A few weeks ago, in the historic Castle Church of Wittenberg in Saxony, Lutherans from all over the world opened the “Luther Decade,” celebrations that coincide with Martin Luther’s (1483-1546) arrival in Wittenberg 500 years ago in 1508 and commemorate the achievement and global significance of the German reformer. Nine years later, on 31 October 1517, Luther not only castigated the abuses of indulgence sellers with his “95 theses” but also offered a new understanding of what it meant to be a Christian. Ushering in the modern age, Luther held that the individual, not the institutional church, stood at the center of God’s relationship with humankind.

According to his friend Philipp Melanchthon, Luther posted his sharply profiled theological arguments on the door of that same Castle Church. This signal event in Luther’s life took place while he lectured as a brilliant interpreter of the Bible in Wittenberg University, living together with other monks in the local Augustinian monastery and serving as pastor and father confessor in local churches.

Wittenberg and its university were places of pride for the leader of Electoral Saxony, Prince Frederick the Wise. This Saxon ruler also protected Luther and kept him alive during the early and uncertain years of the Reformation, enabling the movement for reform to gain momentum.

I visited Wittenberg shortly after the reunification of Germany and saw the monastery in which the reformer lived together with his wife Katharina von Bora, a former nun, and their family. The city still exhibited the drab grey colour into which all East German cities and villages appeared to be dipped during the Communist period. Earlier, in that monastery, Luther had experienced his so-called “breakthrough,” the insight that individuals could not be saved by their own merits but only by the grace of God.

Meditating on a passage in the letter of the Apostle Paul to the Romans, “The righteousness of God is revealed, as it is written, the righteous shall live by faith,” Luther finally made the connection between faith, grace, and justification and found an answer to his troubling question: How could he, a sinner, ever be accepted by God? Up to that point, Luther had seen God’s righteousness as a punishing judgment of sinners. Now he read the text of Paul in an entirely different light as a hopeful answer to a very personal problem, that righteousness was a gift of God “by which the merciful God justifies us through faith.”

This new understanding of God’s acceptance of the sinner through the gift of his grace changed for Luther the whole face of Scripture and set the Reformation in motion. Luther would remain in Wittenberg even after his defiant stand before emperor and nobles at the Diet of Worms and subsequent seclusion in the Wartburg castle, where he also translated the New Testament into German.

Although Luther became a global icon of Protestantism and in recent years has once more won recognition as the “most famous German,” his work and persona are not without dark shadows. Luther remained a thoroughly fallible individual, whose advice to princes and lords was not always without guile. His intemperate, even hateful language against Jews provided some of the building blocks of 19th- and 20th-century anti-Semitism. Any appreciation of Luther has to recognize these limitations and failures. That there remains enough worth celebrating is demonstrated by the recent commemorative events.

In Newfoundland, Lutherans have never been a strong presence. An organized Lutheran congregation existed in St. John’s from 1956 to 1976, composed primarily of Latvians and Germans, most of whom had followed Joey Smallwood’s beckoning call to save the province economically through industrialization. The controversial figure of Alfred Valdmanis, Smallwood’s director general of economic development, was a driving force behind the early Trinity Evangelical Lutheran Church in Saint John’s. The congregation erected a modern A-frame church building on Logy Bay Road that closed its doors in 1976 and is now the home of the Vera Perlin Society.

'Jesus is the Homosexual Agenda'

Bishop V. Gene Robinson, the first openly gay ordained Episcopal bishop, talks about the challenges before his church.

On June 14, 2006, the second day of the 75th Episcopal General Convention, Bishop V. Gene Robinson, the first openly gay bishop to be ordained in the church, made the following statement:

It is very clear to us in the religious community that God is alive and well and working in the culture in organizations such as the Human Rights Campaign, and so we sought to become allies with them. They and other so-called secular organizations were cautious about our seeking them out, as well they should be.

Let’s be clear here: The church has been the primary source of the oppressions that lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgendered people have experienced through out their lives. Just as Scripture was used to justify slavery as recently as 150 years ago, just as Scripture was used to keep women out of leadership positions in the church . . . Scripture was used to fight both of those movements of the spirit. And so, indeed, the Church has been the source of most of the pain that lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgendered people have experienced. And what we try to say to the Human Rights Campaign and others is, if the church is the cause of this oppression it needs to be church people who undo this oppression, and that is what we are trying to do here.

Let’s also be clear that the religious right, both within our church and in other churches, are still proclaiming those kinds of oppressive things that are causing our children to grow up doubting whether indeed they are beloved by God or are an abomination. . . . Only religious people can undo that oppression and that is indeed what we along with the Human Rights Campaign are trying to do in this day and time.

I agree with the conservatives on one point. The conservative voices in our church are saying that at this very moment in the life of our church we are fighting for the soul of the church. I think that is absolutely right. The question is whether this will be a church about rules, about walls, about division, about schism, about threats, about violent language, or will this be a church about the all-inclusive love of God in which every, every baptized person will hear in his or her own heart what Jesus heard at his baptism – you are my beloved, in you I am well pleased.

The reason we are at this moment in the life of the Episcopal Church is that there are enough of us gay and lesbian folk that have laid claim to that promise, to that blessing, if you will, that we are God’s beloved children also along with all other baptized members of the church, and we will not let go of that blessing. And the reason we are at this moment is that there are other people, many people in our church who recognize Christ in the faces and lives of its gay and lesbian members. And so we are fighting over the soul of this church, about whether this will be a church about God’s love for all of God’s children or something else, something from the past, something from which we should repent. It is a great moment to be here . . .

After his statement, Robinson and others took questions from the assembled press, who represented the secular and religious media. Following are Bishop Robinson's answers.

What evidence do you have against the likelihood of schism?

I think we are at a place in our church where we want to listen very carefully to what is being said to us from our partners in mission around the world, and at the same time not be dictated to. We are a confederation of 38 autonomous provinces of the Anglican Communion and I am not aware of other times when the Communion has tried to tell one of its constituent autonomous provinces what will and will not be done. What I think the call of this convention is, is for us to discern the mind and will of God as humbly and as best as we can and to stand up and say that. It is not our job to decide what the Anglican Communion will or will not do in response to our actions. What we are called to do is to as faithfully as we can discern God’s will and act on it in our context.

Let me remind you that no one, not in this church, is asking anyone else in the Anglican Communion to raise up gay and lesbian people to affirm them, to ordain them, to consecrate them bishops. This is not some kind of ecclesiastical colonialism here . . . We are only asking to be allowed to do this in our own context.

It is not a surprise to me that the Archbishop of Nigeria is opposed to this issue. The Archbishop of Nigeria is supportive of legislation in that country that imprisons gay and lesbian people and he is supporting currently proposed legislation that will even criminalize a heterosexual person for speaking out for gay and lesbian rights. It is not a surprise to me that he does not know any faithful Christian gay and lesbian folk. No one is asking that church in the Anglican Communion to change its policies or its beliefs.

However, we do know those people in our church who are faithful and monogamous and have lifelong intention in their relationships. We know them because they are sitting here, they are deputies to this convention, they preside at our altars at Holy Communion and they now have one of us as a bishop. We do know those people and we are only seeking to do what God seems to be calling us to do in our context. We are not trying to export that anywhere. We are just trying to say this is what God is calling us to do at this moment . . .

What do you think will happen when there is a vote on this [the Windsor Commission report]?

I have made a commitment not to do a lot of conjecture about what will or won’t happen. They don’t give you a crystal ball when they consecrate you a bishop. I could have used that. What I will say is that we are not going away. We have been a part of this church since its inception. We will continue to be a part of this church. We are not threatening to leave. The last thing we will do is leave the table. And you see, I think that is what communion is about. It is some kind of commitment to stay at the table, no matter what.

It is our great gift as Anglicans to offer to the worldwide church of every denomination, which is to say that we can disagree about lots of things, and Lord knows Episcopalians do. We are all over the map on virtually every issue you can name. But we all go up to the altar rail and receive the body and the blood of Christ as humbly as we can, and then we go back to the pews and fight about all those things. That is our great gift to the worldwide church.

And we are going to stay at the table. That is the table of the Lord’s Last Supper, the table around which we can discuss all these issues. That I am absolutely sure will continue no matter what happens at this convention.

Continued on page 2: After we've finished obsessing about sex... »

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