right; our rituals, symbols, and myths are just that, but he was wrong when he said they were mere symbols. We speak our unspeakable truths in our mythologies. We doubt, and we hope. The Old Testament book of Job, with all its uncertainties, is my favorite Biblical book; if only the editor hadn’t added a sappy, happy ending.

Elaine Pagels, a professor of religion at Princeton and acclaimed author of Beyond Belief and other works, spoke of her own faith journey as a fallen evangelical whose academic pursuits conflicted with the unthinking literalism of her youth; yet, when faced with the death of her child, she found herself back in a church because it “spoke to my condition”.

I happened across a superb article entitled, “I am a closet Christian”, which marvelously expresses similar sentiments. Brooklynite Ada Calhoun shares her faith journey in the article, and her theme about religion in general and Christianity in particular is summed up in her line, “Not how it’s right or just, but how — and this may sound stupid, but it’s what I think about religion in general — it works.”

Here’s a longer statement:

All of us need help with birth and death and good and evil, and religion can give us that. It doesn’t solve problems. It reminds you that, yes, those challenges are real and important and folks throughout history have struggled and thought about them too, and by the way, here is some profound writing on the subject from people whose whole job is to think about this stuff.

The idea of an eternal community brings me comfort: I like the image of a long table extending backward and forward in time, and everyone who’s ever taken Communion is sitting at it. The Bible at the 1920s stone church where my husband and I were married was filled with the names of people in the community who’d married, been born and died. When my son was baptized in our church in a traditional Easter eve service, the light spreading from candle to candle through the pews of the dark church made me feel, at least for one moment, we were united in a sense of gratitude for new life and awe in the face of the numinous.

Please read the whole article.

Dissident ELCA theologian Nestingen update: #CWA09 & #ELCA

Erik Samuelson Yesterday’s post was about professor emeritus James Nestingen’s negativity regarding the ELCA, past and present. This morning, a blog post from Pastor Erik Samuelson offers another view of Nestingen.

Pastor Erik is of Norwegian ancestry, and his roots are in the old American Lutheran Church (ALC), which was one of the major partners in the ELCA merger twenty some years ago. Professor Nestingen has the same background, and Pastor Erik suggests that Nestingen still resents the merger and the diminished influence of conservative, Norwegian Lutherans in the merged church.

Dr. Nestingen gets to the heart of it: The #ELCA was a bad idea all along. Three cheers for the Old ALC! Hmm…

What I found as I analyzed the way he uses the documents [Lutheran Confessions] is that he often intersperses American political philosophy and highly preferences one particular historical branch of Lutheranism which my family shares with him. It’s a straight line from the German Reformation to it’s adoption in Norway (subscribing to the Augsburg Confession and Catechisms) to the United States via the Norwegian Synod (and some Haugean pietists thrown in from time to time) that kept Norwegian [language] in worship long into the 20th Century, who formed the core of the ALC and had their stronghold in Luther Seminary (and St. Olaf and PLU). Nestingen again and again seems to refer to this as the “true Lutheran” heritage. This works great for Norwegian American Lutherans (who held a great deal of power in the ALC and less since the merger in 1988), but I just don’t see how he can claim this as the predominant form of Lutheranism, or the mainstream of Christianity.

Pastor Erik’s blog also offers a detailed rebuttal to Nestingen’s assertion that the ELCA violates the letter of the Confessions. Check out his post if interested in the esoteric minutiae of Lutheran orthodoxy.

Are ELCA Lutherans now unchurched? One theologian thinks so. #CWA09

Retired professor of church history and storyteller James Nestingen speaks with a folksy country drawl befitting his North Dakota upbringing as a Norwegian Lutheran pastor’s kid. I once heard him speak as a Bible study leader at an ELCA synod assembly, teaching the twenty first chapter of John. When Peter and other disciples had empty nets on Lake Galilee, Jesus told them to try the other side of the boat: So they cast it, and now they were not able to haul it in because there were so many fish. “And they were big fish too,” Nestingen said with eyes sparkling, “fat walleyes, eight pounders every one.” His Minnesota listeners laughingly approved.

“Church history” in Lutheran seminaries seems to assume that the church was born in 1517 on the day that Luther nailed his 95 theses onto the door of the Wittenberg Castle Church, as if the first fifteen centuries after Christ are a mere footnote. And so Nestingen, the professor emeritus of church history at Luther Seminary in St Paul, is an expert in the life of Luther and the confessional writings that encapsulated the insights and teachings of the Lutheran reformers. As professor emeritus, he taught a course entitled Lutheran Confessional Writings. His seminary students were required to memorize Luther’s small catechism.

“This is the document that saved the Reformation,” he points out. “In the 16th Century, it was printed up for people to hang in their kitchens and to use in the instruction of their children.” Many older parishioners have memorized its wisdom, and Nestingen believes that young pastors must “have on their tongues the words that are in the people’s hearts.”

Quite apart from his storytelling and teaching, Nestingen has long been a critic of the ELCA and an irritant to its leadership. Ten years ago, the hot button issue in the ELCA was the ecumenical agreement with the Episcopalians entitled “Called to Common Mission” (CCM). The opponents of CCM formed the WordAlone Network, and Nestingen offered the keynote address at the first national gathering of WordAlone in 2000. His speech is sprinkled with jibes at the ELCA and its leadership:

This is supposed to be a merged church; in fact, to many of us it looks much more like a hostile takeover.
The merger process that produced the ELCA was hijacked by special interest groups
It has gotten the feeling of betrayal.
our church developed and has been maintained on a paradigm of coercion.

Nestingen’s speech was especially critical of then presiding Bishop George Anderson and ELCA Secretary Lowell Almen and presumed back room political machinations that disenfranchised the worthy in favor of the uninformed but easily manipulated. In the intervening years, Nestingen’s folksy but strident voice has continued to sound the alarm at his perception of the ELCA’s retreat from the 16th century Lutheran Confessions. He has continued to provide the theology of WordAlone’s opposition, speaking at subsequent WordAlone national gatherings on several occasions. Now, he has published a rambling rebuke of the 2009 Churchwide Assembly’s actions in approving gay clergy and perhaps gay marriage; his article, entitled “Joining the Unchurched”, appears on WordAlone’s website.

In its August assembly in Minneapolis … the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America effectively declared that it is no longer a church … The ELCA has redefined the Word of God … In a naked power play by the privileged—the few allowed some actual voice in the proceedings—this mighty consensus fell to a bogus, prefabricated ambiguity crafted to disallow it. With the action taken in the Minneapolis assembly, the ELCA has made such power mongering official procedure and policy.

At least Nestingen is consistent. In his initial address to the 2000 WordAlone gathering, he criticized the official ELCA policy mandating the inclusion of women and minorities as voting members of ELCA assemblies, and he harps on the same sour notes in his latest harangue.

From his 2000 keynote address:

The positive value of the quota system overall can be debated … There have always been people who would have traditionally been a part of the decision making processes of the church who had to eliminated to make room for others.

From his 2009 website article (emphasis added):

Positive aspects of quotas can still be argued. After 20 years, the ELCA remains 97 percent white. Some significant departures after the August assembly may make the church even whiter. Still the quotas may have brought some people forward who had been otherwise excluded. That would be a matter of thanks. Yet there’s another side to it.

Quotas include but in order to do so, they also eliminate. In fact, they do so arbitrarily, fastening on characteristics like race and gender but not necessarily putting an equal priority on characteristics, like wisdom, fidelity and zeal. In fact, while the evidence has been difficult to come by, extended experience with the system strongly suggests that those most likely to be included are the manageable, those eager to please, no matter what their race or gender, while those most likely to be eliminated are the gifted and challenging, those most likely to make waves.

Nestingen’s elitism is offensive when he suggests that the women and minorities who were voting members due to ELCA quotas were less likely to be infused with “wisdom, fidelity and zeal”, less “gifted and challenging”, and “eager to please” and “manageable”. Ugh. Unseemly name-calling is unnecessary and diminishes the debate.

Should white men be making the decisions for the ELCA? Give Nestingen the benefit of the doubt and allow that he is neither racist nor sexist. But, his implication that voting members are hand-picked stooges of ELCA leadership is patently false and smacks of conspiratorial paranoia—a minority that believes it should be the majority imagines an ill-defined conspiracy as the explanation. The reality is that voting members to the 2009 Churchwide Convention were themselves selected by the ballot at either the synod level or the conference level, elected by persons selected by local congregations. I recently blogged about a gathering of synod clergy in which normally placid SE Minnesota Bishop Huck Usgaard railed at suggestions that voting members were hand picked or were incompetent.

Carl Braaten is Nestingen’s counterpart in Lutheran Core, a professor emeritus of church history with expertise in the life of Luther and the Lutheran Confessions. Just as Nestingen is the theologian on call for the WordAlone Network, Braaten provides the theological underpinning of Lutheran Core’s resistance to the ELCA. In earlier blog posts (here and here), I critiqued Braaten’s look back, not forward approach.

With feet planted squarely in the sixteenth century, octogenarian and retired theologian Carl Braaten has assumed the intellectual mantle as defender of Lutheran orthodoxy … Braaten argues that ELCA Bishop Mark Hanson is wrong, our ELCA unity is not in Christ, as Hanson suggests, but in our Reformation era Confessions.

So too, Nestingen:

And this is the importance of the confessions. We tell the story of Luther not because his experience is normative, but because as we have heard the promising word confessed, it has become definitive for our community. Some of the Lutheran confessions were written by Luther, the catechisms and the Smalcald Articles. Others were written by a colleague of his at the University of Wittenberg, Philip Melanchthon-the Augsburg Confession and its supporting documents. Still another was written by Luther and Melanchthon’s students. But whoever wrote them, each of the confessions became a public document, summing up Catholic faith in terms suitable to ongoing confession, witness.

As such, the confessions are like the Magna Charta or the Declaration of Independence. They are declarative.

With the symbolic gesture of nailing his theses to the door, Luther unloosed a torrent of reform that washed over northern Europe. Luther and the reformers challenged the Roman Catholic church, challenged the institution of a celibate clergy (even the very notion of the evil of sexual expression), challenged the basic theological premises of the day, and even challenged scripture itself by offering the doctrine of a “canon within a canon” and disputing the authority of the books of James and Revelation. The spirit of reform blew like the wind, sometimes uncontrollable as with the ill fated peasants war, and the reformers felt the need to write down boundaries and definitions, to domesticate the unruly spirit. Thus, there were two parts to the reformation: the doing of it and the writing of it, known as the Confessions.

This brings to mind the saying of Rabbi Abraham Heschel: Concepts are second thoughts. All conceptualization is symbolization, an act of accommodation of reality to the human mind. By taming the wind of reform, by defining in written word the meaning of it all, by penning the Lutheran Confessions, did the reformers lose something? Did a reforming church become a reformed church? Did we lose the timelessness of a reforming spirit in favor of the time centered Confessions?

I find the attitudes of Nestingen and Braaten to be revealing. While ignoring the spirit of reform—the flux doing of it—they focus on the Confessions—the static writing of it. The radicalism of Luther, who flaunted convention, is lost in their resort to the sixteenth century written word, which has itself become a convention. Should we not apply Luther’s own challenge, his own hermeneutic to the writings of the Confessions? “Whatever does not teach Christ is not yet apostolic, even though St. Peter or St. Paul does the teaching.” Dare we say, even though Luther or Melanchthon does the teaching? Hear me well, I am not suggesting the Confessions be abandoned or diminished, but should not the spirit of reform interpret these 16th century words? A hermeneutic that allows us to hear the spirit and not merely the letter?

To the majority of voting members at the ELCA 2009 convention, the ELCA continues to be a reforming church. To Nestingen and WordAlone, to Braaten and Lutheran Core, the ELCA has ceased to be a church of the Reformation era Confessions and thus no church at all.

Bishop Huck calls an ELCA synod meeting #CWA09 & #Goodsoil09

I’m new to Northfield and the Southeast Minnesota synod of the ELCA, one of sixty-five synods spread around the country. Each synod has a chief administrator and “pastor to the pastors”, a bishop. In Southeast Minnesota, that would be Bishop Huck Usgaard. On Wednesday the 9th, Bishop Huck invited the clergy from the 185 congregations of the synod to come together to discuss the recent ELCA Churchwide assembly actions approving gay clergy in “publicly accountable, lifelong, monogamous” relationships and allowing congregations to recognize and support same gender couples. I was pleased to be present.

The bishop began by reminding the assembled that the ELCA and its predecessors have a history of conflict over issues of inclusion as old as Paul and his Gentile churches against James and the Jerusalem church. Closer to home, he shared the story of the two Lutheran churches of his home town in Iowa that had a vigorous dispute over the theology of predestination in their early days, but when they celebrated their centennial, those gathered couldn’t remember which congregation took which side. Then there was slavery and some churches were quiescent and others were activist, then women’s ordination divided congregations, and now policies of LGBT inclusion.“We’ll get through this, too,” was the implicit message of assurance.

Each of the clergy who had been voting members at the ELCA convention in Minneapolis in August were asked to share their impressions. Six or eight spoke. All, save one, were positive, even though some acknowledged they had voted “no” on the key resolutions. The one was quite negative and accused the ELCA of going against the word of God. He quoted extensively from the assembly address by the president of the Missouri Synod (LCMS), which in turn quoted from the 16th century Reformation era Formula of Concord. He fit the pattern of the Lutheran Core / WordAlone response, and he echoed their talking points … rejection of the Word of God … reference to Reformation documents … strong rightward tilt toward the LCMS. See my earlier posts here and here.

A question and answer session was followed by small group discussions. How were voting members picked? From conference meetings. The Bishop reported hearing suggestions that voting members were hand picked and/or were incompetent and/or were pressured, and for the only time during the day, he showed his irritation as he rebuked such suggestions. Have any congregations notified the bishop of an intention to secede? Not one, not yet. There was appreciation expressed for the pastoral leadership of presiding bishop, Mark Hanson, during the assembly.

We broke bread and drank wine together. Spontaneous hymn singing, a capella, broke out.

In closing, the bishop expressed hope that no members and no congregations would leave the ELCA, but he also said those staying should not be motivated by revenge or ill will—better to leave than fester. He quoted Gamaliel’s speech to the Sanhedrin after Peter and others were arrested:

keep away from these men and let them alone; because if this plan or this undertaking is of human origin, it will fail; but if it is of God, you will not be able to overthrow them—in that case you may even be found fighting against God!

A 16th century approach to 21st century problems: #CWA09 & #Goodsoil09

With feet planted squarely in the sixteenth century, octogenarian and retired theologian Carl Braaten has assumed the intellectual mantle as defender of Lutheran orthodoxy. On behalf of Lutheran Core (fellow travelers of the WordAlone network), he penned an open letter to delegates to the recent ELCA 2009 convention; later, he engaged in an ongoing debate with former Presiding Bishop Herb Chilstrom.

Presently, Braaten argues that ELCA Bishop Mark Hanson is wrong, our ELCA unity is not in Christ, as Hanson suggests, but in our Reformation era confessions. Braaten longs for the good old days of the Augsburg Confession (1530), but then he muses that even the Reformation was too radical: “When the first Lutherans lost the magisterial authority of the Roman Catholic Church, it had no sure authority to put in its place.” Too much democracy, that’s the problem. Too much enlightened thinking. Too much reason and rationality. Ah, if the Lutherans only had an authoritative, top down Magisterium like the Catholics, this slippery slope modernism would be held in check. Why, just look at who the ELCA’s ecumenical friends are these days! The Episcopalians, the UCC, the RCA, the Presbyterians, and the Methodists. Mainline Protestants all.

The Lutheran Core website claims that the ELCA convention’s approval of gay clergy and gay marriage has resulted in strained ecumenical relationships. With whom? Not with these mainline protestant ecumenical partners, but with the Roman Catholics and Missouri Synod Lutherans. A sharp turn to the right is in order, according to Braaten and the Lutheran Core reactionaries.

With tongue firmly in his cheek, Lutheran Pastor Erik Samuelson responds to Braaten:

Dr. Braaten-

Thank you for your comments. I have always held you to be one of the great doctors of the Church. Though I have never met you, through your writings[, you] are one of my teachers. I was hoping I would run into you at the Churchwide Assembly, where I was a voting member, so you could answer a question that came up for me while watching the lecture video LutheranCORE distributed.

In the video, you refer to Jesus’ teaching that remarriage after divorce is adultery as “one of the great absolutes of Jesus”. You even mentioned your own children who had been divorced (though didn’t mention that you have, as I assume you have, advised them to remain celibate so as not to enter into adulterous remarriage relationships).

My question is, how can the ELCA allow remarried pastors (unrepentant adulterers) and bless second “marriages”? Both of these actions and the underlying teachings put us out of line with the historical teaching (and 2000 year consensus on human sexuality) of the Christian Church and threaten our ecumenical relationships with both the Roman Catholic Church and the Eastern Orthodox churches? Why have we tolerated this open sin for so long in the ELCA? Might this be the next campaign for us to embark on? Perhaps LutheranCORE can tackle this next? This certainly affects more congregations and pastors than the homosexuality discussions have. Have you written anything on this that might help in our efforts?

Paul Sundberg, another commenter adds, “and what about those pesky women?”

Forward or back, whither shall we go?

Are the Holy Ones leaving? Or, holier than thou? #CWA09 & #Goodsoil09

A group of ELCA pastors huddles over coffee for their weekly text study, but sermon ideas are not the center of discussion this week. “What’s happening in your congregation?” is the question for each in turn. “Just talk, so far,” reports one. “My congregational president has resigned,” says another, “but that prompted two families who didn’t like his heavy handed leadership to return!”

It seems that there is a trickle of disaffected parishioners who are leaving or threatening to leave the ELCA over the new LGBT policies but not a trend–much less a torrent–at least not among this coffee shop gathering.

Word Alone and Lutheran Core, the voices of the opposition, are counseling patience and due deliberation:

We will want to give ourselves time for patient and careful reflection. Now is not the time to make rash, hasty decisions. Most people make serious mistakes when they make decisions under pressure. We do not want to make this mistake now. Our relationship with the ELCA is a serious matter for us. I ask that we all take time to reflect patiently with ourselves and with others and not to make rash decisions now. We all have the time for God to disclose his will for us. Lutheran CORE and our supporters have consistently urged us to maintain at least a formal relationship with the ELCA. The question now before us is the level of our participation within the ELCA.

Around the country, there is anecdotal evidence that the Lutherans are not jumping ship, at least not yet and not in great numbers, over the ELCA 2009 convention actions approving gay clergy and gay marriage. Many congregations are promoting discussion, and folks are seriously wrestling with the question, “what is the Bible and how do we use it?”

Those who leave echo a common refrain, “But there’s this line in the sand. It’s about the Bible and whether we believe what it says.” The Lutheran Core talking points include the statement: “Lutheran CORE is continuing in the Christian faith as it has been passed down to us by generations of Christians. The ELCA is the one that has departed from the teaching of the Bible as understood by Christians for 2,000 years.”

It pains me when some suggest that the ELCA decision was unbiblical, that those of us who agree with the inclusive actions of the assembly don’t “believe what the Bible says.” While we may disagree over interpretation of Scripture, it is self-righteous and judgmental to dismiss contrary opinions as unbiblical or even unchristian.

To the contrary, we believe in the heart of the matter, the “canon within the canon” (Luther’s terminology), the “core testimony” (Walter Brueggeman’s terminology) that compels us to open our arms, our hearts, and our pulpits as we did forty years ago to our sisters despite apparent Biblical admonitions. Luther suggested that all Scripture is not equal, that all passages do not carry the same weight, that some verses must surrender to the greater authority of the core testimony. We agree with Luther, but that does not mean that we reject the authority of the Bible, as charged by some in Lutheran Core and WordAlone.

The Bible says, “Slaves, accept the authority of your masters with all deference, not only those who are kind and gentle but also those who are harsh” 1st Peter 2:18 and “I permit no woman to teach or to have authority over a man; she is to keep silent” 1st Timothy 2:12. Yet, despite nearly two millennia of teaching and tradition, the church now rejects slavery and sexism, by finding deeper streams of meaning in the core testimony of the good news of Jesus of Nazareth, the one who included those that society rejected, those who failed according to the purity rules of the church of his day, those deemed unclean by the Levitical holiness code–the same wellspring that spills out the harsh texts that “clobber” our gay fellows.

The gospel text for yesterday that most Lutheran pastors preached on around the country was Mark’s narrative of the foreign woman who pushed against the traditional Jewish walls of exclusion. For the early church, the question was not “gay” but “Gentile”. Should the Jewish Jesus movement include non-Jews, the Gentiles? Despite their uncleanness? Despite their failure to follow the Jewish law? Despite centuries of tradition and teaching that these did not belong to the family of God?

Halfway through his sermon, my pastor interrupted himself. “There he goes again, some of you are thinking, he’s promoting the gay agenda. It’s not an agenda,” he said. “It’s the gospel.”

There it is. The heart of the matter. The canon within the canon. The core testimony. It’s not unbiblical. It’s not unchristian. It’s the gospel.

Where’s the Biblical support for the ELCA action? #CWA09 & #Goodsoil09

I hosted a discussion at my local Lutheran congregation a few nights ago about the recent ELCA Churchwide Assembly 2009, which approved gay clergy and possibly gay marriage. When I was asked the question, “What’s the Biblical basis for the ELCA action?”, I’m afraid I didn’t provide an adequate response. That’s partly my fault and partly because the answer is complicated and nuanced and not a black and white, unambiguous, simple “proof text”, which is what many conservatives on this issue demand.

Does the Bible speak to nuclear disarmament? Universal health care? Teaching evolution in biology class? The flat earth society? Does the Bible speak to twenty-first century issues that are far beyond the purview and understanding of the ancients who authored the words of the Biblical texts? (Ok, if you’re of a mind that God wrote the Bible, you may as well stop reading now).

Does the Bible speak to “publicly accountable, monogamous, life-long same gender relationships?”

Yes, but we must use modern lenses to filter the pre-scientific, culturally conditioned worldview of ancient authors. We must view the issue in light of a twenty-first century understanding and apply broad Biblical principles and not isolated proof texts.

The sixteenth century monk and priest Martin Luther, the greatest sexual revolutionary in history, not only confronted the church’s insistence upon a celibate priesthood when he gleefully married his love, the nun Katy von Bora, but he also reversed a millennium of sexual angst by rejecting the hangups over human sexuality dating to the fifth century, the time of Augustine and Jerome and others who saw sex–even within marriage–as the spreading of the sinful seed of Adam. The joy of sex: the author of the modern book by that title can thank old Father Martin.

But I digress …

It was Martin Luther who suggested that we view, interpret, and understand Scripture through the lens of “the canon within the canon.” Not all scripture is equal. Not all verses carry the same weight. Had it been up to Luther, he would have excluded the “epistle of straw”, the book of James, altogether. He also had serious doubts about the book of Revelation. With deep devotion toward the Holy Writ, he was nevertheless willing to challenge that which should be challenged.

And what is the heart of the matter, Luther’s “canon within the canon”, or the Scripture’s “core testimony”, to use the terminology of theologian Walter Brueggemann? I think most Christians would agree that it has to do with the gospel, the good news of Jesus of Nazareth, the one who accepted and included those rejected by society.

And what of the law, the rules and regulations, the moral precepts that guide and instruct? Here too, there is a heart of the matter, a canon within the canon, and core testimony attributed to the words of Jesus himself. Love God and love your neighbor, “On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.” Or, as John the evangelist records the words of Jesus, “I give you a new commandment, that you love one another.”

Christian ethics is less a set of rules than a principle: a measuring stick, a gauge, or a scale. What is the loving thing to do? The evidence must be weighed–and that includes the best evidence available—scientific, cultural, academic, historical, medical and psychological. Faith and reason. If the weight of the evidence tilts the scale one way—despite the ancient words of the Levitical priests or Paul the apostle—our way forward as faithful Christians is clear. The heart of the matter, the canon within the canon, the core testimony compels us.

While others may disagree, it is unfair to judge this view as unbiblical or unchristian. With Jacob at the ford of the Jabbok, we have wrestled with our wonderings. We believe we have plumbed deeper streams that wash away the passages that some would use to clobber their fellow.

Is the conservative’s Bible about to become more liberal?

What is the Bible and how do we use it?

This is a recurring thread in this blog. See prior discussions here and here. The question comes up again in light of the announcement that the editors and publishers of the most popular version of the Bible (NIV) plan to issue a new revision that has conservatives stirring.

The world’s most-popular Bible will undergo its first revision in 25 years, modernizing the language in some sections and promising to reopen a contentious debate about changing gender terms in the sacred text.

The New International Version, the Bible of choice for conservative evangelicals, will be revised to reflect changes in English usage and advances in Biblical scholarship, it was announced Tuesday. The revision is scheduled to be completed late next year and published in 2011. MSNBC.com

The history of manuscript transmission and interpretation is fascinating and far beyond the scope of a blog post. For a brief introduction, I suggest the Wikipedia article on Bible Translations. Equally fascinating are the differing attitudes toward the Bible as blogger Cathy Lynn Grossman notes in her Faith and Reason blog on USAtoday.com:

How much this matters to you may well depend on how you see the Bible.

The number of people who say they believe the Bible is "the actual word of God and is to be taken literally word for word" has bumped downward from four in ten adults in 1984 to fewer than three in 10 (27%) in 2008, according to Gallup surveys of 1,000 U.S. adults.

Half of Americans say the Bible as "the inspired word of God but not everything in it should be taken literally." And one in five call the Bible "an ancient book of fables, legends, history and moral precepts recorded by man."

In the recent debates at the ELCA convention over LGBT issues, the fundamental disagreements stemmed from differing attitudes toward scripture. Questioning negative gay Bible passages is a rejection of the authority of scripture argued some conservatives. No, there are “deeper streams” of interpretation that are more instructive than the “clobber” passages countered the progressives. Both sides claimed Biblical warrant for their positions.

What is ironic in the current debate over the revisions to the NIV is that this is a fight amongst conservatives and not a liberal/conservative split. The NIV editors are an independent group of conservative scholars and translators formed in 1965 to create and revise the NIV, and the publisher is Zondervan, an Evangelical publishing house and a Rupert Murdoch company.

It seems that honest scholarship that reveals nuanced shades of gray makes many evangelicals squirm even when the scholars are their own.