Posted on 07/09/2002 5:35:41 AM PDT by Valin
Edited on 04/13/2004 3:36:41 AM PDT by Jim Robinson. [history]
NEW YORK -- A minister with the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod has been suspended for participating in an interfaith service at Yankee Stadium for the families of those killed in the Sept. 11 attacks.
The Rev. David Benke, president of the New York-based Atlantic District, was also ordered to apologize for mixing Christian and non-Christian views in violation of the denomination's constitution.
(Excerpt) Read more at startribune.com ...
The fact that you do not understand the purpose of the church explains the rest of your lack of understanding.
Any Christian church should have one top priority..........that is to worship and glorify our risen Savior.
When the church turns its focus on pleasing man and being of the world, it has crossed a risky threshhold.
No slip of the tongue, jet. If you think seeker-sensitive is God pleasing, you may indeed read a different Bible than I do.
Here is another point which I must disagree with you, and I'm sure all of the other Christians will too. Truths which are contained in the Bible transend time and are foundational to our beliefs today. An example of this is murder, one of the Ten Commandments, which forbids the commiting of it. Some translations got this one wrong and put down "killing" instead of murder. The difference is significant because it comes down to what is in your heart. These truths never change and will always be there for us to hold onto. You might be speaking of the pervasive doctrinal issues denominations seem to invent to exclude people, but I'm not sure.
We also like to throw around a phrase "being saved" which a careful study of God's Word means what happens to us through God's grace (meaning unmerited favor) - the only thing we have to do to have an eternal relationship with Him is to have faith and believe in Him. That for me has always been the toughest part because my mind (and the way I was taught) struggles to always have definitve answers and solid support for my truisms. This faith, though, is different - kind of like the scene in Indiana Jones where he ran up to the edge in that cave and had to trust that a bridge (though consciously invisible) really did exist for him to cross.
Wrong. No works required !!!!
I won't go into all of the ways that Christianity has been used to justify the wrongs of the past, I just hope that the kind of Christians who my children and grandchildren have to live among are the kinds who will be willing to admit that maybe an interpretation was wrong. I hope that they will be surrounded by the kinds of believers that can put their differences aside for one afternoon, and embrace their common humanity in dealing with disaster. No survivor of 9/11 deserves to have their suffering ignored because the service included people who believed differently. It was a time to be an American, while still being able to do what some call "the Christian thing".
For those who would like to find out the facts and issues involved in this case, I am providing some links to resources:
Here is a file of documentation related to Benke's participation in the interfaith prayer service, "A Prayer for America." I compiled this file over several months (September-January):
Here are a couple of pieces I wrote recently on Benke's participation in the interfaith prayer service:
The Underlying Premise of Interfaith Services
Report on Lutherans was one-sided
Here are some more links:
It sounds like you are a learned person, someone who has wrestled with some of the deeper issues in life. Good for you! What upsets me about many individuals with the same experience is that they also have some very deep "religious" ideals in the form of scientific theory and beliefs. These same people, while being critical of people of "faith" (i.e. Christians) about their old beliefs, many of the things they promote have less documented correlation and supporting basis. They can be as "its all or nothing" about their understanding as some of those you've even mentioned.
Your comments were right in the money.
I just received an e-mail from Reclaim News and I see that Kieschnick is going to try to overturn Benke's suspension.
I pray daily for our beloved LCMS.
If I understand you, you seem to be saying that those who appeared to misuse Christianity in the past were not really doing it with Christianity, but with their own twisted view that you have termed "religion". I accept that, but it is difficult for the persecuted to make the distinction sometimes. It must be difficult for homosexual persons (no, I'm not gay) to distinguish between someone who seeks to deprive them of a job and a place to live, from someone who is simply concerned over a biblical difference in lifestyles.
What I was referring to in previous posts about the questionability of the scriptures was the selectivity that was made many, many centuries ago, when Christianity fused with government. Such a combination is dangerous, perhaps lethal, to both, and each completely changes the other. When a set of citizen's duties and responsibilities become religious obligations, then the state has power far beyond any ordinary person's ability to live with. Withholding taxes from the king becomes blasphemy, and the opinions of popes become law. Certainly, there is an overwhelming human frailty in deciding which words become possible for the "subjects" to hear, and when certain words and phrases make the king seem wrong, they can be omitted, changed, or re-interpreted. This is part of the history of Christianity, too. Whether the choice of words, translations, and interpretations were guided by God, or simply the folly of falible humans is a matter of faith, and you've chosen which way to believe. There is a middle path, and that is for the much-maligned denominations that have chosen to interpret scriptures in light of what is known today, both about the world that science has shown us, and about what the scriptures really were all about, as far back as they can take them. Those are the kind of folks you're likely to find at an interfaith service, and I guess I'm glad that the others stayed home.
Again, I ask the question, and I imagine that you might respond in the affirmative, was that pastor trying to do what he saw as God's work by being there? Was he really there to affirm others' "false" religions?
Please, stay away from interfaith services, by all means. Keep yourself in your church, and pray there with the saved, you'll do the world the most good that way.
This problem is within the LCMS and we are a church, not a public agency. It is not up to anyone unaffiliated with us to decide or to 'opine' as they cannot possible know or understand what we are going through.
Sticking to Bible priciples is hard. I don't hold members of other churches to our standards, yet they pick apart the LCMS for our strict adherence to the Word.
I spent some time reading all of the links posted here and it appears that the pastor in the article broke faith with his Lutheran denominational rules by appearing at an interfaith gathering which gave the appearance of condoning (or, at least not disputing) other religions. As you thought I might, I do not understand this position and can find no relevant Biblical reference that specifically can be interpreted to admonish the act of this pastor. Instead, I'm assuming the concern has more to do with doctrinal tenets of the Lutherans which they will back up with their interpretation of a scriptural reference.
Your understanding of my point is right on - religion is what man does to spiritual things. The Pharisees (the Jewish elite) who Jesus never passed on a chance of chastising for their lack of really knowing God, were so critical of Him for being in attendance of prostitutes, gentiles, tax collectors, and other "unclean" persons, that they couldn't see past their noses for who He really was. How dare this man be critical of their approach to their faith! I think His "unconventional" approach so truly po'ed these "religious" leaders that their hearts became hardened towards Jesus and missed the entire point he was trying to make. These "religious" leaders were so caught up in their rulemaking and setting themselves apart from the "unclean" world that Jesus wanted nothing to do with them.
forgive me if I misinterpreted the following:
Yes, I deem religion the choice to make a lifestyle out of a "fairy tale" (which is the believer's Constitutional right), but when following that lifestyle produces the inability to get along with other people either in daily tasks, or extraordinary circumstances, then it is better practiced behind the closed doors of a sanctuary.
If you combine such righteous narrowmindedness about the will of some supposed God, with the willingness to kill, you have exactly the mindset of those who flew the planes into the towers and created the need for the interfaith service in the first place.
... I did learn something else about religion on 9/11 and its aftermath. Its that you cannot always tell who's a religious intolerant just by looking for the rag on the head.
While I can see the points you are trying to make, and while I disagree with them (most, but not all), if you review your comments both in context and one-next-to-another...you can see where I would have drawn the conclusion I did.
Part of the difficulty comes from the mindset of those who are OPPOSED to the practices of the faithful. I know that you say you respect my constitutional right, but based upon your statements, ...if you and I disagree on - say abortion - then it is ME who must retreat behind closed doors. I find that puzzling.
What I was trying to say was that when religious intolerance is taken to an extreme, all that is needed is a willingness to engage in violence in the furtherance of that religion to make them all the same. This brought about the Crusades a thousand years ago,
The Crusades are a specious argument brought out often to create and air of moral equivalence. That is a whole other thread. There are no mainstream Christian denominations or groups advocating forced conversions. And there will never be.
The thrust of "intolerance" lobbying is vague and meant to be so. The obvious cases where we would agree, such as assault or other crimes against persons, are called "intolerance". So are matters of simple disagreement, such as whether "fisting" should be talked about in schools or not. If I challenge the agenda of what I consider to be a militant gay movement...am I "intolerant"? or am I defending my rights?
I am sure the vast majority of Europeans (and Arabs) would applaud an Israeli Prime Minister who rolls over to all Palestinian demands in order to gain peace. The problem is that they don't share the reality that Israeli citizens do. Therefore, I would not look to Europeans to decide if my decision is virtuous or not.
But I respect your opinion and committment.
I think the main thing to remember is what would Jesus do in the same situation. I think Jesus would have gone and spoken the truth. As long as this minister spoke truths about Jesus and God, then I can not fault him for participating.
I don't mean to say that the Crusades justify the violence that the Arab world is currently inflicting on us. I go on to say that their refusal to get over it for a thousand years, because it is one of their old "truths", is the problem. If you want more recent issues that Christian thought has been on the wrong side of, we can go into that. But it would serve nothing. I, too, regret the extremes that gay people have gone to, in order to shock people who do not accept them. But I believe they wouldn't do so much of it, if it didn't get a rise out of so many people they despise. They bait Christians, and so many rise to that bait. It would be nice if you all would stop.
If you've seen other posts of mine, I am squarely on the side of Israel. I would much rather trust a democratic Jewish state in the Middle East than any of the Arab monarchies. I see excesses as having been committed by Israel, but they seem to be water under the bridge, they might as well clean themselves out a defensible position of land. Once European settlers started taking land from the Native Americans, it was probably destined that they would win the Indian wars, and take over the entire middle of the North American continent. The time to have done the highest and best thing had already long passed, and that time probably passed for Israel several decades ago. Now, they have to keep on going, and I support their right to do so.
The topic of this thread is not anything as serious as the violence of the Crusades, or of the present Mideast situation. It's only about people praying together, and other people's reaction to that prayer. We have plenty of other enemies, American Christians should not be fighting with other Christians!
As for the minister who is being threatened with the lost of his ministry, I did some research and came across his defense:
http://www.ad-lcms.org/response_to_charges.html
Sure, it may be self-serving, but I read it with an open mind, and I am absolutely convinced that this man did nothing against his church. To go through this is to "walk a mile in his shoes", and you can certainly understand where he was at physically, emotionally, and spiritually the day he got up to pray in front of people not of his faith. I didn't realize that he was a moving force behind the Nehemiah Plan, I have seen people get houses through that plan, who otherwise would not have had them. Surely, it is as noble a work as Habitat for Humanity. I hope no one here would refuse to pound nails into a house for a needy family, just because the guy working on the other side of the house is from a different church!
In any case, I am convinced that this man is the victim of extreme intolerance, and anyone who could read his side of the story, and feel the same afterwards has a heart of stone.
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