Was it something we said?
In a posting on the WordAlone website dated June 23rd, WordAlone vice president Tom Walker announced an “irrevocable change of direction”—suggesting, of course, that it was the ELCA that has shifted course. Remember the infamous line “we aren’t leaving the ELCA. The ELCA is the one leaving us.” Well, label it what you will, but Walker, on behalf of WordAlone, announces that they are leaving the ELCA, once and for all.
Walker claims that WordAlone has been the “loyal opposition” for more than a decade. Wrong. Disloyal agitators is a better description, and now all pretense is gone. Walker writes:
For over a decade, WordAlone has assumed the role of the loyal opposition in relationship to the ELCA. We clearly voiced opposition to prevailing trends, but always with the intention of getting the ELCA back on a faithful track with a future.
Here’s my interpretation of Walker’s comment.
We kept running our candidates and proposing our resolutions, but we kept losing. Failing to take over the ELCA, we finally realize that if we want to be in control, we must start our own church.
Just as WordAlone President Jaynan Clark earlier warned ELCA presiding Bishop Mark Hanson that his mortal soul was in danger, Vice President Walker now expands that message to the rest of us … “disassociate with the ELCA,” he warns “for the sake of [your] spiritual well being and particularly for the spiritual well being of their children and grandchildren.”
Go straight to hell. Don’t pass go. Is there no end to their narcissistic self-righteousness?
Clark’s earlier meltdown focused on the ELCA presiding bishop. Walker indicts the rest of us. Our sixty-five synodical bishops are “weak-kneed”. The voting members to the momentous CWA09 “rejected Biblical authority.” And the broad rejection of WordAlone and fellow travelers can only be attributed to “the pervasive apathy of the membership at large”. Or, maybe we’re doing mission: teaching Sunday school, quilting, singing in the choir, or one of the thousands of ways the healthy congregations of the ELCA keep on keepin’ on. Failing to jump when WordAlone says “jump” is not a sign of weakness but of the strength of the thousands of ELCA congregations that aren’t cowed by the WordAlone propaganda.
See ya’.
Obie, I don’t know what to say except that its about time. Now we can go on. The Congregational Church has survived the gay crisis and the little church here in Clintonville has had the option NOT to be an open to gay ministers church. Lutherans have that option too if having a gay couple leading them is too far out for the congregation. I won’t miss the extreme expressions of WA in my area. They will still be here but I don’t have to listen to them if I don’t want to.
I pray for them as they start their new ministry. I just wonder if this means they will stop commenting on the ELCA, seeing as how they are disassociating from it. I am guessing no. My guess is it just means nastier rhetoric because there are no consequences now.
The Lutheran Church stands or falls on the doctrine of justification by grace through faith. All of the things that WordAlone touts as “confessional” and “orthodox” are adiaphora. In all of the polemics, angry bluster and accusatory rhetoric, the one thing I don’t hear is a clear statement of the doctrine by which the Church stands or falls.
Or am I missing something?
I asked Tony Stoutenberg what “orthodox” Lutheran meant when he was here. His answer was “your grandmother’s church”. The LCMC pastor was looking for the old red hymnal when he started making changes so I gave him an old ELC black hymnal and told him that the old ALC hymnal was down in the library. As I see it, they have just “come out” with what they were already doing.
@Lilly
Lilly, my thumbnail sketch of “orthodox” was obviously incomplete. Orthodox as a label is about as useful as ‘liberal’ and ‘conservative’ in the political spectrum.
I think it is fair to say that WA has been in a state of re-assessment since 08/’09. Up to that point, whose who stayed were acting as loyal opposition. Looks like they have now given up on that.
I have no doubt that there are tens of thousands of faithful followers of Jesus who remain in the ELCA, some because they agree with the decisions, some in spite of them. I live in a veritable cul-de-sac on one end of town. Every time I leave home, I drive right by the local franchise of the ELCA. It is regularly in my prayers.
I often find Word Alone’s angry and mean spirited diatribes comical, but when Walker said “The ‘vote’ in August 2009 was only the most recent and most flamboyant in a long series of evidence that the ELCA is no longer a viable and thriving Christian denomination” I was taken back. So if I lead an ELCA congregation and agree with CW09, then I am no longer Christian? How arrogant! Following the true Word, Jesus, means displaying the fruits of the spirit. Clark’s and Walker’s latest writings indicate something completely alien to the fruit of the spirit!
@Tony Stoutenburg
Yes, do keep praying for them. They are following Christ in their own way. Pray also for the churches who have joined LCMC and didn’t quite understand what that meant. I think you may have your support base pretty well worked out where you are but I am not sure what that will mean in this area when the little churches have to figure out how to support pastors and what to do about missions. It may all work out but is your group ready to give mission church support to those who decide to go it alone in LCMC ?
That’s good, Tony, because my grandmother’s church was Presbyterian.
@Brant
…And my grandmothers were an Anglican convert to Lutheranism and from a “blended” Lutheran/Catholic home.
@Ann
And my grandmother belonged to an Augustana (Swedish) synod Lutheran church that was very fundamentalistic and judgmental. The pastor would sneak over to the high school to peer under the door at the prom dance to make sure no girls from Gethsemane were sinning. If only we could return to the good ole days when pastors weren’t afraid to judge the sins of others!
Oh, yes, and when we were juniors, the pastor’s son was not allowed to be elected Prom King by his ELC Dad- 1954. This same pastor married us and if he would have known that our reception was going to have a band and some polka music he never would have done it. – 1962
My great-grandmother – mother of my grandfather, so a born and bred Lutheran, got together with three or four friends a few times a week to play the board game “Aggravation.” It was practically a CIA secret between these five ladies, because the game involved rolling dice and the pastor would have condemned them for it. And this went on in the 1980s.
Ann!
I was raised in the Augustana Synod in Chicago, and did not have the sense that it was a ‘fundamentalist’ church at all. We had dances AT the church! What I do remember, looking back, that it had adopted much of the evangelical fervor of the frontier, but the theology was solid Lutheran, not fundie, and the liturgy tended on the ‘high church’ side. Perhaps this being judgmental was more of the congregation in which you were raised.
Do you really yearn for judgmental pastors? If I presented myself as judging the
sins and offenses of my parish, I’d lose all my young families! The world does a pretty good job of condemning young people for each and every act. I’d prefer to address them with grace and forgiveness.
And as to Jaynan, and her need to play to the back row.. our prayers are with you.. this whole thing reminds me of Matthew 6: 5- “do not be like the hypocrites you love to stand and pray on the street corners so they are seen by others..”
Isn’t that what all this is about: putting on a display for an audience? I don’t see Bishop Hanson, or others, reacting in a bombastic fashio.
This whole controversy goes right to baptismal theology: once we’re baptized, we’re part of the Church. In baptism, we’re given gifts for ministry- no exceptions. Who is to deny the gifts given at baptism?
@donna deal
I think you are responding to my earlier response to Ann.
You are correct, of course, it was the congregation and not necessariy the Augustana synod. After a struggle at the time of the ELCA merger, the conservatives lost, left, and now that congregation is a thriving congregation of the ELCA.
My comment about judgmental pastors was tongue-in-cheek sarcasm.
Your baptismal comment is right on. In the Episcopal church with more sacraments, including ordination, I like the Integrity slogan … “all the sacraments for all the baptized.” Even though we Lutherans don’t consider ordination a sacrament, the basic idea still applies.
@Justin
I agree. I grew up on a farm and now live on a lake with ducks coming into the yard. I have always observed that the animals are mean to each other. I especially always watched the chickens pecking the weakest one until she bleeds. Now the ducks are doing the same thing to the weak duck. A while back I observed to our now LCMC pastor that I thought “original sin ” was our animal nature. However he blamed the “fall of man” for all the cruelty in the world. Come on, who does he think he is fooling ? I expect the WA LCMC CORE to try to recruit whoever they can and use the gay issue to do it. It works in this area very well.
My experience in the Augustana Synod is much closer to Donna’s.
@Lilly
Actually, Pastor Brian stands in a very long theological tradition there, Lilly. And in truth, I’m not sure the two of you are not talking about the same thing in different words.
Hi Tony, Thanks. I have a problem with some of the long theological tradition. But it is what he is being paid for.
@Tony Stoutenburg
I think I have said enough about Christus and its pastor. I don’t have to be a member there so I guess I better do what WA has done and pull out of the church philosophy I don’t agree with. I really have better things to do than argue with you.