The Metropolitan Chicago Synod of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA) sponsors a fine online journal entitled “Let’s Talk,” which is a venue for Chicago-area pastors, theologians, and laity to contribute articles about issues facing the Lutheran church in the urban context (full disclosure: I am an occasional contributor).

The most recent issue has some useful articles by those whose vocations put them right in the center of the vexing question: what does effective evangelism in a (post)modern, urban, interreligious context look like?

Bishop Wayne Miller, who has often remarked that St. Francis’ supposed dictum, “Preach the Gospel; if necessary, use words” is next to useless in a post-Christendom context, is particularly incisive in his remarks:

Everything that I say or do bears witness to someone or something. The only uncertainty is the object of that witness. Evangelism makes this uncertainty certain. The object of my witness is the love and power of Jesus. But unless my words and deeds explicitly bear witness to something else, they implicitly bear witness to me. Is the goal of a diverse, pluralistic society to have every individual bearing witness to himself or herself? It is hard to hear good news in this.

We have developed, in the ELCA, an impressive history of making the world a better place through broad-based coalition building between business interests, religious interests, political interests, and earnest individual desires for usefulness and righteousness. Everyone admires the essential goodness and masterful accomplishment of these endeavors.

But to what or to whom do they bear witness? If we are embarrassed or ashamed to allow them to bear witness to the love and power of Jesus, then they will implicitly bear witness only to the power of our love, our strength, our virtue, our ingenuity, our intrinsic goodness.

Meanwhile, those involved with parish “evangelism committees” in particular will not want to miss Benjamin Dueholm’s reflections on success and failure in evangelism, particularly his insistence that “God has not lost a taste for serendipity, which humbles the proud and programmatic.”

The season is upon us where culture junkies such as myself become enjoyably worked up over various year-end “Best of 2011″ lists – best album, movie, novel, etc. Adam Kotsko of Shimer College wonders what this drive towards “spurious ‘ranking,’ that is, the expression of personal preference as an objective feature of the work” says about contemporary relationships between consumers and cultural production:

Certainly the superabundance of cultural production, which has not been matched by an increase in our available attention, makes advocacy and prioritizing inevitable. Yet these rankings become a kind of black hole of attention and debate. Very rarely does a ranking prompt discussion of the actual expressive content of a work — the debate almost always remains on the level of the ranking itself (“What kind of fool could think Citizen Kane is more important than Breathless?”).

Our discussion of cultural goods implicitly endorses their reduction to competing commodities, so that when we’re talking about Joyce vs. Proust, we might as well be talking about Coke vs. Pepsi. And the only alternative I can think of is the notion that serious criticism, which tests the quality of the work by demonstrating the degree to which it sustains and rewards the scarce attention we devote to it, would really be the best possible advertisement for a work.

 

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Much recent Luther scholarship has focused upon his incisive use of economic metaphors to describe the (deceptively) profound daily actions of Christian believers. Over at Lutheran Forum, Sarah Wilson reports on her discovery of a whimsical, yet well-crafted, plan by Luther to convey Scripture’s “riches” to children:

“…the heart may grasp the whole sum of Christian truth under two headings or, as it were, in two pouches, namely, faith and love. Faith’s pouch may have two pockets. Into one pocket we put the part of faith that believes that through the sin of Adam we are all corrupt, sinners, and under condemnation, Romans 5:12, Psalm 51:5. Into the other we put the part of faith that trusts that through Jesus Christ we are all redeemed from this corruption, sin, and condemnation, Romans 5:15-21, John 3:16-18. Love’s pouch may also have two pockets. Into the one put this piece, that we should serve and do good to everyone, even as Christ has done for us, Romans 13. Into the other put this piece, that we should gladly endure and suffer all kinds of evil.

When a child begins to understand this it should be encouraged to bring home verses of Scripture from the sermon and to repeat them at mealtime for the parents, even as they formerly used to recite their Latin. And then these verses should be put into the pouches and pockets, just as pennies, groschen, and gulden are put into a purse. For instance, let faith’s pouch be for the gulden, and into the first pocket let this verse go: Romans 5:12, ‘sin came into the world through one man and death through sin.’ Also this one: Psalm 51:5, ‘Behold, I was brought forth in iniquity, and in sin did my mother conceive me.’ These are two Rhenish gulden for the first pocket. Into the other pocket go the Hungarian gulden, for example this text, Romans 4:25, ‘Jesus was put to death for our trespasses and raised for our justification.’ Again John 1:29, ‘Behold, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world!’ These would be two good Hungarian gulden for the second pocket….

“And let no one think himself too wise for such child’s play. Christ, to train men, had to become man himself. If we wish to train children, we must become children with them.”

Indeed, if Matthew 18:3 is to be believed, the benefits to becoming “like a little child” go far beyond the pragmatics of conveying the faith to youth…

The 20th-century German theologian Erik Peterson, whose conversion from Protestantism to Roman Catholicism was the occasion for a great deal of ecclesiological soul-searching after the second World War, has had a substantive influence on theology both in Europe and in the English-speaking world. However, those in the latter camp have, until now, suffered from a dearth of quality English translations of Peterson’s work. This has been particularly problematic due to the rather ponderous and technical nature of Peterson’s German prose.

Thanks to Michael J. Hollerich’s new volume of translations (from Stanford University Press’ generally excellent “Cultural Memory in the Present” series), it looks as though Peterson’s writings might now be much more accessible to English-speaking students and readers. Readers new to Peterson are sure to gain, if nothing else, an understanding of the way that Peterson’s thought has impacted such contemporary figures as Reinhard Huetter and Pope Benedict XVI.

And if all this helps to further interest in one who, for my money, is one of the most interesting post-Enlightenment thinkers on ecclesiology and ethics, then that will be all to the good.

On the plus side: the Atlanta Diocese of the Episcopal Church is taking on a substantive theological question concerning the patristic heritage of the church.

On the negative side: well, let’s listen in:

Whereas the historical record of Pelagius’s contribution to our theological tradition is shrouded in the political ambition of his theological antagonists who sought to discredit what they felt was a threat to the empire, and their ecclesiastical dominance, and whereas an understanding of his life and writings might bring more to bear on his good standing in our tradition, and whereas his restitution as a viable theological voice within our tradition might encourage a deeper understanding of sin, grace, free will, and the goodness of God’s creation, and whereas in as much as the history of Pelagius represents to some the struggle for theological exploration that is our birthright as Anglicans, Be it resolved, that this 105th Annual Council of the Diocese of Atlanta appoint a committee of discernment overseen by our Bishop, to consider these matters as a means to honor the contributions of Pelagius and reclaim his voice in our tradition And be it further resolved that this committee will report their conclusions at the next Annual Council.

While few would doubt that there were indeed political machinations involved in the eventual defeat of Pelagianism (on the level of official church teaching, anyway), I nevertheless await with less-than-bated breath the arguments for the ways in which his contributions might “deepen” our understandings of sin and grace. But I’ve been surprised before…

The blogosphere has rightly settled down from the fevered discussions on universalism occasioned earlier this year by, among other things, Rob Bell’s writings. However, distance has its advantages. In this case, the fact that universalism (or threats of it) is not quite the hot topic among evangelicals that it was six months ago has given me occasion to realize that, within the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA) circles that I frequent, the most striking fact about the discussions of universal salvation was how muted they were.

Based strictly on anecdotal evidence, my sense is that many ELCA pastors read Bell’s book (or at least articles about it), and most did so with approval. However, it is hard to avoid the sense that a prominent evangelical leader espousing the notion that hell might not exist and that all humans might be saved was, for the most part, a non-event in mainline circles. And it seems equally hard to avoid coming to the conclusion that this might be because universalism has become the default position for many pastors and theologians within the mainline Protestant traditions.

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The bit of revisionist history (summarized by Scott McLemee) concerning the decline of mainline denominations in the U.S. that David Hollinger offers will, I suspect, not be overly surprising to those of us who have actually experienced the seemingly chronic inability of many mainline Protestant congregations to communicate across generational gaps, especially as mainline Protestants continue to have fewer children to begin with. “The evangelical triumph in the numbers game from the 1960s to the early 21st century,” writes Hollinger, “was mostly a  matter of birthrates coupled with the greater success of the more tightly boundaried, predominantly southern, evangelical communities in acculturating their children into ancestral religious practices. Evangelicals had more children and kept them.”

There are few acts more characteristic of Christian hope than the willingness to, when possible, bring children into the world (or adopt those already here) and to raise them in a faith that will form them in virtues that the world increasingly sees as bizarre. And, perhaps paradoxically, few things are more attractive than a church that genuinely hopes.

Theologians working in the key of Hans Urs von Balthasar or, more recently, David Bentley Hart have come to a renewed appreciation of the deep links between truth and beauty. Because I have great sympathies for this line of thought, I am often self-conscious of how mainline Protestant traditions – including the one in which I carry out my ministry – have failed to articulate the beauty of traditional church teachings on sexuality. The reduction of the church’s teaching on sexual ethics to a series of prohibitions (particularly when bereft of such native articulations as those which Roman Catholics possess in, say, the writings of John Paul II) leaves even Christians vulnerable to the possibility that Dan Savage will play more of a role than the church in the formation of their views on the gift of sexuality – a reality that is readily apparent to pastors who do premarital counseling for young adults on a regular basis.

In her recent critique of “hook-up” culture, Lauren Lankford not only provides a concise overview of how the church links beauty and sexuality, she throws in a little Biology 101:

Not only is sex the perfect image of intimacy, passion and desire, it triggers the release of chemicals that train your body to remember what feels good, and how to get it again. Dopamine is a natural drug that gets you high. This is what keeps you going back again. Drugs like methamphetamine access dopamine to achieve the same effect. Your body begins such a bond just with cuddling, kissing, and everything between there and “real” sex. Oxytocin is dopamine’s partner, the emotional binding agent that teaches you to trust and reduces fear.

However, dopamine and oxytocin don’t play fair. They don’t care if it’s just for fun, if it’s “just this one night” or if the person you’re going home with is going to be around next week. They don’t care if it’s make-up sex, breakup sex or all-the-way sex. They don’t care if you just “mess around,” or if you go all the way. They’re going to feed your addiction, commitment or not.

The fact that elementary biology and the ancient wisdom of the church are, in our time, coinciding to form a serious indictment of the casual violence of casual sex in our time is a theological resource that deserves the attention of those who must minister to that violence’s victims – whether they know they are victims or not.