It’s been an interesting week. Special thanks to everyone who commented (and so civilly) on my post about divorce. I learned some things I hadn’t known, which I’d like to list and examine, as an exercise in humility.
On the basis of my upbringing, and everything I’d heard in my own contacts within my church body, I’d gotten the impression that our official position is “No remarriage after divorce, for any reason.”
I should have known better. First of all, we’re (organizationally) a congregational church body. We try to keep our central mandates to an absolute minimum. Every congregation has the right to make its own decisions on such matters as whom they will marry, and this issue is no different. Some of our churches (and pastors) will marry divorced people, some won’t.
I also hadn’t known (though I think Dale told me before, and I should have) that the Lutheran tradition has held almost universally that remarriage is permitted for innocent parties. The tradition where I grew up, which held a view closer to the Catholic one, is not mainstream but fringe.
I looked some things up, and talked to a couple knowledgeable people, and nobody seems to know where the tradition I’m familiar with first entered the Lutheran stream. I suspect that it may have come with Pietism, which in its purest form insists that any matter that might possibly be considered sin is indeed sin, and must be rejected. That’s why we Pietists have our famous rules against drinking and dancing, rules not actually found in Scripture.
On the other hand, somebody told me he thought the Missouri Synod also had an anti-remarriage tradition, and the Missourians are far from being Pietists. Maybe someone who knows more about that can give me more information.
But the Pietist thing is thorny. I consider myself a Pietist, and I’m proud of it. It’s easy for us, today, to look down on the Pietists and condemn them as loveless rule-jockeys. And there’s plenty of justification for that.
But if you know history, there are reasons for what they did. My own people, the Norwegians, had a reputation you wouldn’t recognize when they first arrived on U.S. shores. They were considered drunken, brawling reprobates, and they deserved it.
I wrote about my great-grandfather John B. Johnson a while back. He was a colorful character, but he was also a genuine monster. When he was drunk, which was often, he was capable of anything. He came home one night (so the story goes), with a friend in tow. He loudly announced he had “sold” his daughter (my grandmother, then a little girl) to his friend for the night. My great-grandmother took a broom to the both of them, fortunately, and nothing came of that.
But are you surprised if she wanted to join the Women’s Christian Temperance Union and wipe out saloons?
In the Pietist revivals, hundreds, even thousands, knelt at the altar and received salvation, and then were expected to live a Pietist life. No drinking. No gambling. No dancing (which was likely to put you in situations where you’d be pressured to drink and gamble). Living like that tends to concentrate you, and it also saves money. It greatly assists your upward mobility. Is it any wonder that Pietist immigrant groups tended to assimilate faster and do better in America than other groups? As Wesley is supposed to have said about his converts, “I just can’t keep them poor!”
And yet, as Joe Carter notes in this post at Evangelical Oupost, it’s unquestionably hubristic to try to be “more ethical than Jesus.”
I’ve long felt that the proper rule is, “I will determine in my heart, relying on Scripture and good counsel, how I believe God wants me to live. But I will not try to impose on anyone else any rule not plainly taught in Scripture.”
Which makes me a wishy-washy Pietist, I guess.
Now I wonder if I should start asking out divorced women. I could open myself up to whole new worlds of rejection.
Ah, well. I’m too poor to date right now anyway.
Lars; I came out of a very similar ‘pietist’ background. In my (limited) experience, people who lived in the first half of the twentieth century were pietist, but their children tended to to became Pentecostals… and so an overly rigid rule adherence (of a supra biblical variety) turned into an overly lax approach to christian (biblical) standards.
Pietism at its best is simply the application of living Christianity to all aspects of life. Sadly, Pietism often isn’t at its best, and easily degenerates into legalism. So when people think of Pietism, they automatically think of Pietism at its worst.
So thanks, Lars, for standing up for Pietism, as I think it deserves better than to be defined solely in terms of its worst manifestations. And as a major component of the American spiritual heritage it forms a much larger part of the spiritual background of most church bodies (even the Missouri Synod) than many realize.
But Pietism has become a whipping boy, and gets blamed for lots of things. In some Lutheran circles the working definition of a Pietist is “anyone who doesn’t see things the way we do.” The same working definition applies to “liberals” in the AFLC and “extremists” in the ELCA.
Michael, it works the other way too, that pietists may be apt to suspect Confessional Lutherans of not having “living Christianity” because they aren’t pietists. I probably don’t have to say that to you.
Have you read Bo Giertz’s novel The Hammer of God? I could see reading and discussing that as something profitable for Confessional Lutherans and pietists. The novel is actually three long short stories set in Sweden (the author was a Swedish bishop). His take basically is that the pietistic revivals awakened people’s consciousness of sin by the work of the Holy Spirit, no One less than Him; but that Christians need the focus on Christ and Gospel that characterize wholesome Confessional preaching and sacramental life rather than pietism as an ideology that “needs” that which is different from itself in order to keep it going, etc.
sr, your comment too prompts thought. For what my opinion is worth – – I think you are right. Pietism, with its emphasis on what it calls “free and living congregations” etc. has an inherent tendency to adopt things that foster this sense of “living” spiritual experience. Hence the progression away from dogmatic teaching and towards a “spirituality” that is wary or disdainful of “orthodoxy.” I wouldn’t be surprised, then, if you are right about the children of pietists becoming Pentecostals. In Pentecostalism, I suspect, you have, much more, the unspoken idea that Jesus Was Then, The Spirit Is Now. Sacraments are emphasized even less than in pietism. It’s interesting to me that a lot of people who grew up in evangelical or Pentecostal milieus have been moving on to Eastern Orthodoxy, etc. (such as my sister, one of my correspondents, etc.).
I hope, Michael, that I have avoided the “pietism at its worst” attitude.
My own childhood background was basically in the Wesleyan tradition. I first attended a Confessional Lutheran service in October 1978, and happen to have kept a journal account of the experience. Right from that day I was struck by the Christ-emphasis as compared to what I was used to. I remain impressed by that quality. Confessional Lutheranism bets the farm on Christ.
That should be “Christians need the focus on Christ and Gospel that characterize wholesome Confessional preaching and sacramental life.”
Also, I didn’t make my point about conversions to Eastern Orthodoxy clear. I think that many people in evangelical and Pentecostal milieus become attracted to EO because they sense deficiencies in what they are used to, especially if they study the New Testament in the light of the early Church. That is a fascinating study. I like Peter Gillquist’s remark about how evangelicals who do this study may go through a sequence like this: first, the delighted discovery that these ancient people were Christians like them – – “Are they in the same Church as us?”; and then the change that comes when the evangelical asks, “Am I in the same Church as the early Christians?”
A few of us study along those lines and take to Confessional Lutheranism instead. CL is supposed to be all about the same things as the New Testament and the early Church: it is radically Christ-centered in preaching, sacrament, way of life.
Pietism rightly points out the worldliness and open sin of some in Confessional circles. The phenomenon of the person who appears to think that his Baptism excuses him from Christian obedience rather than empowering him for works of love and a holy life. Hence, I suppose, the unforgettable experience for me in a year and a half of attendance at an AFLC church, that I never heard the Christian life as the life based on our Baptism (except when I did some lay preaching). That can’t be right. It really cannot.
I don’t mean to turn this thread into a pile-up in pietism. Take what I’m saying as a chance for y’all to hear some quick, probably not well-phrased thoughts from a Confessional Lutheran point of view; from a guy who did the altar call thing more than once as a kid….
I said in #3, “rather than pietism as an ideology that ‘needs’ that which is different from itself in order to keep it going, etc.”
What I meant was that pietists sometimes seem to need to contrast themselves (“free, living”) with others (presumably “dead, bound”) for a sense of identity and purpose; that is, they need the “Other” to be bad so they can be good.
I’ve run into more than a little of this in Confessional Lutheranism, from some but, I am glad to say, not all, perhaps not most, pastors. We had one pastor in particular who seemed to fall into a trap like this: he’d write his sermon, and then Saturday evening he’d flip channels and watch the antics of TV evangelists. And he’d rant from the pulpit. He also seemed to “need” to go on about the ELCA. Now I do think that part of biblical preaching is the use of antitheses. Pastors /ought/ to expound what the truth is /not/ as well as what it is. But this guy seemed to be venting his personal disgust; and to be trying to make people feel good about Confessional Lutheranism because it is not like /that/ malarkey.
In my experience in the AFLC I didn’t hear rants about “dead orthodoxy” ever, that I remember, and if I had I would remember. So that’s good. Some things in denominational materials, however, seemed to need to take that line. Now what was interesting about that was that it was just assumed, not argued. It might be hard to argue on a biblical basis that where the truth of God’s Word is really being preached and where the sacraments are being rightly administered, there’s just be “dead orthodoxy.”
But I said I didn’t want to do a pile-on.
Yes, I’ve read “The Hammer of God” & have even given away a couple of copies. Our current prof of New Testament has occasionally assigned that book for one or two of his courses.
Michael, that’s very interesting about The Hammer of God. Your comment bears out theidea that Confessional Lutherans and Lutherans in the pietist tradition of the AFLC, at least, could have a very fine starting point for talks together, in their shared appreciation for this book. We must have a lot in common if this book resonates so much with all of us.
Looking back at my postings, I see some unclear and ungrammatical passages, but I’m going to just let those things go unless someone wants clarification. I’d be happy, for my part, to leave this thread with the expression of happiness about our shared appreciation for The Hammer of God.
Dale, I’ve appreciated all your comments, and I don’t see you at all as taking the “pietism at its worst” attitude. Another thing that occurred to me about “Hammer” is that there’s a very positive reference to C.O. Rosenius in it, another person who could help bridge the Confessionalist/Pietist gap. Your comments about EAstern Orthodoxy are very interesting to me, as I’ve had lots of contact with it, partly through marrying an adult convert to Orthodoxy, though she’s now a member of our church. Yes, I suppose we’ll leave this thread now, but thanks, Lars, for a post that indeed generated some good discussion. We trust you & Phil will drop some more good lines, pregnant with possibilities for further discussion.
Michael, here or elsewhere I would enjoy seeing your account of what good pietism looks like. (You said that people often speak of pietism at its worst.) I’m not so much asking for “my idea of the ideal pietist congregation,” but for a reasonably realistic description. I’d be especially interested in matters such as
– hymnody and liturgy
– content/themes of preaching
– role of Baptism
– role of the Sacrament of the Altar; comment on closed/open Communion
– relations with other churches — Lutheran; evangelical; mainline
That could fill a book, of course, but if you wanted to write a sentence or two about each, I don’t suppose anyone would mind! And again my intention is not debate; I’m not looking for you to line up ducks that I’m going to shoot at.
I’ll try to do that sometime soon.
By the way, it’s interesting that the Evangelical Lutheran Synod, a Confessional Lutheran body (old Norwegian Synod), has published (Lutheran Synod Book Co.) Nils Jakob Laache’s Book of Family Prayer. Laache also wrote Clear and Unfailing Guidance to Peace, described as selections from Rosenius. I wonder if pietistically-inclined Lutherans wouldn’t approve of the Book of Family Prayer.
Our own publishing house, Ambassador Publications, has published a translation of the original Rosenius work.
I wonder if pietistically-inclined Lutherans wouldn’t approve of the Book of Family Prayer.
Dale, You’re just trying to stir up trouble. 😀
Who, me?
Who, me?