It is very hard to swallow yet another Lutheran church body in America but that, following a two-day August 26-27 convocation in Columbus, Ohio, is what America has: the North American Lutheran Church (NALC). “North America” sounds rather expansive and that is only because some few congregations of Evangelical Lutheran Church in Canada will be part of the new denomination.
And I say “yet another” because in 1930 there were perhaps twenty to twenty-four Lutheran groups in America. Following nearly seventy years of fervent consolidation and church merger leading to the 1987 formation of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA), Lutherans have successfully reduced their synodical groups down to, hmm, some twenty to twenty-four church bodies.
Every merger has left a splinter, a micro-synod among the ruins, and some of the micro-synods have in turn spawned their own splits. One split occurred within a synod comprising maybe some twelve congregations on whether the King James Version is the only translation properly used in public worship. I forget whether it was the larger or smaller portion that went off with the KJV under their arms, not that it much matters. It is hard keeping an exact count of Lutheran church bodies because not that many people—Lutherans included—really bother. But it does say something about Lutherans, if not about their nature then at least about how seriously they take their finer points of doctrine and practice.
The best estimate for the eventual membership of the NALC doesn’t top 200 parishes until the end of 2011. Five hundred congregations over the next six years is also tossed around. Compare that to the 10,000 parishes with a combined membership of 4.8 million remaining in the ELCA and in any tilting contest, the windmill wins. Still, 200 parishes—that figure would make the NALC the fourth largest Lutheran synod in United States (depending on whether you are counting “associations” or “synods”—never mind, Lutherans know the difference). Fourth place prompted at least one wag to suggest a synodical motto: “Not Your Smallest Lutheran Church.”
Micro as it is, the NALC, was formed in direct response to ELCA actions a year ago voting to permit the ordination of pastors in homosexual liaisons—albeit liaisons characterized by mutuality, same-sex monogamy, and lifelong commitment. Though the first ordinations included one or two self-identified bisexuals and at least one transgendered individual (all in San Francisco this past July), the ELCA neglected to provide for any rite of union or blessing or marriage suggesting any sort of accountability for the gay clergy admitted to the ELCA roll. As for the transgendered person, best as I can dope that out, this is a guy who wants to be a woman attracted to other women. Or woman; that monogamy thing, remember?
But it isn’t all about sex. That is a hard thing to remember and it doesn’t much help when the media report only that, nor does it help when Herb Chilstrom, the first ELCA presiding bishop, says it must be about sex and traditionalist hang-ups. But as I posted a year ago, approval of homosexuality
. . . is merely the presenting issue following a long, long line of revisionist propositions that have found a home with the Christian left. The authority of Scripture, the reality of sin, the name of God as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit—all these and other critical expositions on God’s revelation to humanity have been under sustained attack. When these go, well, only sex is left and here we are, [blessing] what Scripture, natural law, and common sense itself condemns. (See: An Ecumenical Moment for One)
As micro-synods go, NALC doesn’t look half bad. Of course my judgment is not without self-interest. The NALC is the off-spring of the Lutheran Coalition for Reform (CORE) and I was briefly a member of CORE’s steering committee and later an advisory member to the board. I was not unimpressed by the convocation.
I attended worried about the tone and tenor of things. The prospect of hearing angry Lutherans denouncing the ELCA wasn’t a pleasant one. Yet remarks against the ELCA were few, and when they did come up they were respectful. Thoughts of leaving the ELCA are painful, daunting in fact. These are folks who did once literally ache for the unification of Lutherans in North America. There was little chance, of course, that the far more conservative Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod would ever consent, but even here there was hope that, given time, okay, maybe a lot of time, something nonetheless might be done that would bring the two largest Lutheran bodies together. Dreams fade, but most of NALC’s leadership, especially the new NALC bishop, the Rev. Dr. Paull Spring (a former bishop in the ELCA), had once spent themselves in creating the ELCA. The conversation on leaving was somberly poignant, even melancholic.
The NALC’s formation brought Tanzanian Bp. Benson Bagonza, Kanagwe Diocese, to Columbus, who participated in Spring’s installation. Several bishops of the new Anglican Church in North America attended as observers, along with Fr. James Massa, executive director of the USCCB secretariat for Ecumenical and Interreligious Affairs. Also present, several pastors of the Ethiopian Lutheran Mekane Yesus Church. African Lutherans might be best described as incensed by ELCA actions. The Lutheran World Federation just completed a recent international assembly where acrimonious debate on human sexuality and the rule of Scripture was barely avoided; Africans see the NALC as someone they can do business with.
Where this all goes, of course, is anyone’s guess in the moment, yet in the same moment, the NALC is betting that genuinely disaffected ELCA Lutheran congregations will find themselves a new home.
Russell E. Saltzman is pastor of Ruskin Heights Lutheran Church, Kansas City, Missouri.
September 1st, 2010 | 7:57 am
I don’t know how to say this without sounding crabby, or worse. But here goes.
It’s a good thing, of course, that Lutherans or any Christians would care enough about dogma and religious practices to fight for them, in a sense. However, I do believe it’s not a good thing to be willing to splinter for them. The divided Body of Christ remains a scandal within Christianity and in front of the whole world.
It is not the most important consequence of our divisions, but perhaps the most visible today, that a divided Christianity utterly shoots itself in the foot in trying to engage the culture for the sake of both the Kingdom and the culture. We who claim to confront the culture with foundational truths about who we are, why we’re here, and how we must behave totally lose our credibility when presenting the spectacle of literally thousands of different “truths.” Clearly enough, the observer is justified in thinking, they can’t all be true. Truth itself (Himself?) suffers a reduction to relativism in the process.
The more the splintering, the more it demonstrates that we do not truly possess the Gospel.
September 1st, 2010 | 8:08 am
Thanks for this report. I know folks caught up in all of it, and you’re right about the issues being far more than sexuality.
I had heard that some of the bigger Lutheran churches in the midwest and west would need to come in to help prop up the finances of the new synod. Is this the case?
Also, do you think the LCMC and NALC might come together at some point? I know some Lutheran ministers who had planned to roster with both.
September 1st, 2010 | 9:13 am
I just followed the links here and wound up on a web site for Her Church, where all the weirdness goes down. Transgender ministers, lesbian congregation mostly, tons of trite self-affirmation talk typical of gay spirituality. And some lady who does liturgical dance and is called The Minister of Embodiment. Goddess rosaries, etc.
Any denomination that allows this sort of ridiculousness deserves the extinction that is coming to it. I only pray the ELCA goes up in some grand conflagration so as to set a warning to other denoms. Seriously, these people are ludicrous.
September 1st, 2010 | 11:08 am
[...] of the respondents to Not Your Smallest Lutheran Church, Russell Saltzman’s report on the recent creation of a new Lutheran body, objected to the [...]
September 1st, 2010 | 11:41 am
I see a very bright side to the formation of the North American Lutheran Church.
For twenty years the cast of angry, mostly white, mostly men has been given a forum by the ELCA which was by orders or magnitude bigger than their so-called issues.
Now they will have their own church where they can spit a fume to an appreciative audience.
Those of us who remain happily in the ELCA feel that a festering boil has been lanced.
You boys have a nice day.
Jim Shields
Houston, TX
September 1st, 2010 | 12:08 pm
Thank you for the report. I also feel it is a deeper rift that has been brewing. That said the new body (NALC) has some problems already when it comes to integrity of scriptural interpretation. I felt the decision last August was the best we could do given the division within our body. Those with “bound conscience” one way or the other were to be respected although you disagreed. This was reality in the 1850s, 60s, and 70s when the question was slavery, in the 1940s, 50s, 60s when the question was divorce and the issues go on and on. How do we interpret Scripture is the an important subject, but as studies have shown and reality has revealed we as Lutherans are across the board on this. How do we live within this context? I hope a dialogue will develop very early between the ELCA and NALC. Perhaps this distance of breaking apart is a instrument of the Holy Spirit to allow for true healing to take place. And I do not hope for a conflagration of the ELCA. Shame on Sean for his unhelpful rhetoric.
September 1st, 2010 | 12:15 pm
Lutherans who accept and/or support women’s ordination are theological liberals.
September 1st, 2010 | 1:28 pm
Jim, might I say that’s a very tolerant, inclusive and christian attitude about those who disagree with you.
But how do you know which side was the festering boil?
September 1st, 2010 | 2:26 pm
Sean ;)
Said it better than I was going to.
Joe DeVet – I’m not so sure. I have certainly heard as long as I can remember that the splits and divisions in the church impair our witness to the world, but I don’t think I hear or read nonbelievers saying that so often. I’m sure there are some, but I think this is more our impression of what should bother them than what actually does bother them.
September 1st, 2010 | 2:42 pm
Mr. Shields,
A theological argument based on demographics is pretty weak. Although, if we’re talking about demographics, doesn’t it seem appropriate that a body with a vastly white majority and likewise large majority of male clergy would probably generate a lot of the discussion on pretty much any issue?
That being said, now that “the festering boil has been lanced”, you might be surprised to see angry white men arguing about other issues within the ELCA, which places such a high value on the very diversities that it inherently lacks. With the “angry white men” gone, you can now move on as a less diverse body, still filled with white male sinners.
Congratulations.
September 1st, 2010 | 2:49 pm
Fine piece by Pastor Saltzman. tNALC is seeking to occupy the center-right slot in American Lutheranism. More conservative than the ELCA, a little less conservative than the LCMS (for which I have great respect). I wish tNALC well. Some great, principled folks involved in its formation. Sometimes a velvet divorce is better than staying in a bad marriage.
September 1st, 2010 | 3:05 pm
The church is not a denomination or an institution. The Hidden Church seems to have fallen through the cracks with so many these days who rank earthly institutional unity above the Truth of God’s Word. “Playing Church” is the mirror of the second use of the law that all need to see glaring back at them. Lord Jesus save us from ourselves and our need to be church and not stinky fishermen with a story.
To write such an article without even considering the “first century church for the twenty first century” that is on the ground active, alive, growing in Christ Jesus with the Word of God as its foundation ie. LCMC–Lutheran Congregations in Mission for Christ is to ignore that which witnesses to the gospel truth that we are called to preach, teach and confess Jesus not “church.” Kept in proper perspective any church worth its salt (pun intended) will be from the bottom up about “doing” not “being.” God is the great “I AM” and specifically realized in the I Am’s of Jesus—Bread, Water, Way, Truth, Life, Shepherd–our only Shepherd and a great one.
Perhaps the unbelievers would have ears to hear if what they heard wasn’t about the being of church and church unity and church building but about the being of Jesus, what He has done for them and the doing of His great commission and not just talking about it or once again planning to do it.
God. . . once again save us from ourselves and let’s just get on with your business and not our own. . . .
September 1st, 2010 | 4:20 pm
Dale Coulter asks in part:
“I had heard that some of the bigger Lutheran churches in the Midwest and west would need to come in to help prop up the finances of the new synod. Is this the case?
Also, do you think the LCMC and NALC might come together at some point? I know some Lutheran ministers who had planned to roster with both.”
I reply:
Roughly half of the ELCA’s largest ten congregations (1,500+ membership) have or likely will change affiliation. If they have not already joined LCMC (Lutheran Congregations in Mission for Christ, an “association” not a “synod”) NALC expects they will find a home with them.
As for LCMC and NALC together, personally I expect some LCMC congregations will seek the greater churchly density (oversight, structure, and the like) that NALC promises to offer and will come over individually. There may develop a more formal sharing arrangement, but that is far, far beyond immediate concerns.
To Pr. Jim Shields:
It is exactly this kind of hostility experienced by many traditionalists, such as myself, that has made us give up on dialogue, concession, and even I regret to say, charity. Two years ago I was on the ELCA HQ elevator caught alone with one fellow I thought I knew well. First thing he said: “If you’re so unhappy with the ELCA, why don’t you just get out?” I was at mission school, for pete’s sake, on an ELCA grant. I was trying to stay, for real. I finally just told him I didn’t think my departure would help the ELCA at all, but were he to leave I could see some improvement coming. (Some day I shall repent.)
Pr. Shields, there comes a point when all the posturing is over and done, we must simply offer our ministries up to God. We are responsible for the offering; God is responsible for the consequences; and His judgment – not ours – is always bound by His reckless love. I am content to leave it there.
September 1st, 2010 | 5:34 pm
True, the ELCA might have somewhere around 10,000 congregations as members, but remember those came as the result of a 3-way merger. Since its inception, it has slowly but steadily declined in membership (measured by congregations), with only one or two years of no negative change. Inclusive or not, the ELCA is not a growing organization. The actions of ’09CWA probably are going to net a faster rate of negative change, too.
For what it’s worth.
September 2nd, 2010 | 10:26 am
And near the end times, there will be those who try to color wrong as right.
September 2nd, 2010 | 5:30 pm
Thank you for the responses.
For clarification, I am a happy white male slightly older than the ELCA average of 62.
I am not a pastor but am a lifelong Lutheran and have held some leadership positions at the synodical and at the parish level.
I read what your team publishes and am convinced that you are Calvinists. Below is an outline of a Sunday School class I taught making that case. I compare and contrast Lutheranism and Calvinism on the subjects of morality, God/human relationship, freedom, and sense of humor.
I will have to say that on the last subject, y’all are really not a barrel of laughs. I go to many church wide meetings to get my batteries charged by the good humor and gentleness of my ELCA brothers and sisters. When I am around people on your team, I get very depressed.
Do you visit the holocaust museum or something to get in the mood before one of your meetings?
Your team frequently says you are going to build a God pleasing church. A Lutheran could never claim to know the mind of God. I suspect that God might be pleased when we love and serve the poor. Beyond that, I can only imagine that God would be irritated by creeds and doctrines. But like I said, who knows??
Morality
LUTHERAN.
- Not moralistic.
- Right behavior does NOT determine value before god.
- Recognizes a profound sense of moral ambiguity.
CALVINIST
- Moralistic
- Godly behavior is expected of believers
- Little attention is given to moral ambiguity
GOD – Human Relationship
LUTHERAN
- Faith = trust
- Faith is NOT the acceptance of a set of teachings
- Consequence of faith is service to neighbor
CALVINIST
- Faith is active choice
- Faith is aimed at pleasing God
- Other directed acts are transformed into self enhancing behavior looking over shoulder to see if God is pleased
Freedom
LUTHERAN
- God’s radical adoption of a sinner by grace leads to a radical freedom.
- Freedom from coercive requirements
- Freedom to serve neighbor
CALVINIST
- If there is no hell why would I choose not to steal, kill, etc?
- Believers are expected to please God
- To do this they need a set of rules
Sense of humor
LUTHERAN
- The Bible is not literal – it is a collection of diverse voices that witness in various ways to the ONE GOD.
- Sin boldly
CALVINIST
- Divine origin and divinely inspired unity of the Bible
- Fosters serious self examination
September 2nd, 2010 | 11:59 pm
Lutheran ie.(Not protestant but reformers) Martin Luthers defination.We as lutherans are more suseptable than any because we were the First to want reform.The point to the homosexual issue (Not gay, that is their word for a choice of sin) is acceptance both religiously and publically.Excluding religion it is still unacceptable naturaly or personaly.We have been PUSHED to even bring the issue up.The church will survive no matter what humans do.We musy strive in love and not caste our pearls before swine.All repentant sinners are welcome and accepted.Our congrress and senate have been attacked by homosexual lobbys hr5430 andhr3017 and DADT. on the basis they are a part of the demographic make up of America.Church, school,job and home will be affected by these laws.My personal opinion is, that this is an evil movement within in our culture that will lead to the same results of Sodom and Gommorah
September 3rd, 2010 | 1:10 am
I married a Lutheran woman and wow what confusion – i’ve studied up as much as i can and am now convinced it is all a bunch of hogwash regarding the groups forming and claiming to be the only “true” Lutherans. Who cares? The LCMS – which like WELS – somehow has interrepted the Bible to have “closed communion” (in fact, the vast minority of the world’s Lutherans, not just US) are not welcomed – so much for “two or more are gathered” – the ELCA trying to please everyone and this new group further adding confusion and no more to help the group called “Lutherans” gain worshippers than others. I go to church to worship God – not the church or its structure. Catholism has its issues and disagreements, but is looking more appealing in that it disagrees but doesn’t splinter at every decision every decade. Get over yourselves already!
September 4th, 2010 | 7:09 pm
Anyone who respects the doctrine (teaching) of the true Lutheran Church as defined in the Book of Concord, will flee from the ELCA as fast as they can.
Starting with the “authority” of Scripture, the ELCA has no credibility. They are Zwinglians and Calvinists, nondenominationalists, unionists, confused conformists on Justification, and, rightly, should remove the name “Lutheran” from their church body.
If the ELCA was to stand in a court of law and defend their beliefs as Lutheran, they would lose the case.
Truth will have nothing to do with error. The ELCA is so saturated with doctrinal error, they, sadly, do not even know “who” they are.
Sad, indeed!!
September 5th, 2010 | 7:25 pm
The ElCA has been captured by the same people that captured the democratic party . I dont believe they know what they are talking about .
September 6th, 2010 | 11:35 am
Your team really has a fetish about claiming to be more Lutheran than me.
Do you have any response to the contrasting beliefs between Lutheranism and Calvinism that I outlined?
You, sirs, are not Lutheran.
Let’s start with “what is a Christian?” any takers.
Links
Blogs
Find Us
Contact