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God, Christ, and Biblical Authority in the ELCA Today

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God, Christ, and Biblical Authority in the ELCA Today CTQ 74 (2010): 105-121 God, Christ, and Biblical Authority in the ELCA Today Mark C. Chavez The Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA) is experiencing a severe, tragic crisis with spiritual, theological, organizational, and financial dimensions. I ask for your prayers for all of us in the ELCA. It is a very difficult time for the ELCA, so your prayers are much appreciated. It has been most reassuring to hear from so many Christians in other churches here in the United States and from around the world who are keeping us in their prayers. The damage being done to the ELCA harms the whole body of Christ. The ELCA's crisis is in part due to the fallout from the 2009 ELCA churchwide assembly's approval of a social statement on sexuality and ministry policy recommendations. Both documents were shaped more by culture than by Scripture. The crisis, however, was brewing years before the ELCA's first day of existence on January 1, 1988. The 2009 churchwide assembly was the tragic terminus of a trajectory that had been set decades earlier. On the surface it may look like the ELCA is divided by disagreement over sexual morality. The disagreement is far deeper. Biblical authority is at the heart of the disagreement. The ELCA confession of faith states that it "accepts the canonical Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments as the inspired Word of God and the authoritative source and norm of its proclamation, faith, and life."l In practice Scripture is often not "the authoritative source and norm" in the ELCA. When human authorities supplant Scripture in doctrine and practice, divine authority-that of God, Christt and the Holy Spirit-gets called into question or even lost. Cutting to the chase and using blunt, biblical languaget much of the ELCA has devolved and degenerated into idolatry. I will discuss some key factors that set up the ELCA for the present crisis before its inceptiont some of the warning signs of an impending crisis in the ELCA's short history, and the current status of Godt Christ, and biblical authority in the ELCA in the wake of the Minneapolis churchwide -.--.-----­ 1 Constitution, Bylaws and Continuing Resolutions of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, Chapter 2, Confession ofFaith, 2.03. Mark C. Chavez ofLandisvillet Pennsylvania, is an ELCA pastor and the Director ofLutheran CORE. I Ii II If 106 Concordia Theological Quarterly 74 (2010) ,rr assembly. Some factors for the crisis were internal to the predecessor churches that formed the ELCA and internal to the ELCA. At least one key factor, however, that led the ELCA along a path toward idolatry was external and should be mentioned up front. Deeply embedded in North American culture and thinking is a worldview that completely opposes the biblical worldview. It is the underlying assumption or belief that there are no absolute truths. That widespread belief in North America puts all Christian churches at risk. Before proceeding, I have two caveats. First, many ELCA members and churches are firmly opposed to the course chosen by the ELCA churchwide organization last year. Perhaps half or more of the ELCA's members have more in common with orthodox Christians in other churches-Lutheran, Protestant, Roman Catholic, and Orthodox-than with ELCA members and leaders who believe the ELCA is on the right course. Not all leaders in the ELCA churchwide organization, synods, and seminaries believe the ELCA is on the right course. There are a few, unfortunately only a few, who know the ELCA has taken the wrong course. I use "ELCA" in a shorthand way to mean just those who sincerely believe the Holy Spirit is leading the ELCA on the right course. Second, the three Lutheran churches that formed the ELCA were likely headed for the same crisis now facing the ELCA, even if they had not merged in 1988. The formation of the ELCA accelerated the movement toward idolatry. It did not cause or set the course. I. The Crisis Predates the ELCA's Formation Hindsight is 20/20. Looking back, there were many signs that the ELCA would start off on the wrong course in 1988. Perhaps the clearest sign occurred in 1984. The founding documents and structural organization for the ELCA were formed and drafted by the Commission for the New Lutheran Church (CNLC) , a group of seventy Lutheran leaders with proportional representation from the three merging churches-the American Lutheran Church (ALC), the Lutheran Church in America (LCA), and the Association of Evangelical Lutheran Churches (AELC). In February 1984, the CNLC was considering the confession of faith in the draft constitution for the new church. The draft confession at that time read in part, "On the basis of sacred Scriptures, the Church's creeds and the Lutheran confessional writings, we confess our faith in the one God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit." Elwyn Ewald, an AELC lay CNLC member, Chavez: Biblical Authority in the ELCA Today 107 moved to amend the end of the phrase to read, II we confess our faith in the triune God," thereby deleting "Father, Son and Holy Spirit."2 Not surprisingly, there was a lively discussion in the CNLC about the proposed amendment. What might have been a surprise, at least for most people in the pews and pulpits of the three merging churches at the time, was the closeness of the vote on the amendment. God's revealed, proper name-Father, Son, and Holy Spirit-was affirmed by a margin of just three votes. The amendment to remove this name from the confession of faith was supported by thirty CNLC members and opposed by thirty­ three. Even if all seventy members had been present and voted, and assuming there had been an additional seven votes affirming God's proper name, a 30-40 vote on the amendment should have been disturbing, to say the least. It was reason enough to call a halt to the formation of a new Lutheran church. The foundations for the new Lutheran church were deeply flawed and the course or trajectory that led to idolatry was already set well in place. Rather than being bound by Scripture's revelation of God's proper name and publicly confessing it, some Lutheran leaders intentionally wanted to avoid confessing it. The 1984 CNLC vote was an indication of the number of clergy and lay leaders in the ELCA's predecessor churches who approached Scripture in a way in which humans place themselves in authority over Scripture, rather than submitting to Scripture's authority over all matters of faith and life. As sinners we all refuse to submit to Scripture's authority over us, but the closeness of the CNLC vote was an indication of an approach to Scripture used by a disturbing number of clergy and theologians in the ELCA's predecessor churches. The 1984 CNLC vote was also an indication of the number of Lutheran leaders who either approached Scripture and tradition with a radical feminist critique or were persuaded by the radical feminist critique that Christians ought to avoid addressing God by his proper name and confessing this name. The CNLC vote in 1984 was not an isolated event or a freak aberration unrepresentative of what some Lutherans believed and practiced at the time. Consider this pastoral statement from the ELCA Conference of Bishops in 1989, one year into the ELCA's new life: "In the name of the Father, and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit is the only doctrinally acceptable way for a person to be baptized into the body of Christ." The 2 Edgar R. Trexler, Anatomy of a Merger: People, Dynamics, and Decisions That Shaped the ELCA (Minneapolis: Augsburg, 1991), 60. I> 108 Concordia Theological Quarterly 74 (2010) bishops admonished pastors to baptize in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit because some were using other wording when they baptized. Some had started doing it well before the merger. Perhaps the most commonly used wording was "Creator, Redeemer, and Sanctifier." Some pastors were using words like "Mother, Friend, and Comforter." Some seminary professors and pastors believed that it was not only legitimate and proper to avoid using "Father, Son, and Holy Spirit," but proper to be creative in using other wording. Let us realize how audacious it is to think that we can choose a name for God. How would we like it if someone refused to call us by our proper name, gave us a different name, addressed us by that name, and always introduced us to others by that name? Even Jacob, perhaps the most manipulative figure in the Bible, who almost always responded to God's unconditional promises to him with a conditional promise - "If you will be with me ... , then I'll give you a tenth of all that I have"(Gen 28:20-22)­ did not have the audacity to name God. At the end of his all-night wrestling match with God, Jacob politely asked, "Please tell me your name"(Gen 32:29). The early signs of trouble in the ELCA were noticed by some people. One year after the bishops issued their pastoral statement about Baptism, about one thousand ELCA members - pastors, theologians, and laypersons-met at St. Olaf College in Northfield, Minnesota, in June 1990. They attended a gathering entitled "Call to Faithfulness," which was sponsored by the three independent Lutheran theological journals affiliated with the ELCA: Lutheran Forum, Lutheran Quarterly, and Dialog. Among the people who met were representatives of all the biblical, confessional, evangelical groups in the ELCA - pietists, charismatics, and low-church Lutherans on one side, and high-church evangelical catholics on the other side, with people from every position in between.
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