Women and Justice is an example of postmodernism gone viral within the Body of Christ, seeking to destroy it, and if the ELCA hopes to remain Christian in a way that will permit them to be recognized as such by other Christians not held captive to the postmodern mindset, they must not only reject it, but the worldview that informs it.
All Christian communions functioning within the increasingly-postmodern West must be on guard against the same virus that has so deeply infected the ELCA. We must fortify our immune systems against it if we hope to not have our health compromised… or worse, to die as non-Christians mouthing Christian-sounding words.
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Postmodernism Gone Viral: What Is Disingenuous About the ELCA Social Statement
“Ah! Words! Just words!” the person shouted to the man at the lectern whose speech had just concluded. “Who told you culture is a search for coherence? Where do you get that idea from? This idea of coherence is a Western idea.”
Coherent
or Incoherent?
I heard Ravi Zacharias tell this story. With a quickness of wit that I can only marvel at, he responded to the person (whom he later learned was transgendered) by saying, “Before I answer you, Madame, let me ask you this, then: would you prefer that my answer be coherent or incoherent?”[1]
The view from the front of the chapel in the Desert Retreat Center, where the coaches training event was held, looks out on the beauty of Arizona’s Sonoran desert.
One thing I’ve learned over the years is that congregations can sometimes feel so desperate to call a pastor, any pastor, that they rush through the call process and sometimes make a bad decision. And if the process drags out, they become so discouraged that they simply drift – and some members just leave, often permanently. An experienced coach helps them understand that they really can see – and take – one small, necessary “discipleship step” after another; and each small step can strengthen their faith, prayer life, discipleship, fellowship, stewardship, and outreach.
The CORE Voice Newsletter Looks Different … Very Different!
Change in direction
Lutheran CORE is trying a new format for its newsletter and moving away from its traditional glossy magazine-style newsletter to one that is easier to read on small devices like cell phones and tablets. There will always be a printable version, but CORE will also have versions of the newsletter on our website and on Facebook that will make it easier for our readers to decide which articles they want to read and which they prefer to skip. We will also send out a version via email. If you would like to be added to the email list, please contact lcorewebmail@gmail.com with your name and email address.
In the March issue of our newsletter, CORE Voice, we included information about the ministries of two of the pastors who were going to be presenters at the Rekindle Your First Love event. Another one of the persons who was scheduled to be a presenter, NALC pastor Wendy Berthelsen, heads up a non-profit Christian teaching ministry called Call Inc., which mobilizes ordinary people “called” by Christ Jesus our Lord to “incorporate His call” into all of life, 24/7: home, family, church gathering and “glocal” (local to global).
Pithy Responses to CORE’S April Letter from the Director
Blinding speed
I am continually blessed and encouraged by the very positive and uplifting responses which I receive to my letters from the director, articles in our newsletter, CORE Voice, and other written communications. It is good to know that people read our materials and appreciate, value, and support our work. The responses I received to my most recent (the April) letter from the director were no exception.
One NALC pastor wrote, “There have been times when I have wondered why CORE staff and adherents remain in ELCA, but after reading this letter, I am thankful that you are still there. If you were to leave, it would please them because they wouldn’t have to deal with your wisdom any more. . . .
This program, for adults with special needs and sponsored by St. Timothy Lutheran Church, has been serving Chicago’s Hermosa neighborhood for nearly 30 years. Meeting monthly since 1990, the Uncle Charlie program serves an average of 50 residents from eight group homes on the northwest side of Chicago.
Postmodernism Gone Viral: What Is Disingenuous About the ELCA Social Statement
written by Brett Jenkins | May 14, 2019
by Brett Jenkins, member of the board of Lutheran CORE
Editor’s note: Originally called “Draft Social Statement on Women and Justice,” the document which was developed by the ELCA Task Force on Women and Justice and which has been approved by both the ELCA Conference of Bishops and the ELCA Church Council for consideration by the 2019 ELCA Churchwide Assembly is called, “Faith, Sexism, and Justice: A Lutheran Call to Action.” The ELCA Churchwide Assembly will take place in August 2019.
“Ah! Words! Just words!” the person shouted to the man at the lectern whose speech had just concluded. “Who told you culture is a search for coherence? Where do you get that idea from? This idea of coherence is a Western idea.”
Coherent or Incoherent
I heard Ravi
Zacharias tell this story. With a
quickness of wit that I can only marvel at, he responded to the person (whom he
later learned was transgendered) by saying, “Before I answer you, Madame, let
me ask you this, then: would you prefer that my answer be coherent or
incoherent?”[1]
It is a dangerous proposition to write about someone else’s writing; history is full of literary, philosophical, and political critiques that were complete misfires (often cleverly worded) because the author misunderstood what he was reading. They did this because, not being part of what Charles Taylor would aptly deem the “web of interlocution” from which the original document arose, they misunderstood what was being proposed in the first place.
Having left the ELCA, grateful for the friendships and even some of the formation I enjoyed there but much more grateful to leave behind the posture of defensiveness that necessarily accompanied my ministry as a self-consciously orthodox Christian within it, I wondered actively about the idea of writing this article. I even resisted the pressure of colleagues to do so. I am a pastor of the North American Lutheran Church, and this newsletter has already featured one excellent critique by another NALC pastor, Rev. Cathy Ammlung as well as a critique by ELCA pastor, Stephen Gjerde. Both articles were detailed and incisive, so what can I add to them?
Analysis of the Introduction
Actually I can add one thing: an analysis of how the introduction of the ELCA’s proposed social statement Women and Justice represents the broader conflict of worldviews active within our culture, of which I am, indeed, still a part.
Rev. Ammlung noted in her critique numerous points on which the draft social statement was not only out of step with the Christian (and Jewish) traditions of 2000+ years, but even seemed internally incoherent, out of step with itself. Indeed, as Rev. Ammlung noted pithily, “It’s hard, though, to see in this draft how God’s revealed Word is greater than the sum of feminist, intersectional, and ‘gender/sexual justice’ language.”
Impossible
It is not hard to see—it is impossible to see, for there is no evidence to the contrary in the document, nor should we expect there to be. The constellation of “feminist, intersectional, and ‘gender/sexual justice’ language” emerges from a larger worldview wholly at variance with the Scripture’s line of sight, that of postmodernism.
Gender Feminists
In 1994, doctoral candidate in Women’s Studies at Wellesley, Christina Hoff-Somers, recognized that a foreign ideology had hijacked the equity-seeking feminism of the movement’s progenitors, separating the movement into what she deemed “equity feminists” and “gender feminists,” the latter being the product of postmodern thinking married to the aims of feminism. The feminism with which most readers will be familiar from their time as an undergraduate, on a seminary campus, or from the shriller, attention-getting voices on the nightly news is of the gender feminist lineage, which frequently claims that those Hoff-Sommers characterizes as “equity feminists” are not feminists at all, for they do not share the postmodern presuppositions that undergird their narrative and analysis.
Power
To whit, rooted in the work of theoreticians like Derrida and Foucault, postmodernism sees all social interactions (like the proposed social statement) as “word games,” and word games with only one goal: the exercise of power.
Language of Justice,
Science and Religious Truth
In such an account of the world, there is no way to discern good from evil, truth from falsehood, for all such language is merely a ruse, a “word game” to disguise the naked aggression of one person or group against another. In the view of postmodernism, we are all possessed of worldviews incommensurate with one another and irreconcilable, so our only alternative is civil war through our word games. The intersectional feminist gender-fluid activist by their own reckoning uses the language of justice, science, and religious truth but is merely a campaigner for their own peculiar position—just like everyone else.
Civil War Through
Word Games
Postmodernism allows for temporary alliances but not ultimately the pursuit of jointly-held truth or justice. Witness the growing voices within the gay community expressing relief in the fact that they came of age before the rise of transgenderism because they believe if they were coming of age now they would be forced into hormone therapy and miss out on the adult identity they now espouse. Because postmodernism believes in no higher truth or objective reality to which language correlates but only the exercise of power, it can never be more than a sophisticated exercise in narcissism, an assertion of self over-and-against everything and everyone else.
Sophisticated Narcissism
“Everyone else” necessarily includes God, of course… at least if God is purported to do anything other than underwrite our own self-perceptions and exercise of power through our word games. The postmodernist can use the language of “the Word of God,” but they cannot mean by it what Christians have historically meant—a revelation of something we could not have known without the active initiative of God. Nor can they mean by it what Lutherans have meant by it when they distinguish within that Word Law and Gospel. For both Law and Gospel reveal to us a self so impoverished and depraved it is impossible to affirm, the Law by revealing our inability to be righteous and the Gospel by revealing that we can only be saved by Christ’s righteousness, one utterly alien to ourselves.
Incoherence of
Postmodern Thought
There is a reason why the great theologian Augustine defined sin using the phrase in curvatus in se—“being turned in upon oneself.” When we turn within, seeking something affirmable by God, we cannot find our prelapsarian innocence, and what we produce is the incoherence that characterizes all postmodern thought, including the ELCA’s proposed social statement Women and Justice. The founders of postmodernism actively sought to reject the “Logo-centrism” of Western culture, that is, the logic—the coherence—born of a worldview flowing from a belief in the Logos, belief in an ordering principle within the world that does not take its cues from autonomous human actors.
God Brings Order
and Love
Of course, in the case of Christians, that Logos “became flesh and dwelt among us.” (John 1:14) God’s first act in the Book of Genesis is to call order forth from the primordial chaos, and He uses His Word to do so. The God revealed by the Scriptures is the bringer of order, of coherence. The amazing news of the Gospel is that this bringer of order does not look upon our profound disorder—our sin—and simply destroy both it and us. In the words of one of my favorite LGBTQIA+ authors, “It is not the perfect but the imperfect who have need of love.” The Gospel is that God knew this long before Oscar Wilde and “so loved the world, that he gave his only Son”—the order-bringing Logos—“that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.”
Order is Inherently
Hierarchical
Unfortunately, the God who brings order and coherence to not just the created order but our own lives in spite of us is necessarily antithetical to the worldview underlying the ELCA’s proposed social statement, for order is inherently hierarchical; it privileges truth over falsehood and so some narratives over others. This God also calls us away from the contemplation of ourselves—away from seeking affirmation of any sort, no matter what we find within our experience—and to the contemplation of Jesus Christ, in whom alone we are to find our un-hyphenated identity. Far from the postmodern de-legitimization of distinctions inferred by postmodern exegetes, Galatians 3:27–28 (“For as many of you as were baptized into Christ have put on Christ. There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is no male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.”) teaches us that only Christ is acceptable to God and so we are to find our true identity in Him, not in any other identity, real or imagined.
ELCA Anti-logic
The unity gestured to by Paul as he ends this thought is not incidental. Just as the word adhere means “to stick together,” so the word cohere means “to form a whole.” The unity in justice that is to characterize the Body of Christ and claims to be sought by the ELCA’s latest social statement cannot be pursued using it as the mechanism, for its own internal logic is anti-logic; it reviles any coherence that would not privilege every self-perception and self-identification.
Viral Attack
Virus attacking immune cells
A virus uses the body’s own self-defense system to undo an organism. The ELCA’s proposed social statement Women and Justice is necessarily incoherent because, in ways I assume its authors may not even be aware of because they have probably not read the primary texts that gave birth to postmodernism (Foucault and Derrida are, after all, inordinately difficult authors to plow through), it appropriates the language of truth and justice, sin and righteousness, Law and Gospel, and uses them virus-like to hobble and, if possible, undo the order-bringing work of God’s Word, inverting its meaning as necessary in order to serve an agenda not born of the Word itself. Women and Justice is an example of postmodernism gone viral within the Body of Christ, seeking to destroy it, and if the ELCA hopes to remain Christian in a way that will permit them to be recognized as such by other Christians not held captive to the postmodern mindset, they must not only reject it, but the worldview that informs it.
Moreover, all Christian communions functioning within the increasingly-postmodern West must be on guard against the same virus that has so deeply infected the ELCA and other mainline, revisionist Protestant bodies as well as (smaller) sections of the Roman Catholic and even Orthodox churches. It is in the water around us, and we must fortify our immune systems against it if we hope to not have our health compromised… or worse, to die as non-Christians mouthing Christian-sounding words.
Justice can and must be pursued for not just women and minorities but all people without de-privileging the truth or re-writing the Word of God. The Logos—coherence Himself—demands it.
In the March issue of our newsletter, CORE Voice, we included information about the ministries of two of the pastors who were going to be presenters at the Rekindle Your First Love event. Another one of the persons who was going to be a presenter, NALC pastor Wendy Berthelsen, heads up a non-profit Christian teaching ministry called Call Inc., which mobilizes ordinary people “called” by Christ Jesus our Lord to “incorporate His call” into all of life, 24/7: home, family, church gathering and “glocal” (local to global). Wendy writes:
We offer seminars and resources that are
available on our website: http://www.callinc.org. We take seriously that the Biblical
Greek word for church (ekklesia) literally means “called out
ones.” We believe “called out ones” gives both the definition
and purpose of church: “Ones” … ordinary people “called”
by Christ Jesus our Lord, to go “out,” transforming the world in
Jesus’ name, with His Gospel and in the power of the Holy Spirit. Therefore,
actively teaching about living God’s call and helping people to recognize and
discern the Holy Spirit’s call and gifts is crucial to being the church.
Coaches for Congregations in Transition
written by Cathy Ammlung | May 14, 2019
by Cathy Ammlung, Secretary of the board of Lutheran CORE
The view from the front of the chapel in the Desert Retreat Center, where the training event was held, looks out on the beauty of Arizona’s Sonoran desert.
In early April we had a training event in Arizona for the Congregations in Transition ministry initiative. We now have eight (mostly retired) Lutheran pastors who are ready to serve as coaches for congregations that are between pastors. Another option is for the coach to begin working with a congregation even before the pastor has retired or resigned to take another call. If you would like to know more about how one of these coaches could be of help to your congregation, please contact Don Brandt at pastordonbrandt@gmail.com or Dennis Nelson at dennisdnelsonaz@yahoo.com.
Fear of Pastoral Vacancies
For most of my 29 years as an ordained pastor, I have served small congregations and/or congregations that had a pastoral vacancy. Even in healthy parishes with little conflict, they consistently had two major concerns. One was the fear that there might be a protracted (and possibly unsuccessful) search for a new pastor. The second was that, rather like a tire with a slow leak, the life of the congregation was going to “go flat.” Energy, commitment, contributions, and attendance would diminish. Especially in small, isolated parishes that could not obtain a full (or significantly part-time) interim pastor, maintaining the worship life, fellowship, pastoral care, and outreach of the congregation seemed like a nearly insurmountable task for the lay leadership.
Team Your Congregation with a Coach
The Congregations in Transition initiative, developed by Pastor Don Brandt and Lutheran CORE, addresses these concerns by teaming an experienced, usually retired pastoral “coach” with such a congregation. The coach helps the laity (through a Leadership Team) to confidently and competently navigate the challenges of a pastoral vacancy, to maintain the critical tasks of ministry and mission, and to thereby pave the way for a call committee to focus on its unique tasks with less distraction and stress.
Tap into God-given Gifts
The workshop I attended as a “coach in training” was challenging, packed with useful insights and information, and very helpful. I like the way it calls for coaches to develop personal relationships with a small “Leadership Team” in order to tap into their God-given gifts for leadership, decision making, spiritual growth, and Christian care for their congregation and its members. Rather than feeling helplessly adrift, the laity are empowered to be the Church, the Body of Christ, beloved of Christ and lavishly endowed by the Holy Spirit with every good gift needed to care for one another and to weather what often seems like a “time in the wilderness.”
One Small Discipleship Step
Cohort of Coaches Trained in April 2019
One thing I’ve learned over the years is that congregations can sometimes feel so desperate to call a pastor, any pastor, that they rush through the call process and sometimes make a bad decision. And if the process drags out, they become so discouraged that they simply drift – and some members just leave, often permanently. An experienced coach helps them understand that they really can see – and take – one small, necessary “discipleship step” after another; and each small step can strengthen their faith, prayer life, discipleship, fellowship, stewardship, and outreach. They can discern what they need to do to care for one another, proclaim the Word of God, and reach out with Jesus’ love to their neighbor. And they can redeem that in-between, interim time, to prayerfully consider what gifts a new pastor would best have to continue their growth in faith toward God, fervent love toward one another, and loving witness and outreach to their neighbors.
I hope that many Lutheran congregations will benefit from such coaching relationships and experience interims as precious seasons of growth in faithfulness, trust, and obedience to their Savior and Good Shepherd!
The Uncle Charlie Program @ St. Timothy
written by Keith Forni | May 14, 2019
by Keith Forni, member of the board of Lutheran CORE
This program, for adults with special needs and sponsored by St. Timothy Lutheran Church, has been serving Chicago’s Hermosa neighborhood for nearly 30 years. Meeting monthly since 1990, the Uncle Charlie program serves an average of 50 residents from eight group homes on the northwest side of Chicago. Participants gather for Bingo, arts and crafts, Bible lessons, worship and lunch.
Here Uncle Charlie Program members lead music during morning devotions. Pastor Keith Forni notes that “their joy is so powerfully expressed.” Favorite choir songs are “This Little Light of Mine” and “Jesus Loves Me.” St. Timothy is an ELCA congregation affiliated with Lutheran CORE.
Uncle Charlie Program participants await lunch at St. Timothy Lutheran Church, Chicago, during a recent Saturday monthly gathering.
Paul Diaz, a mission partner volunteer from First and Santa Cruz Lutheran Church- ELCA, Joliet IL, displays the May 2019 theme at the Uncle Charlie Program, St. Timothy Lutheran Church, Chicago.
Lutheran CORE wants to lift up the ministries of other orthodox ELCA congregations that are faithfully living out the Gospel and serving our Lord. Please contact us at lcorewebmail@gmail.com.
Pithy Responses to CORE’s April Letter to the Director
I am continually blessed and encouraged by the very positive and uplifting responses which I receive to my letters from the director, articles in our newsletter, CORE Voice, and other written communications. It is good to know that people read our materials and appreciate, value, and support our work. The responses I received to my most recent (the April) letter from the director were no exception.
One NALC pastor wrote, “There have been times when I have wondered why CORE staff and adherents remain in ELCA, but after reading this letter, I am thankful that you are still there. If you were to leave, it would please them because they wouldn’t have to deal with your wisdom any more. . . . I know your presence will probably not make a difference over the long run, you are fighting a strong and wily opponent, Old Scratch himself, but I admire your courage and your willingness to take on a formidable task. Blessings to you on your work, your passion, and your hope that there may be a ray of sanity somewhere in this mess.”
And then, to clearly show what we are up against and how we got into the mess we are in, a former ELCA synod mission director wrote the following [emphasis added] –
“Shortly after being called to that position I attended staff orientation at the ELCA headquarters with other new Mission Directors. We were told unequivocally that we were to start new congregations for gay and lesbian groups but to refrain from traditional church starts as there would be little if any financial support for traditional church groups. I was told directly by the then ELCA mission director it was the unspoken policy of the ELCA to NOT start traditional New churches or to provide any support for Rural Congregations because the money was to be directed to gay and lesbian church starts. . . .
“During one of my visits to the ELCA headquarters, the national mission director took me into a closet that held the congregations responses to the first sexuality study of the ELCA. She said, and I quote, ‘we are going to ram this s____ down their (congregations) throat.’. . .
“I and many faithful pastors suffered mightily at the hands of the ELCA. In fact nearly every faithful pastor I knew as Assistant to the Bishop suffers or has suffered as a result of ELCA pressure on their ministry to conform. In the ELCA almost anything is tolerated except not accepting their lgbt policy.” Thank you to both of these pastors for letting me quote them in this article. We give thanks for the support of all of our friends, and we pray for and want to encourage and help all who are enduring pressure to accept and conform to non-Biblical positions, practices, and priorities.
Devotion for Tuesday, May 14, 2019
written by Jeffray Greene | May 14, 2019
“I hate those who are double-minded, but I love Your law. You are my hiding place and my shield; I wait for Your word. Depart from me, evildoers, that I may observe the commandments of my God.” (Psalm 119:113-115)
Are you discriminating about those who influence you? Is it not wisdom to stay away from those who do what is harmful and would have you do the same? You say you love the law of the Lord, but live among and are influenced by those who are double-minded. Be conformed to the word of the Lord and know from the inside out His goodness, mercy, kindness, living according to His Word always.
Lord, there are those around me who would lead me astray. Yet, You call for me to love my neighbor. Help me to discern how to walk that I walk the balance that is needed in this life. Grant that with wisdom I would see through circumstances to hold fast to what is right and true. May I be guided by Your Spirit to be both patient and kind, discerning, but loving You and others always.
Lord Jesus, You walked among us and You know the struggles of daily life. As I abide in You, teach me the right way to walk and live that I would hold fast to the truth. Lead me in being compassionate and forbearing that I would not be swayed by those whose minds are not on the will of the Father. Guide me this day, my Savior, that I would walk humbly with You and learn. Amen.
Here Uncle Charlie Program members lead music during morning devotions. Pastor Keith Forni notes that “their joy is so powerfully expressed.” Favorite choir songs are “This Little Light of Mine” and “Jesus Loves Me.” St. Timothy is an ELCA congregation affiliated with Lutheran CORE.
