(I’ve made a running joke in this blog of referring to the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA) as The Very Large Lutheran Church Body That Shall Remain Nameless (TVLLCBTSRN). In view of recent events, I’m going to name names in this post. In the future, who knows?)

The Evangelical Lutheran Church in America’s decision, this past week, to bless same-sex sexual relationships, and to allow open homosexuals (if monogamous) to serve as clergy, will, I’m sure, lead to a perceptible (possibly dramatic) exodus of conservative churches and individuals from the denomination. I approve of this, and encourage it.

Still, I can already hear the accusations of the ELCA liberals and homosexual activists—“This isn’t about truth! It’s about hate! You people just can’t get past your homophobia!”

And in a sense, I understand the criticism. One might reasonably ask, “Why now? Has this problem come up all of a sudden (like the unpredicted tornado that knocked the cross off the steeple of Central Lutheran Church, a convention venue, during deliberations)? Why strain out this particular camel, when you’ve swallowed so many camels already?” Continue reading I left the ELCA before leaving the ELCA was cool →

Another good day writing, thank you for asking. It was more “one step at a time” composition, finding myself often in the situation where I had no idea what the characters would be doing next. So I asked myself, “Well, what’s the emotional reaction? How does the other person respond? Do they stand up or sit down, or just scratch themselves?” And one thing led to another, and I ended up putting down 1,500 words, and ended with a line that (it seemed to me) not only capped the last scene perfectly, but opened up possibilities for later plot points.



Ori asked about my statements on Pietism and legalism on Monday. I’ve actually written about this before, but I’m pretty sure it was back on the old blog site, so I’ll try to re-cap the thing again here.

One element of social change that strongly affected the tumultuous 18th and 19th Centuries was the rise of Pietism. It’s difficult for us, with the preconceptions we’ve absorbed all our lives, to understand what profound changes Pietism wrought. Continue reading Let’s have another cup of coffee, and let’s have another piece of Pietism →

Chad the Elder, over at Fraters Libertas, links to a (subscription only) story at First Things, about how the availability of abortion made unplanned pregnancies entirely “the woman’s problem,” and encouraged irresponsibility in men.

But once continuing a pregnancy to birth is the result neither of passion nor of luck but only of her deliberate choice, sympathy weakens. After all, the pregnant woman can avoid all her problems by choosing abortion. So if she decides to take those difficulties on, she must think she can handle them.

Birth itself may be followed by blame rather than support. Since only the mother has the right to decide whether to let the child be born, the father may easily conclude that she bears sole responsibility for caring for the child. The baby is her fault.

In the radio blackout, I opened the little plastic packages which contained the bread and the wine. I poured the wine into the chalice our church had given me. In the one-sixth gravity of the moon, the wine slowly curled and gracefully came up the side of the cup. Then I read the Scripture, ‘I am the vine, you are the branches. Whosoever abides in me will bring forth much fruit. Apart from me you can do nothing.’ I had intended to read my communion passage back to earth, but at the last minute [they] had requested that I not do this.

When Buzz Aldrin and his teammates landed on the moon, Buzz took the communion of the Lord Jesus. Eric Metaxas writes about it on his blog today.

Do I remember what I was doing when man first walked on the moon?

Indeed I do.

I was traveling that summer with a team from Lutheran Youth Encounter, a “parachurch” ministry that sent teams of college-aged Lutherans to work with the youth in various congregations. We usually spent a week in each church, but we’d had a cancellation for this week, and our team’s leader (a Type-A overachiever of whom I was in awe at the time) had put us to work cold-calling churches all over the Ohio District (because that was where we were). Finally we’d found an urban Cleveland church that was a little desperate because it was between pastors, and somebody apparently thought bringing us in would provide “something for the kids.”

As I recall it, it was a pretty bad fit, and I’m not at all sure they felt they got their money’s worth. Continue reading 40 years ago Monday →

Albert Mohler reports on how Dr. Katherine Jefferts Schori, Presiding Bishop of the Episcopal Church, has finally found a teaching in the church so awful, so scandalous and offensive, that she’s willing to apply the term “heresy” to it.

Denial of the Trinity? Denial of the Virgin Birth? Denial of the Resurrection?

No, no. It’s much worse than that.

She’s found that some people actually believe that Jesus is Lord.

The overarching connection in all of these crises has to do with the great Western heresy – that we can be saved as individuals, that any of us alone can be in right relationship with God. It’s caricatured in some quarters by insisting that salvation depends on reciting a specific verbal formula about Jesus. That individualist focus is a form of idolatry, for it puts me and my words in the place that only God can occupy, at the center of existence, as the ground of being. That heresy is one reason for the theme of this Convention.

She goes on to describe a further, related heresy–believing that Jesus is the one way to God.

Tip: Dr. Paul McCain at Cyberbrethren.