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July 11, 2005
The Reverend Dr. Mark Hanson
Bishop, Evangelical Lutheran Church in America
8765 West Higgins Road
Chicago, Illinois 60631
Greetings! I am writing out of a concern I share with
others about the theological state of affairs within the Evangelical
Lutheran Church in America. The situation might be described as
one of "brain drain." Theologians who have served
Lutheranism for many years in various capacities have recently left
the ELCA and have entered the Roman Catholic Church or the Orthodox
Church in America. Why?
When Jaroslav Pelikan left the ELCA and became a
member of the OCA, I felt it was not terribly surprising. After all,
he had been reading and writing about the Fathers of Eastern
Orthodoxy for so many years, he could quite naturally find himself at
home in that tradition, without much explanation. A short time before
that Robert Wilken, a leading patristics scholar teaching at the
University of Virginia, left the ELCA to become a Roman Catholic.
Then other Lutheran theological colleagues began to follow suit. Jay
Rochelle, who for many years was my colleague and the chaplain at the
Lutheran School of Theology at Chicago joined the Orthodox Church.
Why? Leonard Klein, pastor of a large Lutheran parish in York,
Pennsylvania, and former editor of Lutheran Forum and Forum Letter,
last year left the ELCA to study for the Roman Catholic priesthood.
Why? This year Bruce Marshall, who taught theology for about fifteen
years at St. Olaf College and was a long standing member of the
International Lutheran Orthodox Dialogue, has left the ELCA to enter
the Roman Catholic Church. Why? David Fagerberg, formerly professor
of religion at Concordia College, although coming from a strong
Norwegian Lutheran family, left the ELCA for the Roman Catholic
Church, and now teaches at the University of Notre Dame. Reinhard
Huetter, a German Lutheran from Erlangen University, came to the
Lutheran School of Theology at Chicago fifteen years ago to teach
theology and ethics, now teaches at Duke Divinity School, and this
year became a Roman Catholic. Why? Mickey Mattox, a theologian who
recently served at the Lutheran Ecumenical Institute in Strasbourg
and now teaches at Marquette University, has recently begun the
process of becoming a Roman Catholic. In all these cases the
transition involves spouses and children, making it incredibly more
difficult. Why are they doing this? Is there a message in these
decisions for those who have ears to hear?
All of these colleagues have given candid explanations
of their decisions to their families, colleagues, and friends. While
the individuals involved have provided a variety of reasons, there is
one thread that runs throughout the stories they tell. It is not
merely the pull of Orthodoxy or Catholicism that enchants them, but
also the push from the ELCA, as they witness with alarm the drift of
their church into the morass of what some have called Liberal
Protestantism. They are convinced that the Evangelical Lutheran
Church in America has become just another liberal protestant
denomination. Hence, they have decided that they can no longer be a
part of that. Especially, they say, they are not willing to raise
their children in a church that they believe has lost its moorings in
the great tradition of evangelical (small e) and catholic (small c)
orthodoxy (small o), which was at the heart of Luther's reformatory
teaching and the Lutheran Confessional Writings. They are saying that
the Roman Catholic Church is now more hospitable to confessional
Lutheran teaching than the church in which they were baptized and
confirmed. Can this possibly be true?
I have decided, without any doubt about it, that I
could not re invent myself to become something else than I was raised
to be by my Madagascar missionary parents - an heir of the Lutheran
confessing movement. Through theological study and ecumenical
engagement I thought I had learned something about what it means to
be Lutheran. I have written many books and articles, preached and
published many sermons - leaving a long paper trail - over a period
of five decades, explaining what it means to be Lutheran. There is
nothing in all of those communications that accommodates liberal
protestantism, which Karl Barth called a "heresy," an
assessment with which I fully agree. If it is true that the ELCA has
become just another liberal protestant denomination, that is a
condition tantamount to heresy. The most damning thing in my view
that can be charged against the ELCA is that it is just another
liberal protestant denomination. Are all these theologians wrong in
their assessment of the ELCA? I wish I could deny it. I have been
looking for some convincing evidence to the contrary, because I am
not about to cut and run. There is no place I know of where to go. I
do know, however, that the kind of Lutheranism that I learned - from
Nygren, Aulen, Bring, Pinomaa, Schlink, P. Brunner, Bonhoeffer,
Pannenberg, Piepkorn, Quanbeck, Preus, and Lindbeck, not to mention
the pious missionary teachers from whom I learned the Bible, the
Catechism, and the Christian faith - and taught in a Lutheran parish
and seminary for many years is now marginalized to the point of near
extinction. In looking for evidence that could convincingly
contradict the charge that the ELCA has become just another liberal
protestant denomination, it would seem reasonable to examine what is
produced by its publishing house, theological schools, magazines,
publications, church council resolutions, commission statements, task
force recommendations, statements and actions by its bishops. The end
result is an embarrassment; there is not much there to refute the
charge. As Erik Petersen said about 19h century German Protestantism,
all that is left of the Reformation heritage is the aroma from an
empty bottle. A lot of the pious piffle remains, but then, so was
Adolf von Harnack a pious man. All the heretics of the ancient church
were pious men. Our pastors and laity are being deceived by a lot of
pietistic aroma, but the bottle is empty. Just ask these fine
theologians - all friends and colleagues of mine - who have left the
ELCA. They are not stupid people; they don't tell lies; they don't
make rash decisions. They are all serious Christians. What is
happening is nothing less than a tragedy. The ELCA is driving out the
best and the brightest theologians of our day, not because it is too
Lutheran, but because it has become putatively just another liberal
protestant denomination. I would think that this is a situation that
ought to concern you immensely as well as all the leadership cadres
of the ELCA. But might it also be the case that the very persons who
ought to be troubled by this phenomenon will say to themselves
(perhaps not out loud), "good riddance, we won't be bothered by
those dissenting voices anymore? We wish more of their ilk would leave."
I must tell you that I read all your episcopal letters
that come across my desk. But I must also tell you that your stated
convictions, punctuated by many pious sentiments, are not
significantly distinguishable from those that come from the liberal
protestant leaders of other American denominations. I do not disagree
with your political leaning to the left. I am a life long political
liberal, unlike many of my friends. My wife and I opposed the unjust
war against Vietnam in the 60's and 70's, and we have with equal
conviction opposed the foolhardy invasion of Iraq by the Bush
administration. We also supported the ELCA in its ecumenical actions
to re institute the episcopal office by means of passing the CCM as
well as to adopt the Joint Declaration on the Doctrine of
Justification with the Vatican. But none of that equates with
transforming Lutheranism into a liberal protestant denomination, in
terms of doctrine, worship, and morality.
When I finished my graduate studies at Harvard and
Heidelberg, I was ordained by the ELC and served a parish in North
Minneapolis, simultaneously teaching at Luther Seminary. At that time
I was instrumental in founding Dialog, a journal of theology,
together with Robert Jenson, Roy Harrisville, Kent Knutson, James
Burtness, and others, in order to draw midwest Lutheranism into the
world wide orbit of Lutheran theology. We were not ecumenically
oriented at the start. At that time no Luther Seminary professors
were dealing with the issues posed by Bultmann, Tillich, Bonhoeffer,
Barth, Brunner, Aulen, Nygren and many others. Dialog got the
reputation of being a journal edited by young upstarts who thought
they knew better. It seemed to us then that most of our professors
were not very well informed. But they were good Lutherans, not a
single heretic among them. Heresy was not the problem at that time.
The journal that our group founded in 1961 has now become the voice
of a liberal protestant version of Lutheranism. Robert Jenson and I
resigned from the journal as its editors in1991 to found a new
journal, Pro Ecclesia, a Journal of Catholic and Evangelical
Theology. In the last fourteen years we have published the articles
of theologians of all traditions - Lutheran, Anglican, Catholic,
Evangelical, and Orthodox - exhibiting the truth that we all share
common ground in the Great Tradition. The same cannot be said of
Dialog anymore. It has become a function of the California ethos of
religion and morality, nothing seriously Lutheran about it anymore,
except the aroma of an empty bottle. Too bad. I was its editor for
twenty years and Jenson for ten years, but now in our judgment it has
become, perhaps even unwittingly, the very opposite of what we
intended. The journal now expresses its belief that to be prophetic
is to become the mouthpiece of the denominational bureaucracy, that
is, to attack the few dissenting voices in the ELCA.
One day a church historian will write the history of
Lutheranism in America. There will be a few paragraphs trying to
explain how the self destruction of confessional orthodox Lutheranism
came about around the turn of the millennium and how it underwent a
metamorphosis into a liberal protestant denomination. Recently in an
issue of the Lutheran Magazine you expressed your hope that Lutherans
could some day soon celebrate Holy Communion with Roman Catholics. My
instant reaction was: it is becoming less and less likely, as the
ELCA is being taken hostage by forces alien to the solid traditions
Lutherans share with Roman Catholics. The confessional chasm is
actually becoming wider. So much for the JDDJ! The agreement becomes
meaningless when Lutheranism embarks on a trajectory that leads to
rank antinomianism.
Where do we go from here? I am going nowhere.
Meanwhile, I am hearing rumors about a possible schism or something
about the formation of a dissenting synod. None of that will redound
to the benefit of the one, holy, catholic and apostolic church we
confess in the Creed. Each person and congregation will do what they
deem fitting and appropriate in view of the apostasy that looms on
the horizon of our beloved Lutheran Church. My friend Wolfhart
Pannenberg has stated that a church that cannot take the Scriptures
seriously is no longer a church that belongs to Jesus Christ. That is
not an original statement of his or mine, but one said by every
orthodox theologian in the Great Tradition, including Athanasius and
Augustine, as well as Martin Luther and John Calvin. Does the ELCA
take the Scriptures seriously? We will soon find out. Whoever passes
the issue off as simply a hermeneutical squabble is not being honest
- "we have our interpretation and you have yours." Who is
to judge who is right? The upshot is ecclesiastical anarchy,
sometimes called pluralism. To each his own. Chacun son gout!
I am extremely sorry it has come to this doctrinally
unstable situation in the church I was ordained to serve almost half
a century ago. My father and two of his brothers served this church
in Madagascar and China. My brother and sister served this church in
the Camaroons and Madagascar. My cousins have served this church as
ordained ministers in this country and abroad for decades. Knowing
them as well as I do, I am confident in stating their belief that
this church in some of its expressions is not remaining truly
faithful to the kind of promises they made upon their ordination to
the Christian ministry.
Can the situation which I have described in stark
terms be remedied? Have we reached the point of no return? Are we now
hopelessly mired in what Karl Barth identified as
"Kulturprotestantismus?" I know of about half a dozen
Lutheran renewal groups desperately trying to call the ELCA back to
its foundational texts and traditions. Would they exist if there were
no problem that needs to be addressed? How many congregations and
pastors have left or are leaving the ELCA for other associations?
One day we will have to answer before the judgment
seat of God as to what we have done for and against the Church of
Jesus Christ. There will be no one by our side to help us find the
words to use in response. All of us will have many things for which
to repent and to implore God's forgiveness. And we will all cry out,
"Lord, have mercy!"
Sincerely in Christ our Lord,
Carl E. Braaten |
