Posted on 05/22/2014 7:53:21 PM PDT by lightman
It is over, to begin with. There is no doubt whatever about that. Conservatives have unconditionally surrendered, at least on the gay marriage debate and probably on the “culture wars” more generally.
Or perhaps I should say that any who haven’t surrendered will soon become like the fabled Japanese soldiers who fought WWII long after 1945. It’s been prophesied by academia, declared by the judges’ rulings, and ratified by Hollywood, so there is no going back. You will therefore permit me to repeat emphatically, like Dickens speaking of Marley, that it is over. The culture formed around traditional marriage is dead as a doornail.
We can complain all day that the victory of the progressives subverted our government by ig-noring not only the text of the constitutions of many states but also the outcome of repeated popular votes, but it won’t matter. However it came to be, the fact remains that it was a long fought but ultimately resounding victory for progressives, decay being progress of a sort. And to those for whom everything is reducible to power struggles, victory by bogus judicial fiat counts the same as any other. As athletes say, a win is a win.
Religious leaders who have no king but Caesar will shrug, say their hands are tied and reluctantly just go with the new reality, while those who dare not call a thing what it is will naturally laud these rulings which require everyone to pretend (at least officially) that two men are husband and wife. But American churches in line with historic Christianity on this issue increasingly find themselves in a new and foreign context. So what will happen in and to the Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod as a result of this new con-text, and what should we do about it now that we’ve (possibly) forgotten how to be strangers in a strange land? Allow me to offer first two predictions and then two prescriptions.
First prediction: this will not unify the LCMS. I know, I know, I’m going way out on a limb there. But there is always the idea floating around that becoming an embattled minority will galvanize people who share a cause to put aside other differences. At first it may seem like this will happen in the LCMS; the various camps will rally together around a common identity as torchbearers of traditional marriage. And that may even seem to be happening for a little while, but it won’t last. I truly hope I’m wrong on this (stranger things have happened, I readily admit), but I think Evangelicals will soon go wobbly and this cultural change will, given enough time, simply provide another stage on which the same LCMS play is enacted.
The more conservative and “separatist” strain of the LCMS will see nothing really new be-cause of this issue; as usual, they’ll refuse to change and as a result will become more isolated. They’ve always felt like an embattled minority in American Protestantism anyway, caught between the poles of liberal Protestantism and Evangelicalism, and they still fume about the Council of Trent preventing them from being Catholic. Meanwhile, the more moderate and culturally mainstream strain of the LCMS will eventually find plausible reasons to cave on this issue. The larger, more contemporary-minded LCMS congregations have never found Evangelicalism so distasteful anyway, and many coastal and urban LCMS congregations feel fairly comfortable with ELCA-style liberal Protestantism; so both of those groups of “moderates” will find a way to embrace the new cultural reality. Oh, it might take a decade or so and they won’t formally and officially cave, they’ll just act with congregational autonomy to gradually get their practice in line with the new cultural expectations, first allowing for some exceptional cases and then allowing the exceptions to become the norm, all while claiming to be completely in line with LCMS doctrine and practice. So the LCMS will eventually become divided on this issue, too, and the division will fall on the same general fault lines as demarcate our other divisions.
My second prediction is that the long dormant issue of artificial birth control will make a comeback among conservatives in the LCMS. This has long been a pet topic of mine—how and when (and why) did our teaching on birth control go from one position to the near opposite of that position in one generation? It seems to have simply been a matter of going with the flow of the culture more than actually thinking it through. But the reason it has a chance now to become more than the pet topic of a few people is that when the LCMS explains why we dissent from the culture on gay marriage, we’ll (as usual) be accused of singling out homosexuals for special condemnation. After all, we drifted along with other drastic changes to our understanding of the nature and purpose of sex and marriage, so why not this one? It is a good question, and we ought to take it to heart, not by changing our position on gay marriage but by re-examining how we interacted with similar cultural changes in the past.
Birth control is intimately connected to the gay marriage debate because one of the key arguments in favor of gay marriage is that by normalizing birth control (and declaring it an indispensable part of women’s health care), our society has already established that procreation is entirely incidental to the true nature of sex and marriage, so the whole man/woman thing is irrelevant. An interesting and perhaps persuasive point. So I expect (and welcome) a thorough discussion of artificial birth control among advocates of traditional marriage, which could have the added benefit of increasing our inter-action with Roman Catholic social teaching. It isn’t that we’ll necessarily come to the same conclusion as Rome, but at least we’ll have studied the matter and made a deliberate decision instead of our past practice of just doing whatever Episcopalians do.
Now my prescriptions: First, I would like to see the LCMS listen to our worst critics as though they are speaking the truth. True, just because people say you are treating them hatefully doesn’t mean you are, but it is also true that just because you say you are treating them lovingly doesn’t mean you are, either. Let’s not kid ourselves; the heart is deceitful above all things. We ought not claim to understand our own motives so much more clearly than do the people who impute bad motives to us. We have the evidence of our own thoughts that re-mains hidden from them, but such evidence can deceive us. And they have other evidence hidden from us, evidence which is also not infallible but still to be taken into account. Speaking the truth in love is so much easier when there is a clear proof text to establish the presence of truth and no evidence required or admitted to establish the presence of love, or even to establish a bare minimum of understanding and sympathy. It can just be speaking the truth with a tacked on assertion of love, which takes no effort and requires no harsh introspection and generally fails even to be true.
So something I think would be helpful would be a seminar or convocation, possibly at one of the seminaries, at which formerly LCMS homosexuals honestly describe their experience with LCMS churches. The rules for the audience would simply be no argument or contradiction, no embattled defensiveness—we aren’t admitting to the truth of the charges just by listening to them, but we are considering the possibility of the truth of the charg-es, or if not charges, at least negative experiences. It would just be a genuine, face-to-face explanation from homosexual people who have left the LCMS of their reasons for leaving. There could then be a pan-el discussion led by seminary professors or President Harrison or district presidents or some other recognizable LCMS leaders, with or without the homosexual former LCMSers present. It wouldn’t be a matter of “What should our position be?” but “How shall we go about holding this position effectively in our new context?” I think such an event, if widely attended, could not only help on this issue but also be a step toward a positive change in the general culture of the LCMS.
My second prescription is that we double down on supporting our Lutheran school system. We’re closing schools as fast as we can purchase locks for the doors just at the time when we should be reopening the old ones and starting new ones everywhere. Practically every parish used to run a school way back in the day, but as we came out of our German-speaking ghetto the reasoning behind running our own schools seemed less obvious and the expense of doing so skyrocketed to keep up with the material standards of public education. So what we used to offer for free, we now offer only in select areas to those who can pay tuition.
Most churches that run schools face constant battles between those who think the school is a money pit detracting from other missions and those who think of the school as the primary mission of the congregation. In our new context, I think the latter group once again has the better argument, since once again our entire worldview (this gay marriage debate being but one manifestation) is out of step with the dominant culture around us. A parochial school system can be our mission not only to the next generation but to our communities, and in many cases to our fellow Christians of other denominations who want Christian education for their children but whose congregations lack the experience or know-how to run a much needed Christian school. Christian schools are something the future of Christianity in America requires, and the LCMS is very good at it.
Schools as missionary Predictably for the LCMS, though, our polity could be the thing holding us back. Because our schools are typically parochial in the strictest sense, meaning run by congregations, they flourish only where congregations are strong and wealthy. And because they are run by congregations, they cannot be effectively consolidated where they aren’t flourishing or started where they are most needed. No-body has the authority.
Furthermore, if schools are a mission to the future and to the communities around us, the idea of tuition presents a paradigmatic problem. You can’t charge people for your mission to them. Nor can you simply print more money to run a Lutheran school. Most LCMS schools have given up on the idea of not charging tuition. The reality is the one-to-one parish to school ratio with no tuition will never work, and parishes trying to go in together on a school is a dicey prospect due to innate territorial-ism. Lutheran schools in America will have to be-come missions for every congregation, like overseas missionaries are missions of every congregation. It isn’t just the past that is a foreign country; the future is a pagan country to which our Lutheran schools make the best missionaries. And for that to happen, we might need districts to start operating schools in places where congregations can’t. That would raise other questions about the nature of the call and relationship between the school and the local church, but that, too, would be a welcome discussion. I envision Lutheran schools simply serving anyone who wants to learn about the world accord-ing to the Truth free of charge, with donations of whatever you can afford welcome. That’s sort of how charity hospitals used to be operated; think of a good Lutheran school as an expensive homeless shelter, offering life to those in need. We could afford it if it mattered to us. And maybe it does.
Certainly if we give up on our schools we will have little presence in the American future. We’re too old and odd but too accustomed to thinking of ourselves as normal to survive much longer without our own school system. I should note as an aside that the old K-8 model of education is not the only one out there and perhaps there are other models incorporating aspects of home-schooling and online education which could make the whole endeavor of Lutheran education more affordable.
Fr. Richard Neuhaus’s last book was entitled American Babylon. It’s a good title. Whatever shape the world takes, whatever context we find ourselves in, the task remains to be a collective witness to the truth, to keep the flame alive, to live in such a way that the people around us must at least take us into account as they form a worldview. The good thing about living in Babylon is that, come what may, you never run out of opportunities for bold witnessing. --by Peter Speckhard, associate editor
Since she got "back to the Table" she had to have done a few things.
1. Go to confession.
2. Confess her sin of endorsing abortion.
3. Ask for forgiveness.
THEN she was able to "get back to the Table."
I don't believe her, not in my wildest dreams do I believe her. But then I don't like or trust her. I never did.
==============================
Pelosi is already 74 years old. Let's hope she leaves real soon.
Feinstein is 80 years old, which is too old for her to do much more damage.
Hillary Clinton is already 66 years old...TOO OLD to start on the road to the White House.
Since she has continued to endorse those positions, I doubt she managed to do any of what she should have. She continues to receive.
Freep-mail me to get on or off my pro-life and Catholic List:
Please ping me to note-worthy Pro-Life or Catholic threads, or other threads of general interest.
A sample quote from a very well thought out and very honest article; this is among the best of what I've read in the last few years.
It would be an interesting question to ask her, wouldn't it? She made her peace somewhere, with someone. In the end she'll have to make her peace with our good Lord.
Truly, it is great insight and well said.
May the wisdom of this article be accepted by LCMS. This Catholic will pray that LCMS hold firm on the issues in question. May LCMS do whatever is necessary to retain the LCMS schools without which the denomination’s future will be bleak. May God bless you and yours!
Fr. Paul Marx, founder of Human Life International (founded in 1981), said early on The Pill would lead to manifold increase in homosexuality.
Its very simple: once sex becomes loosed from primary purpose of marriage, that being reproduction (call it discrete), it becomes entirely recreational (indiscrete).
Elementary Watson.
The acceptance of any kind of homosexual behavior—much more the abomination of sodomy-marriage—has been and is increasingly defining the lines between true and apostate Christianity.
Conservative denominations like the LCMS must develop and have clear disciplinary actions for pastors or seminary professors—or even lay church teachers—that will excommunicate those who teach that homosexual behavior or “marriage” is acceptable.
One of the big separators between evangelical & orthodox Christians of all kinds from the liberals used to be the issue of homosexuality...now a few so-called evangelicals and emergents have rolled over and are going with the enormous flow of culture... Such persons who cling to sinful teaching must be rejected and removed from our fellowships like cancer.
The early Church did this with all kinds of false teachers; we cannot be afraid to excommunicate false teachers today—for the love of Christ and His Body.
More than even BC is feminism itself—which brought ABC into the limelight, and using shame pushed its acceptance.
If, as modern feminists claim, there is no difference between men and women other than plumbing, and there are no roles distinct to each sex—everyone is interchangeable in public and private life—than logically, why wouldn’t that apply to the bedroom? No wonder supporters of feminism, abortion,and, homosexuality are usually all the same people.
Modern feminism has been one of the most profoundly anti-feminine—and therefore anti-human—influences on our society.
The blood of 55,000,000+ babies aborted in America alone, must be laid at the feet of the ideology of feminism.
I’ll go along with all that. Very well said.
Freegards
Debating whether to send the link to a particular LCMS friend. Conservative (on most things) as they come, but this part might strain our friendship.
It still took several centuries to stamp out most of Arianism and it continues to resurface in slightly different guises.
The challenge today is that with the multiplicity of denominations and sects excommunication means "start your own church" to most people.
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