12 Lives: Faith • Action • Witness Presentation by Bishop Guy Erwin, Southwest California Synod ELCA ● November 19, 2017 Trinity Church in the City of Boston

Martin Luther 1483 - 1546

“Faith is a living, daring confidence in God's grace, so sure and certain that a man could stake his life on it a thousand times.”

“The sin underneath all our sins is to

Figure 1: Luther in 1526 (Lucas Cranach) trust the lie of the serpent that we

cannot trust the love and grace of Christ and must take matters into our own hands.”

“This is the mystery of the riches of divine grace for sinners; for by a wonderful exchange our sins are now not ours but Christ's, and Christ's righteousness is not Christ's but ours.”

Figure 2: Woodcut of Luther in 1546 (School of Cranach) 12 Lives: Faith • Action • Witness Presentation by Bishop Guy Erwin, Southwest California Synod ELCA ● November 19, 2017 Trinity Church in the City of Boston

Guy Erwin is Bishop of the Southwest California Synod of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America. Ordained in May 2011, Erwin is the ELCA’s first synod bishop who is gay and partnered. Married to Rob Flynn, a member of the ELCA, Bishop Erwin lives in Los Angeles. Bishop Erwin is part Osage Indian and is active in the Osage Nation of Oklahoma. Erwin also served as interim pastor for two ELCA congregations in California, and as minister for worship and education at St. Matthew’s Lutheran Church in North Hollywood, California. Prior to coming to California in 2000, he was lecturer in church history and historical theology at Yale Divinity School from 1993 to 1999. He served as parish associate at Emmanuel Lutheran Church in New Haven, Connecticut from 1986 to 2000. Erwin has also served on a variety of boards and committees for ELCA-related institutions and other non-profit agencies.

Bishop Erwin earned a doctorate and two master’s degrees at Yale University and his bachelor’s degree at Harvard University. He engaged in seminary studies at Yale Divinity School and the universities of Tübingen and Leipzig in Germany. Most recently, he was the Gerhard and Olga Belgum Professor of Lutheran Confessional Theology at California Lutheran University in Thousand Oaks, but also served as part-time interim pastor of Faith Lutheran Church in Canoga Park, California. He serves as the ELCA representative to the Faith and Order Commission of the World Council of Churches since 2004.

Suggestions for Further Reading

Bainton, Roland, Here I Stand: A Life of Martin Luther (Nashville: Abingdon, 1991). Originally published in 1950.

Kittelson, James M., Luther the Reformer: The Story of the Man and His Career (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 2003).

Pettegree, Andrew, Brand Luther: How an Unheralded Monk Turned His Small Town into a Center of Publishing, Made Himself the Most Famous Man in Europe – and Started the Protestant Reformation (London: Penguin Press, 2015).