Big Happenings In Lutheran and Anglican Circles

I’ve been around the horn with various Lutheran and Anglican articles today and wanted to pepper you with them in case you want to get an idea of what is going on in those Christian communities:

Lutheran Pastor Russell Saltzman

Lutheranism

Lutheran pastor Russell Saltzman has an illuminating artile on First Things today about what is happening in Lutheranism (similar to the ongoing fracture in Anglicanism right now).  Yours truly followed up with a comment responding to an earlier commenter.  Hat tip to Principium Unitatis.

Excerpt:

During its August 17–23 national church convention in Minneapolis, the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America seems poised to approve same-sex relations and the ordination of pastors in same-sex relationships.

Frankly, the creation of one more Lutheran church body in America is a dauntingly depressive possibility. I’m not entirely certain I want anything to do with it . . . unless we’re talking about a ministerium organized to open dialogue on becoming a Roman Catholic affiliate, congregations, pastors, the whole caboodle, eventually seeking full communion with the bishop of Rome. If Rome cooperates, this ought to be pretty easy. Just think of us as inactive members seeking reinstatement. In my congregation, an officially inactive member is welcomed back to full fellowship by making a contribution and receiving Holy Communion, and sometimes we’ve been known to even skip the contribution part. Couldn’t the Church of Rome handle that? There might be a few subsidiary issues to settle, but get us inside first and everything else becomes manageable. What is needed here is a brave archbishop or two, together taking cognizance of what is about to happen to the ELCA, and stepping forward as potential shepherds. Can’t really call it stealing sheep if the previous shepherd has run off, can you?

No, I’m not being facetious. Not altogether. The original intent of the sixteenth century Reformers wasn’t to start a new church but to be a witness for evangelical reform within the one church. Our Lutheran confessional documents—notably the Augsburg Confession of 1530—forcefully argues that nothing Lutherans taught was contrary to the faith of the church catholic, nor even contrary to that faith held by the Church of Rome. As it has happened, much to our Lutheran chagrin, late twentieth century Rome itself become a better witness to an evangelical gospel than early twenty-first century Lutherans have proved capable of being. And for all the radical Lutheran polemic coming after Augsburg—you know, about the pope being the latest anti-Christ sitting on the throne of the whore of Babylon—truth is, these days, I get far less trouble from the bishop of Rome than I get from my own bishop. (emphasis mine)

Anglicanism

N.T. Wright

Two “takes” on the recent Episcopal Church’s (i.e. the American Anglican Church) General Convention that thumbed their nose at Anglican Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams’ request for them not to break the Communion by condoning everything homosexual (same-sex union blessings in Episcopal churches, ordaining practicing homosexuals to be bishops):

Anglican Bishop of Durham N.T. Wright’s take:

In the slow-moving train crash of international Anglicanism, a decision taken in California has finally brought a large coach off the rails altogether. The House of Bishops of the Episcopal Church (TEC) in the United States has voted decisively to allow in principle the appointment, to all orders of ministry, of persons in active same-sex relationships. This marks a clear break with the rest of the Anglican Communion.

We must insist, too, on the distinction between inclination and desire on the one hand and activity on the other — a distinction regularly obscured by references to “homosexual clergy” and so on. We all have all kinds of deep-rooted inclinations and desires. The question is, what shall we do with them? One of the great Prayer Book collects asks God that we may “love the thing which thou commandest, and desire that which thou dost promise”. That is always tough, for all of us. Much easier to ask God to command what we already love, and promise what we already desire. But much less like the challenge of the Gospel.

The Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams’ take:

7. In the light of the way in which the Church has consistently read the Bible for the last two thousand years, it is clear that a positive answer to this question would have to be based on the most painstaking biblical exegesis and on a wide acceptance of the results within the Communion, with due account taken of the teachings of ecumenical partners also [e.g. the Catholic Church]. A major change naturally needs a strong level of consensus and solid theological grounding.

Anglican Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams

My take:

Archbishop Rowan Williams seems to want to preserve the unity of the Anglican Communion at all costs, even when it means allowing large national Anglican churches like the Episcopal church to break from the traditional teachings of Christianity on serious doctrinal issues like sexual behavior.  In the Anglican Communion, this might ultimately fly with a new “two-tier” system that he suggests, but the reality is that, for unity to mean something, when a church breaks from orthodox Christian teaching, they have caused the division and broken the unity, especially if they persist (as the TEC has) in that heterodoxy.

Not to be triumphalistic, but this is an example of something that cannot fly in the Catholic Church: If a church or group of churches within the Catholic Church held a convention and declared homosexuality to be moral, same-sex blessings to be given in the Catholic parishes, and practicing homosexuals to be ordained bishops, those groups would be excommunicated and declared in schism from the Catholic Church.  You have to call a spade a spade.

Traditional Lutherans and Anglicans are seeing their communities fracture into a hundred pieces right before their eyes, the “slow-moving train crash” that Wright quips about (which is a brilliant image), and obviously many are turning to Rome because the Catholic Church is beginning to stand out once again because she is unmoved in her defense of the truth of Christian marriage and immorality of homosexual behavior.  She is becoming a sign of contradiction in the world once again, often the lone voice against contraception, sterilization, abortion of every kind, and immoral sexual behavior (from pornography to non-marital sex to same-sex acts).

The Catholic Church has also begun opening up a new era of dialogue with the Orthodox Churches and even different Protestant Ecclesial Communities with the goal of reunion.  This new era is one of reconciliation, mutual respect, and hope in Christ for unity again by the power of the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of Truth.  Going away or gone altogether are the polemical attacks from both sides against the other, as the Lutheran pastor points out above.

May Christ graciously bless us and unite as one in the Truth!