I heard an interesting piece of gossip at my class reunion last Saturday.

I don’t think anyone will be hurt by it. The news was more than a hundred years old.

The reunion took place at the farm of one of my classmates (we lived in a small town, and it was a small class. Smaller now). The town is Kenyon, Minnesota, not a famous place, but once a center of Norwegian-American settlement, made conspicuous once upon a time by the story I shall now relate.

Our host told us, “This farm once belonged to the first doctor in Goodhue County, Dr. Grønvold.” That was interesting.

Later another classmate, who knows I’m interested in history, told me, “You know, there was a big scandal here in the 1800s. That farm over there” (he pointed to a brick house about a thousand feet away) “is the Holden church parsonage. The pastor there was gone a lot, and his wife had an affair with the doctor who lived here.”

“B. J. Muus?” I asked. Yes, he said, that was the pastor’s name.

I’d read about the story, but never gave it close study. Now I’d stumbled across the living oral tradition, on the very spot, and it piqued my interest. So I read up about it. Continue reading It happened in Holden →

I hope I didn’t contribute to the confusion.



I posted a while back (during the election, I think) that I wondered if Muslims around the world might be offended if we elected a man whose father was a Muslim, but who was not practicing Islam. I based it on what I believed to be a Muslim teaching, that the son of a Muslim man is always a Muslim, forever.

Apparently that doctrine is not universal among Muslims. Certainly we haven’t heard much about it during this administration. So that doesn’t seem to be an issue, and I was mistaken.

But it appears, according to a Pew Research poll, that 34 percent of Americans think President Obama is a Muslim, while 43 percent aren’t sure what he believes.

The usual voices are blaming talk radio, but I’m sure I’ve never heard any national talk show host espouse that idea (though crazy callers bring it up from time to time). Well, Michael Savage might have said it, but Michael Savage will say anything.

I did hear a guest on a local talk show last weekend say the president was a Muslim, but that was small-time radio.

Our president says he’s a Christian, and I believe he’s a “Christian,” at least according to his own lights (which would appear to be very different from my lights. Insert Rev. Wright joke here). When the form says “Religion,” he checks the box next to “Christian.”

But is anybody really surprised people are confused on the matter?

Has President Obama ever made a positive statement about Christianity to rival the many flattering statements he’s made about Islam since his inauguration? American politicians have a tradition of joining churches and parading their piety. It’s often hypocritical, but the president’s avoidance of public worship while in office has been no secret.

If I know a man is married, and I hear him talking all the time about Jane, and how beautiful Jane is, and what a great wife Jane is, I think I can be excused for being surprised when I learn that he’s in fact married to Sally, about whom he never talks.

Today I was too busy to listen closely to the weekly Ultimate Issues Hour on Dennis Prager’s radio show. But I caught one guy calling in on the subject of the existence of God. He explained that, for his own part, he thought of God as some kind of Force. Seeing God as an “old man in the sky” seemed to him primitive thinking.

One hears that sort of thing fairly often. I attribute it to the scientific world view that’s dominated public thought ever since the Enlightenment. Religion, under that view, is irrational and all about emotion. Science is about reason. If there’s a true explanation of ultimate reality, such thinking argues, it must be a scientific answer. So if there’s a God, He must be describable in scientific terms. A powerful Force seems to fit the bill.

Hey, George Lucas built a whole movie franchise out of it.

I would like to propose that describing God as a Force is both inadequate and profoundly unsatisfactory. Here’s why.

My first proposition is that God must be the greatest thing in the universe. Because if anything were greater than Him, that thing would be God. God is, by definition, that which has no superior.

A Force is by its nature an impersonal phenomenon. Forces do not think or choose or love.

Therefore, if God is a Force, God is not love.

But if you believe (as I do, and most people in our culture do, because they’ve never examined their beliefs) that love is the greatest thing of all, how can you say that God is a Force? That would mean that something that cannot love is superior to things that do love (that would be us).

You have to have it one way or the other. If God is a Force, He is not love, and love is not the greatest thing of all.

If God is Love, He is not a Force (or not merely a Force). He has to be a Person (three persons in one, according to Christians).

For me it’s a no brainer. Love wins. God must be Personal.

A few weeks back I wrote about a matter in the church which I attend, which has drawn national attention. I think it’s appropriate for me to follow that story up now, as our congregation has finished its investigation and the principle figure involved is speaking publicly again.

First of all, to name names, my church is Hope Lutheran Church of Minneapolis, and the subject of the story is our senior pastor, Tom Brock. Pastor Brock fought a long battle with The Very Large Lutheran Church Body Which Shall Not Be Named, over issues like women’s ordination, abortion, and homosexual marriage, before finally encouraging withdrawal from that church body and affiliation with ours a few years back. He has a cable television show, and a local radio talk show, in which he discusses religious issues. Through these outlets he has made himself fairly prominent, and indeed (as we have seen) a target.

A local homosexual publication called Lavender Magazine heard a rumor that Pastor Brock was attending a Catholic support group called Courage, a group for men struggling against same-sex attraction. A freelance reporter then posed as a prospective member, attended a meeting, and wrote an article for Lavender, in which he insinuated that Pastor Brock was leading a secret “gay” life. This move has been “viewed by many as journalistically unethical,” according to this AP story on the One News Now website.

Gee, ya think? Breaking the confidentiality of a Twelve Step Program?

Pastor Brock was placed on leave of absence while our congregation conducted an inquiry.

He appeared before the congregation again this past Sunday. He and members of the elders explained that he has been exonerated by their investigation. Among other things, they spoke, with his permission, with people in the Courage group in whom he had confided. They can find no evidence that he has been living a secret sex life. They are satisfied that Pastor Brock is celibate, which is all we ask of any man dealing with this difficult problem.

Reports that Pastor Brock was “back in the pulpit” last Sunday are technically true, but misleading. He did occupy the physical space behind the pulpit when he talked, but he didn’t deliver the sermon. He will be preaching again, but not right away. His intention is to resign as Senior Pastor but stay on staff, concentrating on the radio and television outreach that put him in the crosshairs in the first place.

I know Pastor Brock to say hello to. I do not know him well. But I shook his hand on my way out of the sanctuary, and told him he’s a hero to me.

I heard something of a radio show tonight that ties in a bit with Lars’ last post. The show was discussing a Christian response to homosexuality, and I believe both guests had struggled with same-sex attraction over the years. A woman called in to ask if they believed people could be born gay and told her painful story of being rejected by churches repeatedly. She was 66 years old now, did not want to have homosexual feelings, but was beginning to believe God made her this way.

What burned me up was when she said churches had alienated her when they learned she struggled with homosexuality. Some churches wanted her to embrace the perversion; others wanted her to clean herself up before she could come to God with them. Naturally, I believe the first group is not practicing biblical morality, but the second group? Who do they think they are?! Are they in church to do God a favor? Does the Almighty need them to do his work? Did they clean up themselves before God redeemed them?

I hate hearing of church people who reject those struggling with the ugly, public sins. It’s just as blasphemous as any play or movie you might be recruited to boycott.

But as usual when I start writing, I calm down before I’m finished. I know the church has many godly people who help anyone who comes to them through the roughest sins and struggles. And I know there are churches with many religious people, who do not know God, but think they can save themselves by doing good things and avoiding certain bad things. Of course, the second group is going to hold to whatever religious culture they have in their town and kick out the ugly sinners who can’t overcome their own faults through sheer moral courage or maybe bad luck.

Yes, it’s bad luck to overcome your faults on your own because you may begin to believe you can meet God on your terms, that you are strong enough to negotiate with him, or that he doesn’t matter in the long run (in which case, there wouldn’t be a long run). Some of us are blessed to have faults or weaknesses that encourage us to sin visibly; we may seek God sooner than those who are self-made.