An Analysis of Recommendations 1 and 7 in the Final Report of the ELCA’s Commission for a Renewed Lutheran Church

The past couple years we have written extensively about the ELCA’s Commission for a Renewed Lutheran Church, which was formed in response to action taken by the 2022 Churchwide Assembly.  We have expressed deep concern over –

• The primary mandate that was given to the Commission to be “particularly attentive to our shared commitment to dismantle racism.” 
• The makeup of the Commission, with 20% being LGBTQ+ persons and 20% being DEIA officers or leaders at their place of employment and/or influence.
• The DEIA audit which the 2022 Churchwide Assembly instructed the Church Council to have done of the ELCA’s governing documents and how the results of that audit might be incorporated into the work of the Commission. 
• The consistent lack of specific information in all communications from the Commission.
• The way in which the ELCA dismissed and ridiculed persons who were concerned through the document which they released, “Myths and Facts about Congregational Governance.”
• The amendments to the ELCA Constitutions which have been recommended by the Commission, approved by the Church Council, and are being presented to the 2025 Churchwide Assembly, especially the proposed amendments to chapter 22 of the Churchwide Constitution, which would fast-track the approval process for amendments that come from the floor at the assembly.

But my concerns have only grown greater as I have read and analyzed the final report from the Commission, which was recently released.  A link to that final report can be found HERE. 

I have studied and sought to grasp the entire report – all 75 pages of it.  My overall impression is the same as what I have of all documents that come from the ELCA.  It is too long and excessively verbose.  I always wonder if the reason for the length and all the verbiage is to hope that people will not read it – at least not read all of it or read it carefully.  My second impression is that rather than help facilitate functioning so that the ELCA can better focus on its mission, the Commission has made the process and structure even more convoluted and complex.  It is as though the Commission has created deeper snow and/or thicker mud for the ELCA to now have to try to navigate its way through.

But what I find most alarming are Recommendations 1 and 7 in the final report, which have accomplished nothing less than cementing a DEIA value system and Marxist critical theory into the ELCA governing documents.  This infiltration of a radical leftist agenda into the governing documents is no longer something that we fear might happen this summer at the Churchwide Assembly.  It has already happened.  The horse has already left the barn.    

Recommendation 1 reveals the Commission’s values and priorities.  Recommendation 7 exposes their accomplishments.

Recommendation 1 – “Immediate Action on Dismantling Racism” – can be found on page 34 in the final report.  This recommendation reveals what the Commission values the most and feels most urgent about.  The Commission is recommending that “the ELCA Church Council immediately begin identifying and acting upon mutual accountability measures and compliance incentives across all expressions of the ELCA to ensure the proactive centering of dismantling racism within the denomination.”  These measures and incentives are to be guided by the recommendations outlined in the DEIA audit and the ELCA’s Strategy Toward Authentic Diversity.

Complaining about the slowness of the progress of the ELCA’s becoming in their eyes a “truly welcoming church” that realizes “authentic diversity,” the Commission’s position is that “all constitution and bylaw amendments needed for the development and implementation of these accountability measures and compliance incentives must be developed and advanced in time for consideration by the 2028 Churchwide Assembly.”  If they are not developed in time, then the ELCA Church Council needs to call for a special meeting of the Churchwide Assembly to evaluate and enact the necessary constitutional revisions. 

There is nothing else that the Commission sees as so urgent and compelling and feels as hot, bothered, and motivated about as dismantling racism.   

There are two things in the Rationale for Recommendation 1 that I found alarming.  First, the Commission admits that its “mandate was specific to the charge of dismantling racism.”  But it has enlarged its concern to encouraging the Church Council “to expand the work beyond dismantling racism to include dismantling discrimination against all historically underrepresented groups.”  More will be said about these groups in Recommendation 7.  I remember early on in the work of the Commission when Co-Chairperson Carla Christopher used the language of “dismantling oppression” rather than “dismantling racism” in a video regarding the work of the Commission.  I wrote to her and asked how that expansion happened, how victims of oppression will be identified, and whether people with traditional views who do not agree with the work of the Commission will become victims of oppression.  She wrote back, back-pedaling from “dismantling oppression” back to “dismantling racism.”  But here I see that she has reversed her course.

What is even more alarming in the Rationale for Recommendation 1 is the way in which it concludes with a sentence that gives a preview of what is to come in Recommendation 7.  It says, “While much that needs to be done to accomplish this work may be centered in our constitution and bylaws, which can only be amended by the Churchwide Assembly, the commission encourages the Church Council to act on continuing resolutions and policies that can advance this work before the 2028 Churchwide Assembly.”  Much of what we have feared the most is no longer something that might happen at the 2025 Churchwide Assembly.  It has already happened.  The horse has already left the barn.    

Recommendation 7 – “Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Accessibility Related Changes to Governing Documents and Recognition of Historically Underrepresented Groups” – can be found on pages 47-49 in the final report.  What is most disturbing here is that this Recommendation contains a number of continuing resolutions which the Commission recommended and which the Church Council has already approved, thereby making them already part of the ELCA’s governing documents.  What these continuing resolutions that are already approved have already done is nothing less than cementing a DEIA value system and Marxist critical theory into the official governing documents of the ELCA.  The horse has already left the barn.     

5.01.H24. gives definitions of Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Accessibility.  These definitions are now a part of the ELCA’s governing documents.   

5.01.I24. commits the ELCA “to working to intentionally lift up voices from historically underrepresented groups.”  There are many places throughout the final report and in the recommended changes to ELCA constitutions and bylaws where provision is made for “historically underrepresented groups” to have voice, vote, and representation far beyond their actual numbers within the membership of the ELCA.  This continuing resolution identifies “historically underrepresented groups” as including persons of color, persons whose primary language is other than English, persons of diverse gender identities, persons of diverse sexual orientations, persons experiencing poverty, persons of lower income, persons living with disabilities, and persons who are not natural-born United States citizens.

There is certainly no doubt that God loves all people.  In the First Reading for Easter Sunday Peter says at the house of Cornelius, “I truly understand that God shows no partiality” (Acts 10: 34).  The Second Reading for the Fourth Sunday of Easter describes “a great multitude that no one could count, from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages, standing before the throne and before the lamb” (Revelation 7: 9).  Consistently throughout the Bible God shows His love for the poor and commands that His people be concerned for the poor.  And among the things that the prophet Micah says that God requires of us is “to do justice and to love kindness” (Micah 6: 8).  What troubles me is the way in which through continuing resolution 5.01.J24. the Church Council has not only fully embraced every form of sexual orientation and gender identity.  It has also made the following a special privileged and protected class that one dare not discriminate against.

5.01.J24. Persons of diverse gender identities and persons of diverse sexual orientations means individuals who identify beyond the sex and gender binary, individuals whose gender identity may be fluid, and individuals who identify as lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, intersex, asexual, or other sex, gender, and sexual identities that are more complex than sex, gender, and (sic).  (I believe something has been cut off in the final report.)

And then, to make it completely clear, the final report states the following – “Continuing resolutions 5.01.G24, 5.01.H24, 5.01.I24, and 5.01.J24 (as amended) were adopted by the Church Council and are now part of the ELCA’s governing documents.”

Why would anyone still believe that bound conscience has a chance to survive in the ELCA?  Bound conscience is the concept from 2009 in which the ELCA promised to provide a place of dignity and respect for those who hold traditional views regarding human sexuality.  Why would any congregation still believe that they would have the option of not calling a pastor with a “diverse gender identity” or a “diverse sexual orientation”?  What we knew all along would happen has happened.  The ELCA has officially turned its back on its promises from 2009.  The horse has already left the barn.     

And not only that but Marxist critical theory has been incorporated into the ELCA’s governing documents through the actions of the Church Council.  The whole language of dismantling racism – which is the primary mandate given to the Commission and as we saw in Recommendation 1 the primary concern of the Commission – reflects critical theory.  In this ideology racism is not just something that people say and do that they must stop saying and doing.  Rather it is seen as so embedded into the very structures of society that those structures must be torn down.  Built into the very systems of our culture are structures that privilege some people and lead to the oppression of others.  Those who are in positions of power and privilege are not going to voluntarily relinquish that power and privilege, so those systems must be dismantled and destroyed.  This perspective has now been incorporated into the official governing documents through action that has already been taken by the Church Council.  The horse has already left the barn.  Continuing Resolution 5.01.I24. contains this sentence.  “This church recognizes that humans have multiple aspects of their identities that are tied to systemic privilege and oppression that shape the lives of individuals and communities in distinct ways.”

HERE and HERE are links to the official ELCA news releases which tell about actions taken by the Church Council at their November 14-17, 2024 and April 3-6, 2025 meetings.  Do they give any indication of the full depth, seriousness, and significance of what happened at those meetings?  Absolutely not!  Instead the news release for November 14-17 uses this innocuous, non-specific language to describe the actions of the Church Council –

• Approved amendments to “Constitutions, Bylaws, and Continuing Resolutions of the ELCA” that were drafted in response to the Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, Accessibility Audit.
• Recommended to the 2025 Churchwide Assembly certain amendments to “Constitutions, Bylaws, and Continuing Resolutions of the ELCA” that were brought to the council by the Commission for a Renewed Lutheran Church.
• Approved amendment of certain continuing resolutions in “Constitutions, Bylaws, and Continuing Resolutions of the ELCA.”
• Acknowledged amendment to the governing documents of this church related to nonbinary inclusion and to gendered language in the constitution.     

And the news release for April 3-6 uses this equally innocuous and non-specific language.  The Church Council –

• Authorized its Executive Committee to consult with the Strategy Toward Authentic Diversity advisory team to review its purpose and to create an ELCA handbook that includes recommendations for diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility (DEIA) standards for congregations.
• Adopted continuing resolution amendments to “Constitutions, Bylaws, and Continuing Resolutions of the ELCA” that relate to the churchwide organization. 

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I would now like to conclude by saying a few words to those who might be persuaded to believe the ELCA’s claim that DEIA is supremely compatible with the gospel and truly reflects and is consistent with Biblical values.  First, the ELCA’s DEIA is not the gospel of the Bible.  The gospel of the Bible is the gospel of the forgiveness of sins and the hope of eternal life through Jesus and His death and resurrection.  The ELCA’s DEIA gospel is a gospel of God’s welcoming, including, and loving all people equally.  There is a major difference.  Jesus is not really necessary in the ELCA’s DEIA gospel.  Second, DEIA and critical theory are not gospel.  They are legalism at its absolute worst.

With DEIA and critical theory there is no satisfaction.  You can never do enough.  No matter how much you apologize for, repent of, and grovel over your racism, abuse of power, and misuse of privilege, it is never enough.  If you are white, and especially if you are a white male, you will never be able to apologize enough for, repent enough of, and grovel enough over the racism, abuse of power, and misuse of privilege of all white people around the world and in all times past.

With DEIA and critical theory there is no forgiveness.  There cannot be forgiveness, because if oppressed and marginalized people forgive oppressive, privileged people who have apologized, repented, and groveled enough, then oppressed and marginalized people will lose their power over privileged people, and power is what it is all about.

With DEIA and critical theory there is no deliverance.  If you are white – and worst of all, if you are a white male – then you cannot not be racist.  You will do everything you can to perpetuate the systems that have privileged and empowered you.  The only thing that can be done is for “woke people” – on behalf of the oppressed and marginalized – to tear down, dismantle, and destroy the systems that have empowered the privileged people.  (The only problem is that the “woke people” who lead the process of dismantling will then come into positions of power and privilege and themselves begin oppressing and marginalizing oppressed and marginalized people.  For that is what you get when the greatest value is power.)

The apostle Paul wrote to the Galatians, “I am astonished that you are so quickly deserting the one who called you in the grace of Christ and are turning to a different gospel – not that there is another gospel, but there are some who are confusing you and want to pervert the gospel of Christ” (Galatians 1: 6-7).  Paul then had some very strong words to say about those who were proclaiming a gospel contrary to what the Galatians had originally received.  I believe that his words are very relevant to what is happening in the ELCA today. 

 

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Editor’s Note: The conclusion of this article will be published in a second post on or about September 18, 2020.

Critical Theory—in particular, Critical Race Theory—has recently captured the Church’s attention, and in some corners of the Lord’s vineyard it seems, more significantly, Her imagination.  (For those unfamiliar with Critical Theory, this article will serve as a necessarily incomplete introduction.)  Springing from the same philosophers and theorists (Foucault, Derrida, etc.) who brought us postmodernism, Critical Theory seems to be suddenly taking the whole Western world by storm.

This is an illusion.  Though all but Liberal Arts majors would likely be unfamiliar with the Frankfurt School or even the phrase “Critical Theory,” everyone who has received an undergraduate education in the last thirty years has been familiarized with (and in many cases, indoctrinated into) its basic terminology and the categories of meaning by which it makes sense of the world.  For instance, for every one of my acquaintance at my own undergraduate alma mater of Penn State, the obligatory “professional writing” requirement for non-English majors was used by the professors as an opportunity to force-feed undergraduates Critical Theory.  As an example, a business writing class for music majors taught participants to write personal reflections on books like Stone Butch Blues, a lesbian coming of age story, instead of memos, letters to parents, and departmental requisitions.  Even if you think the exposure salutary, it demonstrates the tactics of Critical Theory, which, as its exponents readily affirm, “contains an activist dimension. It tries to not only understand our social situation but to change it, setting out not only to ascertain how society organizes itself along racial lines and hierarchies but to transform it for the better.”[1]

Solid introductions to Critical Theory by both its proponents and opponents are now widely available, and I encourage the reader to consult at least one of each to familiarize themselves with its outlines; otherwise, as commentator Phil Blair demonstrated in his response to a recent Christianity Today article, we may find ourselves employing it unbeknownst to ourselves.

Heresy

Though articles abound that are critical of Critical Theory (hereafter referred to as CT) from a Christian perspective, as mine is, I hope to explore the topic from an at least slightly different perspective; I propose that while CT may properly diagnose some elements of our cultural ills, it necessarily misaddresses these maladies because it is in fact a secularized Christian heresy.

The Critic Is Often Right About What Is Wrong, But He Is Nearly Always Wrong About What Would Be Right.

I want to start by acknowledging what CT—and progressive ideologies more generally—often get right.  One of the functions of the people in a society that are typically deemed “liberal,” “left,” or “progressive” is to point out injustices when they accumulate.  Any meritocracy (where achievement or talent is rewarded with social and/or economic upward mobility) periodically and predictably accumulates inequity and unfairness at its margins.  At a biological level, talent and giftedness are inborn traits that often run in families.  Sociologically, families pass on habits and knowledge that maximize (or minimize) inherent capacities for greater achievement and reward.  The greatest patrimony that a family passes on in a meritocracy is not their wealth—though that certainly has undeniable advantages—but rather their knowledge and skills in accessing or leveraging the power structures of the meritocracy.

This does not mean that a meritocracy is inherently immoral. (What would we want, a system where lack of talent, industry, and skill is rewarded?) But it does mean that for all the good it may produce, it is a system that can put real people at a real disadvantage in accessing the social and economic rewards deemed legitimate by the value system at its foundation; it is a system that needs a watchdog that calls for course corrections when the process whereby “the rising tide that lifts all boats” creates eddies and riptides that prevent people from weighing anchor and setting sail.

In his book The Righteous Mind, Jonathan Haidt contends that in the same way all the complex flavors of the world’s cuisines are composed of the tongue’s four basic tasting capacities—sweet, sour, salty, and bitter—the great diversity of moralities to which people ascribe are woven from the five basic “cognitive modules” with which we define and evaluate morality and justice.  Defined in terms of their antipodes, these modules are care/harm, fairness/cheating, loyalty/betrayal, authority/subversion, and sanctity/degradation.  Haidt names this Moral Foundations Theory.

One need not agree with Haidt’s thesis about the origins of these cognitive modules to see their utility as an interpretive grid.  In analyzing the political application of the theory, Haidt, who identifies himself as a liberal, discovered that those who measured as the most “liberal” registered highly in the care/harm and fairness/cheating categories but little to not at all in the other three.  Though caring and fairness were also the dominant categories for those who registered as the most “conservative,” people with these political leanings showed a near convergence with the other three concerns of loyalty, authority, and sanctity:

What this means is that if it seems that the proponents of Critical Theory are “tone deaf” to some of the moral concerns expressed by other, more “conservative” people, it is because they are.  For the “liberal” adherent of CT, the mere presence of inequity is all the proof needed that injustice is occurring.  Questions of whether people have demonstrated the social virtues of developing skills (that is, demonstrating loyalty to the system’s values) are largely not considered, or if they are, the need to do so is defined as part of the oppression inherent in “the system.”  Likewise, the need to “pay one’s dues,” which recognizes the system’s authority, is construed as more evidence of injustice rather than a period of necessary apprenticeship during which there is predicted inequity between those who have acquired the sought-after skills and resources and those currently acquiring them.  Finally, the need to exhibit sustained effort with or without immediate reward—the most sanctified value in a meritocracy—is despised most of all as the mechanism of systemic injustice because, although such effort generally yields overall improvement in the socio-economic position of a given class of people, there is no guarantee in any particular instance that the effort so exerted will result necessarily in equity.  The moral concerns of three of the five moral cognitive modules are not only temporarily bracketed to focus analysis on the issue of fairness, for the “liberal,” they quite literally do not register as things worthy of assessment and for the critical theorist, they are merely attempts to obfuscate the real issue, which is measurable equity.

Moreover, the proponent of Critical Theory does not need to provide measurable criteria whereby to evaluate the claims of their analysis.  The existence of the inequity natural to and predicted by a system that rewards merit is the prima facie evidence that revolution is needed.  Whether the proposed system could actually create the desired equity and whether that equity would be balanced with other moral concerns  (everyone living in social and/or economic squalor is, after all, a type of equality) need not be seriously contemplated, because the only value in view is equity, which is defined as fairness that provides the necessary care for everybody.

This is how these critics can be right about what is wrong (that is, in Critical Race Theory, the form of CT most affecting the life of the Church at present, racial inequities), but so wrong about what would put these wrongs right; their theories are not based upon a morality with a complex enough palate, capable of fine enough distinctions.

Eschatology and Anthropology

This is also in part why Critical Theory is a comprehensive worldview; in merely noting inequity, it believes that it has accounted for all the most significant moral variables—the only ones that count.  It must then flatten all human experience into the narrow interpretive grid it deems the only valid one.

Four Fundamental Questions

The late Ravi Zacharias helpfully delineated at least four fundamental questions of human life to which any worldview must propose an answer: human origin, meaning, morality, and destiny.  Because of the 1925 “Scopes Monkey Trial,” the issue of origins has dominated the intellectual landscape of the Western Church for the last 100 or so years.  First, it dominated the popular imagination as “yet another case” of backward religionists resisting reason’s inevitable march of progress in accord with the Enlightenment’s self-narration.  (Yes, this was first. Scopes deliberately implicated himself so that a trial would need to be held and Darrow deliberately had the trial played out by a sympathetic urbane media in the court of public opinion as part of his legal strategy.)  The attempts to condemn Intelligent Design as veiled religious dogma are the intellectual descendants of that controversy.  Secondly, it precipitated a growing crisis within the Church between Fundamentalists and Modernists, who believed a dating of the age of the earth to greater than 7,000 years was congruent with orthodox Biblical interpretation.  The inheritors of that dispute are the Young Earth versus Old Earth Creationist debates of today.[2] 

“Your theology can never be better than your anthropology,” was one of the favorite axioms my Prophets professor in seminary passed on to us from his mentor.  Of course, being self-consciously orthodox, I thought that axiom got it exactly backward; our theology—specifically our Christology and soteriology—necessarily defines our understanding of human nature, so our anthropology can never be better than our theology.

Unfortunately, the Western Church’s obsession with origins has led to a relative neglect of the way our understanding of who Jesus is and what salvation fully entails informs our understanding of what human beings are (our meaning), how we should live (our morality), and our purpose or telos (our destiny).  The preaching of Jesus predominantly as life coach, social activist, friend of sinners, prophetic preacher, social reformer or even atoning sacrifice for sinners, has led to the neglect of the consistent preaching of Jesus as the God-Man or Theanthropos, a new species in God’s economy of salvation.[3]  “God became man that man might become [like] God,” exulted Irenaeus of Lyons in his second century classic Against Heresies, going on to declare as the soteriological significance of that teaching that “the glory of God is a [hu]man fully alive.”

Great Tradition Christianity proclaims that the ultimate destiny of redeemed humanity is not merely to avoid hell (Jesus as the cosmic get-out-of-jail-free card) or to emulate Jesus as the finest example of a fully self-realized or perfectly moral human person, but rather to become “partakers of the divine nature” (2 Peter 1:4).  Through our Sacramental union with Jesus, who was fully God and fully human, by faith in His promises, we are drawn into the perichoretic inner life of the Godhead, the most Holy Trinity.  As the Theanthropos, Jesus is the “firstborn among many brothers” (Romans 8:29), not the only-born to be admired and worshipped, but whose life remains fundamentally distant from our own.

This teaching about the implications of salvation through Christ for our destiny as human beings thoroughly conditions and shapes all other elements of our theology.  In other words, remembering the fullness of our destiny as human beings in Christ has far more impact on our understanding of what is the meaning of human life and the morality by which it is to be lived than our understanding of our origins.

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[1] Richard Delgado and Jean Stefancic. Critical Race Theory: An Introduction. (New York: New York University Press, 2017), page 8.

[2] If you speak the first article of the Nicene or Apostles’ Creed without crossing your fingers, you are a creationist of one stripe or the other; it is important that non-fundamentalist Christians be absolutely clear on this point and think through the consequences of that position as distinct from a functional Deism.

[3] Justification by grace through faith—forensic justification—may indeed be the doctrine upon which the Church stands or falls as Martin Luther declared, but it was never meant to be preached denuded of the very Christology that makes it so powerful and poignant.