Lutheran Church Quotes

Vera had also hated lipstick, Marzipan and Lutherans - excluding her husband, but not her late mother-in-law. Most of all she hated being governed by anyone or anything.

For the Church of Sweden, the Church of England, the German Lutheran Church and many other branches of European Christianity, the message of the religion has become a form of left-wing politics, diversity action and social welfare projects.

Jesus said his Father's House has many rooms. In this metaphor I like to imagine the Presbyterians hanging out in the library, the Baptists running the kitchen, the Anglicans setting the table, the Anabaptists washing feet with the hose in the backyard, the Lutherans making liturgy for the laundry, the Methodists stocking the fire in the hearth, the Catholics keeping the family history, the Pentecostals throwing open all the windows and doors to let more people in.

Lutherans don't hold bingo games in the church basement. Lutherans are against fun in general, which is why for them, birth control has never been a big issue.

Evangelical Lutheran Church was running Nazis out of Europe after the war in parallel with the Catholic Church's program.

Lutheranism restricted itself to an exclusively ecclesiastical and theological character, while Calvinism put its impress in and outside the church upon every aspect of human life.

Let us put it the other way, the Lutheran or Protestant church versus the Catholic. The Catholic is the girl that you love so much that she can lie to you, and the Protestant is the girl that loves you so much that you can lie to her, and pretend a lot that you do not feel.

By Franklin Roosevelt's time Hilda Dietrich was forty, a housewife and mother, married to the Reverend Herman Dietrich, pastor of the Lutheran church. Like her husband, who said as much from his pulpit, Mrs Dietrich was fully persuaded that Italians were creatures with African blood, that all Italians carried knives, and that the country was in the clutches of the Mafia. It was no extremist theory. A lot of worried people believed it, particularly Italian-Americans.

Once the Lutheran churches were secure, Luther, like most other leaders of the Reformations, believed in freedom of conscience only for those who agreed with him.

whatever the Roman Church may be otherwise, she wants to be and also is church of the cross, church of the Crucified, whose sacrificial death plays a greater part in its life and thought than in many Protestant Churches.

God doesn’t care what you call yourself. He’s not impressed with Catholic, Protestant, Methodist, Episcopalian, Baptist, Lutheran… Those are words that people made up, and they mean nothing to God…nothing. He sees right through all that stuff, into your heart. It’s not about church, it’s not about doing a list of activities, and it’s not about calling yourself a particular name or going through some particular ritual. It’s much more personal than that.

It was in those first couple months that I fell in love with liturgy, the ancient pattern of worship shared mainly in the Catholic, Lutheran, Orthodox, and Episcopal churches. It felt like a gift that had been caretaken by generations of the faithful and handed to us to live out and caretake and hand off. Like a stream that has flowed long before us and will continue long after us. A stream that we get to swim in, so that we, like those who came before us, can be immersed in language of truth and promise and grace. Something about the liturgy was simultaneously destabilizing and centering; my individualism subverted by being joined to other people through God to find who I was. Somehow it happened through God. One specific, divine force.

The phrase 'Founding Fathers' is a proper noun. It refers to a specific group: the delegates to the Constitutional Convention. There were other important players not in attendance, but these fifty-five made up the core. Among the delegates were twenty-eight Episcopalians, eight Presbyterians, seven Congregationalists, two Lutherans, two Dutch Reformed, two Methodists, two Roman Catholics, one unknown, and only three deists- Williamson, Wilson, and Franklin. This took place at a time when church membership usually entailed "sworn adherence to strict doctrinal creeds." This tally proves that 51 of 55 -a full 93 percent- of the members of the Constitutional Convention, the most influential group of men shaping the political underpinnings of our nation were Christians, not deists.

There was another, much clearer survival of freethinking ways. Sisterdale had never had a church, and Joe said his family had rarely spoken of religion except to dismiss it. "Dad would tell us, 'Dat's for Catholics', or 'Dat's for Lutherans, not us,' and said that if he wanted to talk to God he could do it in the fields.

While he’s gone, Chris gives me detailed directions for how to get to the grocery store. “Take the third left after the Lutheran church, and then the next right after First Baptist, and, now, if you see St. Mary’s, you’ve gone too far.” By the time I hop up behind the wheel of an old Ford truck, I think I’ll just let Jesus take the wheel.

Martin Silenus made an expansive gesture. “I was baptized a Lutheran,” he said. “A subset which no longer exists. I helped create Zen Gnosticism before any of your parents were born. I have been a Catholic, a revelationist, a neo-Marxist, an interface zealot, a Bound Shaker, a satanist, a bishop in the Church of Jake’s Nada, and a dues-paying subscriber to the Assured Reincarnation Institute. Now, I am happy to say, I am a simple pagan.” He smiled at everyone. “To a pagan,” he concluded, “the Shrike is a most acceptable deity.

John Calvin, brought characteristic rigor to the question. Luther dreamed of good princes, disliked law on principle, and had little interest in institutions. As a result, Lutheran churches ended up with a mishmash of governing structures. Calvin, by contrast, had trained as a lawyer, knew that structures matter, and favored more participatory government.

People didn’t realize how important it was to hug the single people in church—particularly the widows.

...Sinners are attractive because they are loved; they are not loved because they are attractive.

The love of God does not find, but creates, that which is pleasing to it.

Who Started Your Church? • Calvary Chapel, 1965: Chuck Smith • Mormon church, 1830: Joseph Smith • Disciples of Christ, 1809: Thomas Campbell • Baptist church, 1609: John Smyth • Presbyterian church, 1560: John Knox • Calvinist church, 1536: John Calvin • Lutheran church, 1517: Martin Luther • Eastern Orthodox church, 1054: Eastern Patriarchs • Catholic Church, 33: Jesus Christ

Karelia is the best place to explore Finnish Orthodox customs. Onion-domed churches and traditional festivals give the place a different feel from the predominantly Lutheran rest of the country.

Although it is a bit of a caricature, I think that there is some truth in the generalizations I’m about to make. The tendency in Roman Catholic theology is to view the kingdom of Christ as a cosmic ladder or tower, leading from the lowest strata to the hierarchy led by the pope. Anabaptists have tended to see the kingdom more as a monastery, a community of true saints called out of the world and a worldly church. Lutheran and Reformed churches tend sometimes to see the kingdom as a school, while evangelicals (at least in the United States) lean more toward seeing it as a market.

Catherine had to treat the church hierarchy carefully. She had always exercised a rational flexibility in matters of religious dogma and policy. Brought up in an atmosphere of strict Lutheranism, she had as a child expressed enough skepticism about religion to worry her deeply conventional father. As a fourteen-year-old in Russia, she had been required to change her religion to Orthodoxy. In public, she scrupulously observed all forms of this faith, attending church services, observing religious holidays, and making pilgrimages. Throughout her reign, she never underestimated the importance of religion. She knew that the name of the autocrat and the power of the throne were embodied in the daily prayers of the faithful, and that the views of the clergy and the piety of the masses were a power to be reckoned with. She understood that the sovereign, whatever his or her private views of religion, must find a way to make this work. When Voltaire was asked how he, who denied God, could take Holy Communion, he replied that he “breakfasted according to the custom of the country.” Having observed the disastrous effect of her husband’s contemptuous public rejection of the Orthodox Church, Catherine chose to emulate Voltaire.

Finns have one of the lowest rates of church attendance in the Christian world. Various Lutheran revivalist movements are seeking to combat this and are often in the news. The ultra-conservative Laestadian movement

We were the church. As the New Testament instructed. When it was time for Sunday morning meeting, we convened in private homes. To raise a structure and call it a church was the worldly way. A church made of hands was soon cluttered with altars and crucifixes, and was thereupon idolatrous. These false churches, they were not walking in Truth. They were whistling off to Hades. This was a shame, because I knew some real nice Lutherans.

Since in fact liturgical traditions, vestments, church vessels, etc., were immediately removed wherever Calvinism infiltrated or Reformed ideas even gained influence in the church's polity, the reaction which it caused in Lutheran areas was a conscious propensity for ceremonies. Henceforth, therefore, the celebration of an emphatically liturgical service was among the visible signs by which the Lutheran character of confession was demonstrated outwardly.

A Lutheran church in Nebraska is typically a place where any mad passion for Christ is politely concealed. Men and women recite the various creeds in hypnotic monotone; the hymns, pumped from wheezy organ pipes, are sung with no lilt or musicality. The members of the choirs not only don't dance, they don't sway. That's not to say no one is ever smacked hard with God's love or filled up to the eyeballs with the Holy Spirit, but when you are, you keep it to yourself." (48)

A Lutheran pastor in Illinois writes: A great deal of the work in our church is done by non-paid individuals who, at times, hurt the feelings of fellow volunteers. Do you have any thoughts on what to do with mean people who volunteer their time?

It causes the world great indignation that the question of God and his revelation could be taken so seriously, as seriously as it was taken by the teachers and synods of the ancient church, and by Lutherans, Reformed, and Catholics in the century of the Reformation.

It was sharpest of all for Protestants who did not belong to tightly organised and disciplined churches, in which there was either formal confession of sins (as in many Lutheran churches) or systematic oversight of the moral status of church members (as in many Calvinist churches). Those systems did not solve the problem of belief logically, but they did solve it emotionally, since anxious Christians could outsource their concern about themselves to the ministers who policed them. It was a kind of fideism: you cannot be certain of your own beliefs, but you can place your trust in your community instead.

Another meaning of 'Word' in Lutheran theology says it is only through the Word that Christians are kept and sustained in their faith. That is why Christians must not neglect the Word of God. They need to read it regularly in devotions at home, hear it preached in church, and study it with fellow Christians in Bible classes or similar settings.

Nevertheless, it didn’t happen! The masses in Germany remained as unchurched as ever. We can be sure of this because teams of inspectors visited the Lutheran churches in many local communities, beginning in 1525 and extending over the next century. These inspectors submitted a huge number of written reports of what they observed – reports that still exist. These documents have been organized and an extensive number of them published by the distinguished American historian Gerald Strauss (1922–2006), who noted, ‘I have selected only such instances as could be multiplied a hundredfold.’9 Consider these excerpts in the light of the fact that in most places the people were required by law to attend church services.

Meanwhile in Wichita, Kansas, Dr. George Tiller, one of the few doctors who performs late-term abortions—only about 1 percent of all procedures but crucial when, for instance, a fetus develops without a brain—is shot in both arms by a female picketer. He recovers and continues serving women who come to him from many states. I finally meet Dr. Tiller in 2008 at a New York gathering of Physicians for Reproductive Choice and Health. I ask him if he has ever helped a woman who was protesting at his clinic. He says: “Of course, I’m there to help them, not to add to their troubles. They probably already feel guilty.” In 2009 Dr. Tiller is shot in the head at close range by a male activist hiding inside the Lutheran church where the Tiller family worships each Sunday. This is done in the name of being “pro-life.

The Kingdom of God is a tricky concept, and I was always taught it referred to our heavenly reward for being good, which, now that I actually read the Bible for myself, makes very little sense. Others say that the Kingdom of God is another way of talking about the church, and still others say that it's the dream God has for the wholeness of the world, a dream being made true little by little among us right here, right now. My answer? All of the above.

In a sense the rise of Anabaptism was no surprise. Most revolutionary movements produce a wing of radicals who feel called of God to reform the reformation. And that is what Anabaptism was, a voice calling the moderate reformers to strike even more deeply at the foundations of the old order. Like most counterculture movements, the Anabaptists lacked cohesiveness. No single body of doctrine and no unifying organization prevailed among them. Even the name Anabaptist was pinned on them by their enemies. It meant rebaptizer and was intended to associate the radicals with heretics in the early church and subject them to severe persecution. The move succeeded famously. Actually, the Anabaptists rejected all thoughts of rebaptism because they never considered the ceremonial sprinkling they received in infancy as valid baptism. They much preferred Baptists as a designation. To most of them, however, the fundamental issue was not baptism. It was the nature of the church and its relation to civil governments. They had come to their convictions like most other Protestants: through Scripture. Luther had taught that common people have a right to search the Bible for themselves. It had been his guide to salvation; why not theirs? As a result, little groups of Anabaptist believers gathered about their Bibles. They discovered a different world in the pages of the New Testament. They found no state-church alliance, no Christendom. Instead they discovered that the apostolic churches were companies of committed believers, communities of men and women who had freely and personally chosen to follow Jesus. And for the sixteenth century, that was a revolutionary idea. In spite of Luther’s stress on personal religion, Lutheran churches were established churches. They retained an ordained clergy who considered the whole population of a given territory members of their church. The churches looked to the state for salary and support. Official Protestantism seemed to differ little from official Catholicism. Anabaptists wanted to change all that. Their goal was the “restitution” of apostolic Christianity, a return to churches of true believers. In the early church, they said, men and women who had experienced personal spiritual regeneration were the only fit subjects for baptism. The apostolic churches knew nothing of the practice of baptizing infants. That tradition was simply a convenient device for perpetuating Christendom: nominal but spiritually impotent Christian society. The true church, the radicals insisted, is always a community of saints, dedicated disciples in a wicked world. Like the missionary monks of the Middle Ages, the Anabaptists wanted to shape society by their example of radical discipleship—if necessary, even by death. They steadfastly refused to be a part of worldly power including bearing arms, holding political office, and taking oaths. In the sixteenth century this independence from social and civic society was seen as inflammatory, revolutionary, or even treasonous.

I grew up with the strong impression that a person became spiritual by attending to these gray-area rules. For the life of me, I could not figure out much difference between the dispensations of Law and Grace. My visits to other churches have convinced me that this ladder-like approach to spirituality is nearly universal. Catholics, Mennonites, Churches of Christ, Lutherans, and Southern Baptists all have their own custom agenda of legalism. You gain the church’s, and presumably God’s, approval by following the prescribed pattern.

Here is where most preachers make their mistake. They are afraid that by preaching the gospel too clearly, it will be their fault if people lapse into sin. They imagine that the gospel is food for the carnal-minded. True enough, to many the gospel does become the smell of death unto death, but that is not the fault of the Gospel. That happens only because men do not accept—do not believe—the Gospel. Faith is not merely thinking, "I believe." Your whole heart must be seized by the gospel and come to rest in it. When that happens, you are transformed and cannot help but love and serve God.

made the nostrils seize up. Chicken shit had an unpleasant edge, like when damp pinfeathers were scorched off a roaster’s carcass; horse shit, on the other hand, was almost sweet, if not actually cheerful. He thought about it as the car rolled through a swampy smell and decided he might have been working out in the countryside a tad too long, now that he had begun comparing and contrasting the different varieties of livestock odors. He switched to contemplating the appearance of the Blessed Virgin. Virgil’s father was a Lutheran minister, and Virgil had gone to church almost every Sunday and Wednesday from the time he’d been

Even though they were not fervent about their faith, Jobs’s parents wanted him to have a religious upbringing, so they took him to the Lutheran church most Sundays. That came to an end when he was thirteen. In July 1968 Life magazine published a shocking cover showing a pair of starving children in Biafra. Jobs took it to Sunday school and confronted the church’s pastor. “If I raise my finger, will God know which one I’m going to raise even before I do it?” The pastor answered, “Yes, God knows everything.” Jobs then pulled out the Life cover and asked, “Well, does God know about this and what’s going to happen to those children?” “Steve, I know you don’t understand, but yes, God knows about that.” Jobs announced that he didn’t want to have anything to do with worshipping such a God, and he never went back to church. He did, however, spend years studying and trying to practice the tenets of Zen Buddhism. Reflecting years later on his spiritual feelings, he said that religion was at its best when it emphasized spiritual experiences rather than received dogma. “The juice goes out of Christianity when it becomes too based on faith rather than on living like Jesus or seeing the world as Jesus saw it,” he told me. “I think different religions are different doors to the same house. Sometimes I think the house exists, and sometimes I don’t. It’s the great mystery.

Bless me, readers, for I have published. It's been five years since my last book. Greetings, fellow sinners! If you picked up a copy of this book, it means you are either: 1) wracked with guilt and are looking for penance, or 2) need to spend over $10.00 at the airport newsstand so you can use your credit card. Either way, welcome to Stephen Colbert's Midnight Confessions. As America's foremost TV Catholic, it was natural for me to do a segment inspired by the church. After all, the Catholic Church and late night TV actually have a lot in common: our shows last about an hour, we're obsessed with reaching younger demographics, and the hosts are almost always men. This religious-adjacent tome contains all my favorite confessions from The Late Show. These are things that aren't necessarily sins, but I do feel guilty about them. For instance, repackaging material from the show and selling it in a book. I've always been a big fan of confession. The confessional is a great place to go to relieve yourself of your sins. Unless you're claustrophobic, in which case it's a suffocating death trap of despair! And while most confession books just give you run-of-the-mill mortal sins, I go one step further and provide you with mortal sins, venial sins, deadly sins, and even sins of omission (Notice that the previous sentence didn't have a period!) This book is a throwback to a simpler life when people would go to a priest to confess their sins. As opposed to how it's done now - getting drunk and weeping to Andy Cohen on Bravo. Confessing your sins is a great way to get things off your chest. Second only to waxing. The only downside is that you get introduced to it as a kid, before you have any juicy sins to confess. Oh, you stole a cookie? That's adorable, Becky. Come back when you total your dad's Chevy. Now you might be asking yourself, "What if I'm not Catholic - can I still enjoy this book?" Of course. After all, no matter what religion you are - be it Jewish, Muslim, Lutheran, Pagan, or SoulCycle - we all have things to feel guilty about. For example, not being Catholic.

It is the distinctive position of the Reformation with which, over against Rome, it stands or falls, that that which properly constitutes, defines, and perpetuates in unity a Church, is its doctrine, not its name or organization. While a Church retains its proper identity it retains of necessity its proper doctrine. Deserting its doctrine it loses its identity. The Church is not a body which bears its name like England, or America, which remain equally England and America, whether savage or civilized, Pagan or Christian, Monarchical or Republican. Its name is one which properly indicates its faith--and the faith changing, the Church loses its identity. Pagans may become Mohammedans, but then they are no longer Pagans--they are Mohammedans. Jews may become Christians, but then they are no longer Jews in religion. A Manichean man, or Manichean Church, might become Catholic, but then they would be Manichean no more. A Romish Church is Romish; a Pelagian Church is Pelagian; a Socinian Church is Socinian, though they call themselves Protestant, Evangelical, or Trinitarian. If the whole nominally Lutheran Church on earth should repudiate the Lutheran doctrine, that doctrine would remain as really Lutheran as it ever was. A man, or body of men, may cease to be Lutherans, but a doctrine which is Lutheran once, is Lutheran forever. Hence, now, as from the first, that is not a Lutheran Church, in the proper and historical sense, which cannot ex animo declare that it shares in the accord and unanimity with which each of the Doctrines of the Augsburg Confession was set forth.

If it was possible to objectively measure the spiritual life of a city—through the language of its municipal charter, the legislative influence of its church leaders, the ratio of religious institutions to residents, its weekly church attendance, the judicious enforcement of Blue Laws, and so forth—then Berlin (with Montevideo and San Francisco) would have to be considered as one of the most faithless—or heathen—cities in the Western world. Much of the unvirtuous Berlin ethos can be explained by global events (the mass influx of French Huguenots and Central European Jews; the rise of modern capitalism) and ideological shifts (the weakening of Lutheran doctrine; trickle-down faith in scientific inquiry and Nietzschean vitalism); but, mostly by the creation of a self-conscious urban identity.

Getting sober never felt like I had pulled myself up by my own spiritual bootstraps. It felt instead like I was on one path toward self-destruction and God pulled me off of it by the scruff of my collar, me hopelessly kicking and flailing and saying, “Screw you. I’ll take the destruction please.” God looked at tiny, little red-faced me and said, “that’s adorable,” and then plunked me down on an entirely different path. I am like a Lutheran Nikita. I was allowed not to die in exchange for working for God. I’d get a life back, a rich one I’d never have chosen out of a catalog, a life where I would marry a nice man, go to college, have a couple babies, attend seminary, become ordained as a Lutheran Pastor, and start a church. I’d get my life back, but eventually I’d have to work for God. I’d have to become God’s bitch.

In modern church life, we often leave the nave to have "fellowship" with one another at social functions in the basement, and we are sometimes invited to "fun and fellowship" at games nights or congregational picnics. These are inappropriate usages of the word "fellowship" (which translates the New Testament κοινωνία), for the human interaction that takes place in church basements and public parks can be shared without a qualm with Christians of other confession and even with the irreligious and pagans. True κοινωνία begins with baptismal admission into the church (δι' οὗ ἐκλήθητε εἰς κοινωνίαν τοῦ υἱοῦ αὐτοῦ 'Ιησοῦ Χριστοῦ τοῦ κυρίου ἡμῶν, 1 Cor 1:9) and culminates in the fellowship granted through common partaking of the holy things; as such, it is entirely distinct from all Adamic-earthly gatherings, being the supernatural product of divine monergism.

Church Fathers on the End Times The Church Fathers taught pre-millennialism in the first three centuries. Here are the pre-millennial teachings from the Fathers in their order:   1.        The Roman Empire would split in two. (This took place in AD 395.) 2.        The Roman Empire would fall apart. (This took place in AD 476.) 3.        Out of what was the Roman Empire, ten nations would spring up. These are the ten toes/horns of Daniel’s prophecies. 4.        A literal demon-possessed man, called the Antichrist, will ascend to power. 5.        The Antichrist’s name, if spelled out in Greek, will add up to 666. 6.        The Antichrist will sign a peace treaty between the Jews in Israel and the local non-believers there. This treaty will last seven years. 7.        This seven-year treaty is the last seven years of the “sets of sevens” prophecy in Daniel 9. 8.        At the end of the seven years, Jesus will return to earth, destroy the Antichrist, and establish reign of peace that will last for a literal 1000 years. 9.        They wrote they were taught these things by the apostles. They also wrote that anyone who rises up in the church and begins to say any of these things are symbolic, are immature Christians that can’t rightly divide the word of God, and should not be listened too. (Today these beliefs are included in the doctrines of most of, but not all of, the Reformed, Presbyterian, Lutheran, Eastern Orthodox, and Roman Catholic churches!)   Here are some of the references from the early church fathers on the End Times:   “After the resurrection of the dead, Jesus will personally reign for 1000 years. He was taught this by the apostle John himself.” Papias Fragment 6   “The man of Sin, spoken of by Daniel, will rule two (three) times and a half, before the Second Advent… There will be a literal 1000 year reign of Christ… The man of apostasy, who speaks strange things against the Most High, shall venture to do unlawful deeds on the earth against us, the believers.” Justin Martyr Dialogue 32,81,110

New Year’s Day It is on account of Your mercy alone, O Lord, that I am not consumed, because Your compassions never fail. They are new every morning; great is Your faithfulness. Abide with me, O God, throughout the coming year. Be my guide in all my perplexities, my strength in my weakness, my ever-ready help in all my troubles. Forgive me all my sins. O Sabaoth Lord, look down from heaven and in grace behold and visit Your holy Church, which You have chosen for Your own. Preserve for us Your saving Word and Sacraments, that Your vine may send out its boughs from sea to sea and its branches to the uttermost parts of the earth. Look graciously upon our nation and all the nations of the world, and bless them with peace. Grant to all that are in authority wisdom and courage to rule in such a way that we may lead a quiet and peaceful life in all godliness and honesty. To You, almighty Creator and gracious God, I commit this nation, my church, my family and loved ones, and myself. Abide with me. With Your grace and mercy preserve me whole—soul and body—blameless to the coming of my Lord Jesus Christ. Amen. (76)

Historian Robert Merton, in his study of the growth of science in 17C England, says yes, arguing for a direct link between Protestant characteristics of methodical, persistent action, empirical utilitarianism, and anti-traditionalism and the development of the scientific method in England.30 An indirect link is also possible. As a matter of theology, Aquinas’s Catholicism is more enthusiastic about the human exercise of autonomy and intellect than Lutheranism or Calvinism. As a matter of psychology, however, Protestantism pervasively affected the day-to-day practice of Christianity in ways that cut its adherents loose from a powerful institution and its attendant rituals. While good Catholics confessed to the priest, did penance under the priest’s instruction, and turned to the Church to tell them what the Bible meant, good Protestants read the Bible for themselves, confessed directly to God, received absolution directly from God, and didn’t do penance at all. In this practical sense, Protestants were more on their own than Catholics were, and it is plausible to see this as an extension of individualism and of a sense of autonomy.

Heaven's eucharistic irruption into earthly space and time prompted classical Lutheranism not to join the Reformed and Anabaptists in their campaign of iconoclasm which rendered Christian churches little different in external appearance from Islamic mosques. While conceding the adiaphorous quality of images representing various aspects of the Incarnate Life, as early as his conflict with Karlstadt the Reformer defended the appropriateness of the crucifix and sculptures of Mary with the Christ Child. Orthodox Lutheran architecture and church decor attested the confession of our Lord's presence among His own in the means of grace, forging a style which goes hand in hand with precious doctrinal substance. Increasing accommodation to the North American Puritan milieu over the past century has led to a loss of the genuinely Lutheran understanding of the altar as a monument to the atonement, which is Christ's throne in our midst. ... If our chancels' decoration (or stark lack thereof) bespeaks the absence of our Lord and His celestial companions, can we be surprised at waning faith in the real presence and at waxing conviction of the rightfulness of an open communion practice? A deliberate opting for Puritanism's aesthetic barrenness can only make the reclaiming of Lutheran substance an even harder struggle.

This direct apprehension of the word of God was a formula for religious excitement and exaltation, for all felt themselves in a close, daily, and fruitful relationship with the deity. It explains why New England religion was so powerful a force in people’s lives and of such direct and continuing assistance in building a new society from nothing. They were colonists for God, planting in His name. But it was also a formula for dissent. In its origins, Protestantism itself was protest, against received opinion and the exercise of authority. When the religious monopoly of the Roman Catholic Church began to disintegrate, in the 1520s and 1530s, what replaced it, from the start, was not a single, purified, and reformed faith but a Babel of conflicting voices. In the course of time and often by the use of secular force, several major Protestant bodies emerged: Calvinism in Geneva and Holland; Anglicanism in England; Lutheranism in northern Germany. But many rapidly emerging sects were left outside these state churches, and more emerged in time; and the state churches themselves splintered at the edges. And within each church and sect there were voices of protest, antinomians as they were called—those who refused to accept whatever law was laid down by the duly constituted authorities in the church they belonged to, or who were even against the idea of authority in any form.

Within the West, the big social inventions have always been happy to define the individual. At various times and to various degrees, social programming has had a ready answer to the question of what the good life meant: being a good Christian, a good citizen, rich, an A student, or a good manager or employee. Imagine defining yourself instead as someone who defines institutions rather than being defined by them. Then imagine what sort of social invention you would have to engage in to create something akin to a school, a church, a government, or a business that would facilitate the person you aspire to be. No Lutheran will ever be as fully expressed as Martin Luther. No Mormon will ever realize her potential the way that Joseph Smith did. No Muslim will ever be more righteous than Mohammed. No Christian will ever be more perfect than Christ, no Jew more law abiding than Moses. Millions – even billions – of people do honor these amazing men by following their example, trying to emulate them. Yet what is interesting is that if a person were really intent on following their example they would refuse to be constrained by their example. That is, if you really want to imitate Joseph Smith or Mohammed or Martin Luther you would never become a Mormon or Muslim or Lutheran. You would, instead, start your own religion in which you subordinate tradition to your own convictions and revelations. You would trust in yourself enough to create rather than imitate. If that sounds irreligious to you, you are wrong. No follower of these men is more religious than they were. (And of course at the time, most people thought of these men as heretics, not true prophets.) Progress is the product of invention. Specifically, progress depends on social invention that subordinates the past to the future, that changes what has been created by past generations in order to realize what is possible for future generations.

Robert Askins Brings ‘Hand to God’ to Broadway Chad Batka for The New York Times Robert Askins at the Booth Theater, where his play “Hand to God” opens on Tuesday. By MICHAEL PAULSON The conceit is zany: In a church basement, a group of adolescents gathers (mostly at the insistence of their parents) to make puppets that will spread the Christian message, but one of the puppets turns out to be more demonic than divine. The result — a dark comedy with the can-puppets-really-do-that raunchiness of “Avenue Q” and can-people-really-say-that outrageousness of “The Book of Mormon” — is “Hand to God,” a new play that is among the more improbable entrants in the packed competition for Broadway audiences over the next few weeks. Given the irreverence of some of the material — at one point stuffed animals are mutilated in ways that replicate the torments of Catholic martyrs — it is perhaps not a surprise to discover that the play’s author, Robert Askins, was nicknamed “Dirty Rob” as an undergraduate at Baylor, a Baptist-affiliated university where the sexual explicitness and violence of his early scripts raised eyebrows. But Mr. Askins had also been a lone male soloist in the children’s choir at St. John Lutheran of Cypress, Tex. — a child who discovered early that singing was a way to make the stern church ladies smile. His earliest performances were in a deeply religious world, and his writings since then have been a complex reaction to that upbringing. “It’s kind of frustrating in life to be like, ‘I’m a playwright,’ and watch people’s face fall, because they associate plays with phenomenally dull, didactic, poetic grad-schoolery, where everything takes too long and tediously explores the beauty in ourselves,” he said in a recent interview. “It’s not church, even though it feels like church a lot when we go these days.” The journey to Broadway, where “Hand to God” opens on Tuesday at the Booth Theater, still seems unlikely to Mr. Askins, 34, who works as a bartender in Brooklyn and says he can’t afford to see Broadway shows, despite his newfound prominence. He seems simultaneously enthralled by and contemptuous of contemporary theater, the world in which he has chosen to make his life; during a walk from the Cobble Hill coffee shop where he sometimes writes to the Park Slope restaurant where he tends bar, he quoted Nietzsche and Derrida, described himself as “deeply weird,” and swore like, well, a satanic sock-puppet. “If there were no laughs in the show, I’d think there was something wrong with him,” said the actor Steven Boyer, who won raves in earlier “Hand to God” productions as Jason, a grief-stricken adolescent with a meek demeanor and an angry-puppet pal. “But anybody who is able to write about such serious stuff and be as hilarious as it is, I’m not worried about their mental health.” Mr. Askins’s interest in the performing arts began when he was a boy attending rural Texas churches affiliated with the conservative Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod denomination; he recalls the worshipers as “deeply conservative, old farm folks, stone-faced, pride and suffering, and the only time anybody ever really livened up was when the children’s choir would perform.” “My grandmother had a cross-stitch that said, ‘God respects me when I work, but he loves me when I sing,’ and so I got into that,” he said. “For somebody who enjoys performance, that was the way in.” The church also had a puppet ministry — an effort to teach children about the Bible by use of puppets — and when Mr. Askins’s mother, a nurse, began running the program, he enlisted to help. He would perform shows for other children at preschools and vacation Bible camps. “The shows are wacky, but it was fun,” he said. “They’re badly written attempts to bring children to Jesus.” Not all of his formative encounters with puppets were positive. Particularly scarring: D

During the conversation she [7th-GGM, Anna Maria Hoepflinger Floerl] also talked about the guidance with which God had provided her when they started to expel the Salzburgers. She was born in the state of Bavaria and brought up in ignorance by her seriously erring mother and some relatives. However, when God recognized that He could save her soul, He saw to it that among the twelve journeyman of a papal masterbuilder from Salzburg who worked on a church in Bavaria, there was a Lutheran journeyman, called “the Lutheran,” about whose religion strange things were said. Because he got room and board at the house of her cousin, for whom she worked, she was very much aware of his Christian behavior. And, since she noticed great peace, nonconformance to the world, and diligent prayer and intercession as well as sympathy and tears when he saw the bound Evangelical Salzburgers being led past him, she had the deep desire to talk to this man secretly about his and her religious faith. One evening God arranged for her cousin to be busy with the soldiers who were accompanying the Salzburgers on their way across Bavaria, while the servants were in the tavern. She grasped this opportunity to make this knowledgeable man, who was experienced in Christianity, teach her the Evangelical truth for three hours; upon her request, he also sent her a good book, namely the Schaitberger, in a small well-secured barrel. In it, they eagerly read for three consecutive weeks at night about the Evangelical truth and her previous misunderstandings. Because the people concluded from her overall behavior, especially her absence from monthly confession, observance of brotherhood meetings, participation in pilgrimages, and telling a rosary, that she might have suspicious books, they waylaid her, took the book away from her, and threatened her with jail and death unless she stayed away from this heresy. At the priest’s instigation, her mother, in particular, behaved very badly. Finally God gave her the courage to leave, although she knew neither the way nor the area. A woman potter, also a secret Lutheran, referred her to her very close kinswoman in Austria; but there she was advised in confidence that she was to go to Salzburg rather than to pretend, in violation of her conscience, because here they searched very much after Evangelical people and books. Since the journeyman bricklayer had given her instructions on how to get to the Goldeck jurisdiction and, there, to a Lutheran family, she traveled there without a passport, like a poor abandoned sheep, in the name of God, who was her leader and guide, and she was well received. However, because the Evangelical people were being expelled at that time, she was summoned to appear before the authorities and was threatened that, if she stayed with these Evangelical people, she would enjoy neither God’s care nor any favor from the people in the Empire, but would die a horrible death. Nevertheless, she said that she would go with them regardless of what might happen to her. She preferred all misery and even death itself to renouncing God, her Savior, and the Evangelical truth. She did not start with good days, but with misery and death, as the bricklayer had told her earlier while assuring her of God’s help.

But Luther did more than bring out the feeling of insignificance which already pervaded the social classes to whom he preached—he offered them a solution. By not only accepting his own insignificance but by humiliating himself to the utmost, by giving up on every vestige of individual will, by renouncing and denouncing his individual strength, the individual could hope to be acceptable to God. Luther's relationship to God was one of complete submission. In psychological terms his concept of faith means: if you completely submit, if you accept your individual insignificance, then the all-powerful God may be willing to love you and save you. If you get rid of your individual self with all its shortcomings and doubts by utmost self-effacement, you free yourself from the feeling of your own nothingness and can participate in God's glory. Thus, while Luther freed people from the authority of the Church, he made them submit to a much more tyrannical authority, that of a God who insisted on complete submission of man and annihilation of the individual self as the essential condition to his salvation. Luther's "faith" was the conviction of being loved upon the condition of surrender, a solution which has much in common with the principle of complete submission of the individual to the state and the "leader.

I finally meet Dr. Tiller in 2008 at a New York gathering of Physicians for Reproductive Choice and Health. I ask him if he has ever helped a woman who was protesting at his clinic. He says: “Of course, I’m there to help them, not to add to their troubles. They probably already feel guilty.” In 2009 Dr. Tiller is shot in the head at close range by a male activist hiding inside the Lutheran church where the Tiller family worships each Sunday. This is done in the name of being “pro-life.” •

all of the work on the external structures of the church must flow not from what we wish for ourselves in a church, but from that which through the grace of God is still present in the church, in the true evangelical church, and with the great soberness in which the church orders of the Reformation can be an example for us.

It is indeed not we who can preserve the church. Nor was it our ancestors, and it will not be those who come after us. But it has been, is now, and will be the one who said, ‘I am with you always, even to the end of the age

Long-Term Planning in Human History RELIGIOUS BUILDINGS Step Pyramid, Saqqara, Egypt The oldest pyramid in the world, built c. 2600 BCE in 18 years, where King Djoser could be eternally reborn in the afterlife. The engineer Imhotep was revered as a god. Ulm Minster, Germany Lutheran church constructed 1377–1890. Funded by local residents, it was the mother of all crowdfunding projects lasting over 500 years. Sagrada Familia, Spain Gaudí’s basilica in Barcelona.

Again, if Scripture is the ultimate authority, how should it be interpreted? Lutherans and Anglicans tended to say that interpretations should follow the broad themes of the gospel that unite all parts of the Bible (yet long, arduous discussions between Lutheran and Anglican theologians in the 1530s resulted mostly in frustration at the inability to find a common expression of their faith). Most of the Anabaptists held that the key to interpreting Scripture was to follow New Testament commands literally, and especially to imitate the life of Christ, while reading the Old Testament symbolically. Many Reformed Protestants approached the Bible as a unified whole, but with special emphasis on the way that Old Testament revelation, especially God’s covenant with Abraham, led to New Testament realities like God’s covenanting with individuals, churches, and nations (though some who were not Reformed flatly denied that God any longer covenanted with nations).

Mark well! That neither Christ nor His apostles, ever gave to His followers, what is know today as a denominational name, such as "Catholic," "Lutheran," "Presbyterian," "Episcopal," and so forth -- unless the name given by Christ to John was intended for such, "The Baptist," "John the Baptist" (Matt. 11:

Before Luther's vehemence many humanists and others desirous of reform in the church now began to lose confidence that he was the prophet for whom they so earnestly waited. Erasmus had committed himself firmly to neutrality. Now his hostility to Luther hardened. A Louvain theologian, Peter Barbirius, tried to coax him into an alliance against Luther. Erasmus replied bitterly on August 13, 1521. He said he had read less than a dozen pages of Luther, and he reproached those who had attacked Luther as a seditious person inciting the common people to revolt-as Latomus had done, although Erasmus did not mention him by name. His bitterness and hostility extended to the Lutheran camp and to those Lutherans who "by odious means" had tried to seduce him to their side. Yet, said he to Barbirius, "I fear that they are very numerous who with mighty invective attack secondary propositions among Luther such as, Although one may do good works, they are sinful,' although they themselves do not believe in that which creates the foundation of our faith, that the soul survives the death of the body."'' Erasmus called such a paradoxical statement a "secondary proposition," and we may be tempted to follow his lead. On one level Luther's declaration that all good works are tainted with sin sounds like modern questions based on sociobiology and psychological inquiry. Is selfless human action possible, or is there in the very performance of an unselfish act a superior sense of generosity and magnanimity that are desirable emotional rewards for benevolence? At a certain point such questions may seem to lead only to sophomoric squabbles over meaningless issues. For Luther something grand and fundamental was at stake. That was that morality could not become a substitute for intimate involvement in the drama of redemption. To those satisfied with their conduct in the world (as most of us usually are) Luther's message was one of radical introspection, intended to drive us not to the enumeration of our sinful acts but to the examination of the spirit that motivated them. In the complexity of that infinite rejection of our own power of disinterested benevolence, we were to be driven to a saving despair about ourselves and into the arms of Christ, who alone could save us. Morality without Christ might have value in the world in helping people get along with one another, and Luther never denied the role of reason in helping human beings create orderly societies. By his assertion that we sin when we do good works, he made a frontal assault on Renaissance intellectuals enamored not only with classical literature but with the proud sense of culture that was part of it. He implicitly attacked the pride not only of those who found virtue in giving alms, going on pilgrimage, and the like but also of those who claimed to be good because they imitated virtuous men of classical times. Luther made Christ the only virtue and made it impossible to speak of goodness in any way without calling Christ into the argument.

You will hear the mockery of the church, not just any church, not just the Catholic Church, not just the Lutheran Church, but the church per se.” The prosecution was immediately reminded that this was immaterial—but the point had been made.

Thus when George Konrád wrote somewhat sententiously that ‘no thinking person should want to drive others from positions of political power in order to occupy them for himself’, he was acknowledging a simple truth—no ‘thinking person’ was in a position there and then to do any such thing. This same appreciation of the grim facts of life also forms a backdrop to the opposition’s insistence on non-violence: not only in Czechoslovakia, where passivity in the face of authority had a long history; or in the GDR, where the Lutheran Church was increasingly influential in opposition circles; but even in Poland, where it represented for Michnik and others both a pragmatic and an ethical bar to dangerous and pointless ‘adventures’.

Lutherans have always had a very strong self-identity. Our faith and our practice are solidly rooted in the scriptures and our confessions. Therefore, we are, ecumenically speaking, an easy church to dialogue with because our position is always relatively clear in that other denominations can read our book as well as we can.

We are the first, the oldest, and one of the largest Protestant denominations in the world. However, Lutherans do not believe that they are the only true church. We maintain that the true church is invisible and cuts across all denominational lines.

In Norway the revivalist Hans Nielsen Hauge (1771–1824) restored a pietistic presence to the Lutheran state church.

In this we advance nothing new, but embrace and repeat the declaration which the ancient orthodox church has drawn from the holy Scriptures, and transmitted uncorrupted to us, namely, that this divine virtue, life, power, majesty, and glory, have been given to the assumed human nature in Christ.

Nothing is more unfounded than to see a “world historical action” in Luther’s theses against indulgences and to date the beginning of the Reformation from them. The Anti-Roman movement had been in existence for decades in all classes of the German nation, and the fight against the abuses of the church had already found literary expression, for instance in the writings of the humanists. They were much more scathing than the rather tame theses of Luther. who did not even blame the indulgences themselves, but only their “abuses.

No wonder then that church historian Mark Noll comments, “Much of the influence of Lutheranism around the world can be traced to the success of this catechism in expressing the profound truths of the faith in a language that all can understand.”18

His theological work found expression not only in opposition to the church politics of National Socialism, but also in the ongoing crucial debate with key elements of National Socialist ideology and of its understanding of the state. In this regard, he distanced himself either explicitly or implicitly from such Lutheran theologians as Paul Althaus, Werner Elert, Friedrich Gogarten, and Emanuel Hirsch, who in various ways accorded the priceless gift of theological legitimation to the Third Reich by interpreting the historical and natural realities of human life in an utterly un-Lutheran way—that is, as direct or indirect manifestations of the law of God.

If the Lutheran, Reformed, and Anabaptist churches in continental Europe came about due to theological or ecclesiastical issues, the Church of England came about (at least in one sense) due to hormonal issues, namely, lust.

Human sin and God’s grace are the two poles of Lutheran spirituality. To be sure, these are intrinsic to all of Christianity, but in Lutheranism they are both heightened. They are resolved in the principle by which, it is said, the church stands or falls: justification by grace through faith.

I Fiksdals butikk gjekk Annie Lane omkring, utan å ana at ho gjorde menn oppspilte, så dei tok med seg lukta av eksotiske matvarer heim til konene og kjærastane sine, og sat der og drøymde syndig om den yndige Annie, medan dei snakka om luktene frå kolonialvarene i Fiksdals general store. Dei fekk sauestiren og sat og striglante på sine eigne kvinner. Så drog dei kvinnfolka opp frå stolane med påskot om at dei ville danse med dei, svinga dei rundt på golvet og heiv dei opp i lufta, til kvinnene spurde kva oppstyret skulle vera godt for, og mennene ropte: – Og det spør du om! Og så bar det inn i halmsengene, og det spela inga rolle at dei berre hadde mjølsekker som laken og dynetrekk, for der fór karane laus på kvinnene sine på alle tenkelege vis, for her var det så langt mellom farmhusa at ingen kunne høyre dei, i alle fall trudde dei det. Og slik gjekk det til at da det nye Roslyn var under oppbygging våren 1915, var det snart ikkje ei ung kvinne å sjå som ikkje hadde fått kul på magen, og da hausten kom, bar dei englebarna til Grenville Lutheran Church, der dei auste vatn på skrikande krapyl som kom til verda for å bygge det nye Amerika.

Church isn’t perfect. It’s practice.

So, when a young German cleric, who had fled religious persecution in the Fatherland to seek asylum in the New World, wished to tell his story and expose the clandestine Nazi domination of the Lutheran Church in Germany, the FBI was immediately engaged to arrange his secret meeting(s) with the most eminent anti-Nazi story-teller in the U.S., Kressmann Taylor, who took his real life story and fictionalized it into this, her next book, Until That Day, published in 1942.

The story of what happened to him and to men like him in Germany is something of a modern miracle. The Nazis had prepared a perfect plan. By a subtle scheme that looked on the surface like co-operation they would take over the Lutheran Church and use it to serve their purposes. They would disarm the churchmen and place their own men at the head of a united Church. They would control the whole organization and it would be an easy matter to destroy any dissenters. The Church, with its great authority, would become a strong tool for the dissemination of Nazi doctrine.

He requested an opportunity to address the Officer Corps in Berlin, and General von Fritsch, who was in command at the time, agreed but only on condition that Rosenberg would refrain from attacking the Church in his talk. The newspapers the next day announced that he had made an impressive address, but all Berlin was buzzing with the true story. Rosenberg had broken his promise and had flung his customary accusations against the Church. Fritsch, followed by his entire Officer Corps, had risen and walked out, leaving Dr. Rosenberg an empty auditorium in which to fulminate. Rosenberg’s book, The Myth of the 20th Century, had become the Nazi bible. It was the book of the Hero-cult, of state worship, of the theory that the Nordic blood is divine; its pages were full of foul invective against the Lutherans, the Catholics, and the Jews. In 1935, the Bruederrat published a series of papers assailing The Myth of the 20th Century, refuting its absurdities in clear language and opening fire on the very heart of the Nazi beliefs. These papers were widely disseminated although the government made frantic efforts to confiscate them. It is probable that no copies of any of these papers exist in the United States, since it was too dangerous––rather, it was impossible––to bring them out of Germany.

Community life, not a dreamy ideal, said Bonhoeffer, but an often difficult initiation into the “divine reality” that is the church. That is, the church exists as a brotherhood established by Christ, even if it doesn’t feel like it in a given moment. The martyred Lutheran pastor taught that struggles within the community are a gift of God’s grace, because they force its members to reckon with the reality of their kinship, despite their brokenness. A community that cannot face its faults and love each other through to healing is not truly Christian.

However, one visible societal element that has been lost is the proper understanding of women and their role in Protestant churches. Professor Catherine Tzacz talks about her experience studying with some Lutheran women and their surprise at the centrality that women play in Eastern Orthodox liturgy. The Protestant Reformation unwittingly erased many of the places where feminine spirituality—a spirituality profoundly different from masculine spirituality—flourished: “The Reformers, Patricia Ranft has shown, attacked institutions within Christianity that fostered women’s visibility and high status, specifically monasticism, saints, and Mariology.”13 One commentator went so far as to suggest that “the Protestant rejection of the veneration of Mary and its various consequences (such as the really ‘male-dominated’ Protestant worship, deprived of sentiment, poetry and intuitive mystery-perception) is one of the psychological reasons which explains the recent emergence of institutional feminism.”14 Without giving women an authentic outlet for their fundamental need to worship and the unique way they go about doing it, Protestantism has pushed them in another direction—that is, eyeing those roles previously reserved for men because the feminine roles have been decimated. This argument has been made among Protestants themselves. Blogger

Elector of Saxony, counselled by the Wittenberg theologians, forced Landgraf Philip to banish or imprison some of the Baptists, but he could not be compelled to go beyond this and was able to boast that he had never had one put to death. He stood to it, that in times where one had one opinion and another another, those in error should be converted by instruction and not by force. He said he saw better lives among those called “fanatics” than among the Lutherans, and he could not bring his conscience to allow him to punish or put to death anyone for his faith, when there was not otherwise sufficient cause for doing so.

Truly it required a divine mind to originate a scheme by which God "could be just and yet justify the ungodly." All the wisdom of the world could never have answered the question: "How can mortal man be just with God?

In justification, God imputes or counts over to the sinner the righteousness of Christ. In sanctification, God imparts the righteousness of the new life. Justification is what God does for the believer; sanctification is what His Spirit does in him. Justification being purely an act of God, is instantaneous and complete; sanctification being a work in which man has a share, is progressive. Justification takes away the guilt of sin; sanctification gradually takes away its power. Sanctification begins with justification. So soon as the sinner believes he is justified; but just so soon as he believes, he also has the beginnings of a new life.

In our Lutheran Church, with her deep, significant and inspiring doctrine of this holy Sacrament, with her solemn and searching preparatory service, every such season ought to be a time of refreshing. What an auspicious opportunity is here offered for special sermons to precede the Holy Communion, for recalling the wanderer, awaking the drowsy, stirring up the languid, instructing the inquiring, and establishing the doubting! What pastor, who has a Christ-like interest in the spiritual welfare of his people, and who has used his communion seasons to this end, has not often realized that they are indeed times of refreshing from the Lord?

People are made to realize the uncertainty and unsatisfactoriness of the affairs of this life. By losses, diseases, bereavements, or bitter disappointments, God seeks to wean them from their worldly idols.

We cannot separate the water from the Word. We would not dare to baptize with water without the Word. In the words of Luther, that would be "simply water, and no baptism.

Christian parents, if you desire your sons and your daughters to become steadfast and useful members of the Church of Christ, see to it that you do your part in their religious instruction. Insist on it, and even use your parental authority, if necessary, that your children learn the Catechism and regularly attend the pastor's instructions.

Nowhere in the whole Bible is it even intimated that it is God's desire or plan that children must remain outside of the covenant of Grace, and have no part or lot in the benefits of Christ's redeeming work until they come to years of discretion and can choose for themselves. This modern idea is utterly foreign and contradictory to all we know of God, of His scheme of redemption, and of His dealings with His people, either in the old or new dispensation.

Every lesson that does not make sin more hateful and Christ more precious, is in so far, a failure.

A true Lutheran pulpit cannot be a sensational pulpit, for discoursing wordly wisdom, philosophy, poetry, or politics. It must expound the Word, and never gets done preaching repentance towards God and faith in our Lord Jesus Christ.

And should any one be ashamed of this public profession and refuse to make it, Jesus clearly tells such an one that of him He also will be ashamed in the judgment day. The Bible nowhere recognizes a secret discipleship. There are no promises to him who does not confess.

When we come to deal with an institution of His, we dare never expect to fathom or test it by our poor, short-sighted and sin-blinded reason, philosophy, science, or common sense. "For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, saith the Lord. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways, and my thoughts than your thoughts." Whenever, therefore, we come to deal with anything that comes from His hands, it is no longer of the earth, earthy, and is not subject to earthly laws and human rules.

It would indeed be blasphemy for any man to claim that he had power in himself to forgive sins. If he can have any power at all, it must be Christ's power.

Laws requiring a certain frequency of church attendance, the taking of Communion, and baptism of infants soon appeared all across the Lutheran areas of Germany. So did laws excluding all religious nonconformists, especially Jews.

Moreover it were to be wished, that those surnames of Lutherans, Zwinglians, Calvinists, were packt away and utterly abolished, which are rather the Ensignes of faction, than badges of Brotherly Union, and which never pleased the ancient Fathers.

Due partly to the influence of the Genevan Academy and partly to the Institutes, Calvin’s theological influence was soon felt in various parts of Europe. Eventually, a number of churches appeared—in the Netherlands, Scotland, Hungary, England, France, and so forth—that followed the teaching of the Genevan reformer, and are now known as Reformed or Calvinistic. Significantly, in most of these countries Calvinism was joined with a zeal for reforming society that did not exist in Lutheran lands, for Calvinists were convinced that it was their duty to make the civil government conform to the law of God. Thus, one of the most lasting consequences of Calvinism—and one that Calvin most likely would never have imagined—was a series of revolutions that opened the way for the modern world.

Luther's personality as well as his teachings shows ambivalence toward authority. On the one hand he is overawed by authority—that of a worldly authority and that of a tyrannical God—and on the other hand he rebels against authority—that of the Church. He shows the same ambivalence in his attitude toward the masses. As far as they rebel within the limits he has set he is with them. But when they attack the authorities he approves of, an intense hatred and contempt for the masses comes to the fore. […] we shall show that this simultaneous love for authority and the hatred against those who are powerless are typical traits of the "authoritarian character.

My full immersion into the world of TBN and a Christianity that can seem like it’s from another planet entirely, rather than strengthening my confidence in the sufficiency of my own tradition, has actually weakened it. I see the holes. I hope this shift continues for me because it feels like for so very long the various sects and denominations within the church (including my own) have spent so much energy defending their theological, doctrinal, and liturgical purity that they have been unable to see what it is we actually offer one another. If Lutheranism is, let’s say, peanut butter —and we go on and on about how it’s both creamy and crunchy, it’s full of protein, it’s super yummy, it’s a food far superior to, say, evangelical chocolate —then we lose the way in which chocolate can actually make peanut butter yummier. That doesn’t mean that the two must always be paired, just that they can bring out each other’s strengths without diminishing their inherit uniqueness. By acknowledging the yumminess of chocolate (or bagels, or raisins, or bananas) and what it brings to peanut butter, we in no way diminish the yumminess of peanut butter. Be not afraid. We cannot live by bread alone, and I think that’s a good thing. (Though just for the record, I still think Paula White is a nut-job.)

Birkmann waved that away. "I'm not religious. Going to church - it's a magic show, in my opinion. Don't tell the Chamber of Commerce I said that." "I'm not talking about religion. I'm talking about God," Virgil said. "I'm a Lutheran minister's kid, and, believe me, there's a difference between a religion and God. I sorta cut out the middleman.

Music has no interior beacon that guarantees permanent meaning. Unlike truth, which is transcultural, absolute, and unchangeable, music can shift in meaning from place to place and time to time. Of all the art forms, music is inherently the most flexible. The music of Bach, as deeply fixed within the churchly contexts of his time and ours, can still shift meanings while remaining great music in its own right. For Lutherans it is church music, par excellence. For the young convert from Satanism, it was evil. In its original form, the tune “Austria” was the imperial national anthem, “Gott erhalte Franz den Kaiser,” composed by Haydn. He then used it as the principal theme for the slow movement in his Emperor Quartet. In this guise it reflects the essentially secular contexts for which it was written and is perfectly at home in the concert hall. It is also the tune for “Deutschland über Alles,” the German national anthem. And for Jewish people, it is associated with the unspeakable horrors of the holocaust. And finally, it is the tune to which the hymn “Glorious Things of Thee Are Spoken” is sung in virtually all American churches. To American Christians this tune’s primary meaning is “sacred.” To them, it carries virtually none of its first two meanings, unless one or the other was impressed first into their memories. There is no way to explain this phenomenon other than that music, as music, is completely relative.

The Council itself identified religious truth as present in what was in effect a series of overlapping circles, with all Christian faiths possessing some degree of truth but “the fullness of Christ’s truth” present only in the Catholic Church. The new ecumenism appeared revolutionary to many, a complete reversal of what had previously been taught. It was, however, merely a change of perspective, in that the Catholic Church had always recognized the core of orthodoxy in Protestantism (the Trinity, the divinity of Christ) but had previously emphasized its errors. Now she chose to recognize its truths, as the basis of imperfect brotherly unity. Eastern Orthodoxy Ecumenical priority was inevitably given to the Eastern Orthodox, who were recognized as sharing most of the Catholic faith. Separation from the Orthodox was viewed by the Council Fathers as a lamentable historical misfortune, and the mutual excommunications of 1054 were formally rescinded after the Council. Protestants The Council warned against a false ecumenism based on an indifference to, or a misinterpretation of, doctrine. However, under Bea’s direction, official dialogues were initiated, especially with Lutherans and Anglicans. In practical terms, the immediate effect of ecumenism was to alter Catholics’ and Protestants’ attitudes toward one another, as for the first time they were allowed, even encouraged, to pray together both formally and informally, although they could not share the Eucharist. The

Our church is so rich in hymns that you could justifiably state that if one were to introduce Methodist hymns in a Lutheran school, this would be like carrying coals to Newcastle. The singing of such hymns would make the rich Lutheran Church into a beggar that is forced to beg from a miserable sect.

Precision in matters of Christian doctrine is a hallmark of confessional Lutheranism, all for the sake of the Gospel.

May you be strengthened with all power, according to his glorious might, for all endurance and patience with joy, 12† giving thanks[4] to the Father, who has qualified you[5] to share in the inheritance of the saints in light. 13†He has delivered us from the domain of darkness and transferred us to the kingdom of his beloved Son, 14† in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins. The Preeminence of Christ 15‡‡† He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation. 16†For by[1] him all things were created, in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities—all things were created through him and for him. 17†And he is before all things, and in him all things hold together. 18†And he is the head of the body, the church. He is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, that in everything he might be preeminent. 19†For in him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell, 20†and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, making peace by the blood of his cross.

SOME COMPLEMENTARIANS HELP EVANGELICAL FEMINISTS BY BEING COWARDLY OR SILENT Another ally of egalitarianism is a large group of Christian leaders who believe that the Bible teaches a complementarian position but who lack courage to teach about it or take a stand in favor of it. They are silent, “passive complementarians” who, in the face of relentless egalitarian pressure to change their organizations, simply give in more and more to appease a viewpoint they privately believe the Bible does not teach. This is similar to the situation conservatives in liberal denominations face regarding homosexuality, where too many people who think it is wrong will not take a stand. As mentioned above, Robert Benne, member of the task force on homosexuality in the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America said, the presence of open homosexuals at every discussion makes it difficult for folks who are uncertain or just plain nice to voice objections or even reservations about the revisionist agenda. Most church people like to be polite and accepting, so they often accept that agenda out of the desire to “keep the peace in love.”1 One of the leaders who helped conservatives retake control of the Southern Baptist Convention after a struggle of many years told me privately, “Our biggest problem in this struggle was not the ‘moderates’ who opposed us. Our biggest problem was conservatives who agreed with us and refused to say anything or take a stand to support us.

The complete NIV Bible was first published in 1978. It was a completely new translation made by over a hundred scholars working directly from the best available Hebrew, Aramaic and Greek texts. The translators came from the United States, Great Britain, Canada, Australia and New Zealand, giving the translation an international scope. They were from many denominations and churches—including Anglican, Assemblies of God, Baptist, Brethren, Christian Reformed, Church of Christ, Evangelical Covenant, Evangelical Free, Lutheran, Mennonite, Methodist, Nazarene, Presbyterian, Wesleyan and others. This breadth of denominational and theological perspective helped to safeguard the translation from sectarian bias. For these reasons, and by the grace of God, the NIV has gained a wide readership in all parts of the English-speaking world. The work of translating the Bible is never finished. As good as they are, English translations must be regularly updated so that they will continue to communicate accurately the meaning of God’s Word. Updates are needed in order to reflect the latest developments in our understanding of the biblical world and its languages and to keep pace with changes in English usage. Recognizing, then, that the NIV would retain its ability to communicate God’s Word accurately only if it were regularly updated, the original translators established The Committee on Bible Translation (CBT). The committee is a self-perpetuating group of biblical scholars charged with keeping abreast of advances in biblical scholarship and changes in English and issuing periodic updates to the NIV. CBT is an independent, self-governing body and has sole responsibility for the NIV text. The committee mirrors the original group of translators in its diverse international and denominational makeup and in its unifying commitment to the Bible as God’s inspired Word.

In its Lutheran form, despite the emphasis upon God’s grace, “justification by grace through faith” was heard as “justification by faith” and thus as involving a fearful form of works righteousness: the “work” was “to believe.” Faith meant believing in a correct set of doctrines (which happened to be Lutheran), and this was the gateway to salvation. What

He knew something was deeply wrong with the church as it then existed, and not just with the Reichskirche and the German Christians, but with the best of the church, with the Confessing Church, and with the current form of Christianity in Germany in general. He felt that what was especially missing from the life of Christians in Germany was the day-to-day reality of dying to self, of following Christ with every ounce of one’s being in every moment, in every part of one’s life. This dedication and fire existed among pietist groups like the Herrnhüter, but he thought that they bordered on being “works” oriented and overly “religious” in the Barthian sense. They had pushed away from the “world” too much, had pushed away the very best of culture and education in a way that he didn’t feel was right. Christ must be brought into every square inch of the world and the culture, but one’s faith must be shining and bright and pure and robust. It must be free of cant and “phraseology” and mere religiosity, or the Christ whom one was bringing into the world and the culture was not Christ at all, but a tawdry man-made counterfeit. Bonhoeffer advocated a Christianity that seemed too worldly for traditional Lutheran conservatives and too pietistic for theological liberals. He was too much something for everyone, so both sides misunderstood and criticized him.

Dresden was built in the 11th century following Roman architectural patterns, but the main Baroque church was built in the early seventeen hundreds by George Bahr, who died before it could be completed. Earlier built as a Lutheran parish church, the structure had undergone years of remodeling before finally being baptized as a Protestant one. Many of the church’s features attested to that; for example the altar, pulpit and the baptismal font were built in the front so they could be in the view of the congregation.

Many feel a civic obligation to pay church tax, up to 1.5 per cent of their salary depending on the municipality, as though this is just another tax that must be paid to keep Denmark the great nation that it is. As a result, the country has a Lutheran state church financed via taxes, but only 28 per cent of Danes believe in any kind of life after death, according to a survey by the country’s Palliative Knowledge Centre (in the US it’s 81 per cent). Just 16 per cent believe in heaven (the figure rises to 88 per cent in the US).

What J. S. Bach gained from his Lutheranism to inform his music, what Jonathan Edwards took from the Reformed tradition to orient his philosophy, what A. H. Francke learned from German Pietism to inspire the University of Halle’s research into Sanskrit and Asian literatures, what Jacob van Ruisdael gained from his seventeenth-century Dutch Calvinism to shape his painting, what Thomas Chalmers took from Scottish Presbyterianism to inspire his books on astronomy and political economy, what Abraham Kuyper gained from pietistic Dutch Calvinism to back his educational, political, and communications labors of the late nineteenth century, what T. S. Eliot took from high-church Anglicanism as a basis for his cultural criticism, what Evelyn Waugh found for his novels in twentieth-century Catholicism, what Luci Shaw, Shirley Nelson, Harold Fickett, and Evangeline Paterson found to encourage creative writing from other forms of Christianity after they left dispensationalism behind — precious few fundamentalists or their evangelical successors have ever found in the theological insights of twentieth-century dispensationalism, Holiness, or Pentecostalism. As

Plagiarism was not considered blameworthy in the ancient world. Authors freely copied from predecessors without recognition. Thus, the world has no idea about what outside materials, and other teachings were added to the four authorized Gospels of the New Testament. On the other hand, the age and authenticity of the Nag Hammadi texts are not disputed. They were not subjected to two-thousand years of translating, editing, embellishing and re-copying as were the four traditional Gospels. These Nag Hammadi Gospels, and other writings found at Nag Hammadi, challenge the long-held precepts of the Roman Catholic Church, as well as the Christian churches (Lutheran, Baptist, Anglican, Methodist, Presbyterian, Evangelical and the like) of today. The Roman Catholic Church and Christian churches are unwilling, unprepared and reluctant to accept these long-hidden gospels.

It is often thought that when the Reformation was established, Europe was divided into Protestants (whether Lutheran or Swiss) on the one hand, and Roman Catholics on the other. The large numbers of Christians are overlooked who did not belong to either party, but who, most of them, met as independent churches, not relying, as the others did, on the support of the civil power, but endeavouring to carry out the principles of Scripture as in New Testament times. They were so numerous that both the State Church parties feared they might come to threaten their own power and even existence. The reason that so important a movement occupies so small a place in the history of those times is, that by the relentless use of the power of the State, the great Churches, Catholic and Protestant, were able almost to destroy it, the few adherents who were left being driven abroad or remaining only as weakened and comparatively unimportant companies. The victorious party was also able to destroy much of the literature of the brethren, and, writing their history, to represent them as holding doctrines which they repudiated, and to give them names to which an odious significance was attached.

Moreover, he actively sought the God of the Bible, as well as the spirits of nature. When he attended the Swedish Lutheran church every Sunday with Alma, he knelt and prayed in humble accord. He sat upright in the unyielding oak pew, and took in the sermons without discomfort. When he was not in prayer, he worked in silence over his printing presses, or industriously made portraits of orchids, or helped Alma with her mosses, or played long games of backgammon with Henry. Truly, Ambrose had no idea what was occurring in the rest of the world. If anything, he was trying to escape the world—which meant that he had arrived at his curious bundle of ideas all by himself. He did not know that half of America and most of Europe were attempting to read each other’s minds. He merely wanted to read Alma’s mind, and to have her read his

Initially, at the creation, these offices were indeed entrusted to all men, but they were all lost through the fall. Christ has restored these offices to believers.

Among the essentials the Eastern churches include also their polity, and so do the Roman, the Anglican, and most of the Reformed churches. All of them, of course, regard as essential also the Church’s doctrine. Disunity in the proclamation is a sad sign. It cannot be remedied by viewing it as unimportant. To set up, in the face of this disunity, a merely external unity or union is not only to use a poor substitute but also to deny that which makes an assembly of people the Church in the first place.

This question underlies the current insistence upon altar fellowship, which aims to bridge the gulf between denominations. It is difficult to see, really, why a beginning should not rather be made with baptismal fellowship. For in many respects the situation there is far more favorable. In the major denominations which practice infant Baptism there is far-reaching agreement on the baptismal rite, though of course it is more than a rite when Baptism is really administered in the name of the triune God. Moreover, such Baptism in one denomination is accepted as valid by the others, even by the otherwise very exclusive Roman Church. So we could say that baptismal fellowship is already a reality.

Still, if one were to apply to Baptism the demands currently made for altar fellowship, one would have to insist that the exception become the rule. That could and would happen if parents of one church body had their child baptized in another. That would be a profession of the cross-denominational unity of Christ’s church. The proponents of altar fellowship should ask themselves whether they stand ready to do this. And since they recognize as valid the Baptism of the Roman Church, they should not, of course, exclude this either. For this they would not be ready, and rightly so. They will assert that the administration of the Sacraments and the Church’s proclamation are inseparable, since these are constitutive of the Church only when they are kept together. To recognize another church body’s Baptism does not imply that doctrinal differences and other distinctions are of no importance. But if baptismal fellowship were to be carried to the extremes indicated, then of necessity the other differences and distinctions would have to be regarded as unimportant. The same reasons stand in the way of altar fellowship.

It is precisely in the situation of a local congregation that the Lord’s Supper fulfills its function as synaxis most meaningfully. This is the situation from which Paul’s statements about synaxis in 1 Corinthians proceed. It was the local situation which occasioned his reproofs against lovelessness. Likewise in such a situation, and only in such a situation, is there opportunity for a concrete agape, which is still something different from a general love for mankind. We cannot concede that the love which we owe also to those outside the boundaries of our churches is impaired when in our liturgical fellowship we unite locally for the celebration of the Lord’s Supper.

For more than four hundred years the right hand of fellowship of the Reformed has remained outstretched. For more than four hundred years we Lutherans with our reformer have had to hear the accusation of unbrotherliness and lovelessness, because we have refused this hand. This fact must give us serious cause ever and again to examine whether or not Luther’s conscience was perhaps on this point an erring conscience. Woe to us if we would base the denial of altar fellowship on the tradition of our Church or the example of Luther. If we did this, we would no longer be Lutherans.

Pastors and church musicians will work to plan integrated services where the music plays its part in complementing the hymns and lectionary readings. Listeners—or perhaps more accurately, “singer/listeners”—will listen to music attentively, recognizing that music, too, is part of Gospel proclamation.

So should those entrusted with the supervision of the church completely avoid ever separating or pulling apart speech and song in the ecclesiastical system of the public liturgy. . . . The perfect and complete liturgy consist of two duties, that is, speech and song.

If someone wishes to sing in church, he should sing with the church. Nor do I wish to have anyone counted among the musicians who, in undertaking any task for the church, totally disregards the accepted norms of choral melody in church, who sets himself up to indulge only his own taste and temperament. (PraeSM I, 20–21)

For those who commune with any Church in the taking of this Sacrament profess publicly by this action that they embrace the teaching of the same Church and reject the contrary teaching, and separate themselves from others, just as when someone communes with Popes under one kind (as they say), shows that he approves of Papal religion, but those who with Lutherans take the Lord’s Supper (as they call it) under both kinds bear witness that they profess the pure teaching of the Gospel and reject the contrary.4

Thus far in fact he and most other French people were of the mind that the Lord’s Supper was the only difference of opinion between their and our Churches.

Cranach was one of Martin Luther’s close allies and, in the mid-sixteenth century, he produced altarpieces for Lutheran churches in Wittenburg, Weimar, Schneeburg, Kemberg, Regensburg, and Dessau. Unlike other reformers, Luther never forbade images, especially of the crucifixion, and many of Cranach’s paintings and altarpieces functioned as didactic exercises, almost schematic diagrams of Lutheran soteriology.

Utanga refugee camp was their home for four years. When Ilhan turned twelve, a Lutheran church sponsored her family to go to the United States. Ilhan arrived in Arlington, Virginia, in possession of two English phrases: “Hello” and “Shut up.” Her classmates yanked at her hijab, stuck chewing gum to it, and bombarded her with questions like, “Do you have hair? Do you have a pet monkey? Does it feel good to wear shoes for the first time?” Every day, the girl who had survived armed militias and a refugee camp was reminded that she was different. “This is the first time I realized the stigma that I carried as an immigrant and a refugee, and a Muslim person who was visibly Muslim, with a headscarf,” she told The New Yorker. “And that my blackness was a source of tension.” But as the kids bullied her, Ilhan remembered her grandfather telling her as a child: “Everything is temporary.” His words gave her courage.

Generations of Lutheran pastors in my own denomination, the Lutheran Church Missouri Synod, were taught the rudiments of their theological confession by Francis Pieper. The lectures that formed his text, Christian Dogmatics, were delivered in German in the second and third decades of the twentieth century, translated into English, and then, printed and reprinted until the present. The three volumes comprise more than 1600 pages, eight of which address issues relating to the two realms.

But upon closer inspection, the Dutch Republic is vastly different from the Spanish Netherlands, specifically concerning the relationship between religion and politics. In fact, that relationship in the Dutch Republic is unique in Western Europe. In the Dutch Republic there is no state church, as there are in France, Spain, England, German Lutheran territories, Scandinavian countries, or the Reformed Protestant territories of the Holy Roman Empire. People in the Dutch Republic do not have to belong to a particular religion. Well into the seventeenth century, the dominant, state-supported, public church in the Dutch Republic includes only a small minority of the population. Equally unique is the fact that, from its establishment, the Dutch Republic remains a haven for religious groups of all sorts.

The Vietnam War was pivotal to the formation of an emerging evangelical identity. For many Americans who came of age in the 1960s and 1970s, Vietnam demolished myths of American greatness and goodness. American power came to be viewed with suspicion, if not revulsion, and a pervasive antimilitarism took hold. Evangelicals, however, drew the opposite lesson: it was the absence of American power that led to catastrophe. Evangelical support for the war seemed to grow in direct relation to escalating doubts among the rest of the public. After the Tet Offensive in the summer of 1968, a poll revealed support for continued bombing and an increase in US military intervention “among 97 percent of Southern Baptists, 91 percent of independent fundamentalists, and 70 percent of Missouri Synod Lutherans; only 2 percent of Southern Baptists and 3 percent of fundamentalists favored a negotiated withdrawal.” Aware of their outlier status, many evangelicals understood themselves to be a faithful remnant, America’s last great hope. With the fate of the nation hanging in the balance, conservative evangelicals “assumed the role of church militant.”34 The war was a watershed moment for American Christians overall.

When I learned about his longtime ties with Park City’s Christ Lutheran Church, I wanted to shout: “Of course he was!” Our landmark ten-year study on serial killers revealed as much. We learned that if these guys could choose a profession, it would be minister, police officer, or counselor. Why? Because of the perks, of course. The single most obvious one being that all these professions involve some type of power and control over others. It’s not surprising that in prison many violent offenders gravitate toward religion—not merely to be a member of a group, but rather to lead the group. Charles “Tex” Watson of the Charles Manson family and David Berkowitz (aka Son of Sam) are now jailhouse preachers.

On June 15, 1904, an annual gala was held on the passenger ship as it steamed up the East River, with about 1,400 people from St. Mark’s Evangelical Lutheran Church. Consisting mostly of German immigrants, the boat was packed with women and children, and when a small fire started on the ship shortly after the trip began, faulty equipment was unable to put it out or stop it from spreading. On top of that, the lifeboats were tied up and the crew, which never conducted emergency drills, was unprepared for a potential disaster. When parents put life preservers on their children and then had them enter the water, they soon learned that the life preservers were also faulty and didn’t float. As the disaster unfolded, over 1,000 passengers burned to death or drowned, many swept under the water by the East River’s current and weighed down by heavy wool clothing. Few people on board knew how to swim, exacerbating the situation, and eventually the overcrowded decks began to collapse, crushing some unfortunate victims. In the end, the General Slocum sank in shallow water while hundreds of corpses drifted ashore, and the fallout was immediate. The captain was indicted for criminal negligence and manslaughter, and the ship’s owner was also charged. While the captain would receive a 10 year sentence, the company in charge of the General Slocum got off with a light fine. In a somewhat fitting postscript, the ship was salvaged and converted into a barge, only to sink once again during a heavy storm in 1911.

It is worth noting that Anabaptists did not aspire to be identified as Protestants. Instead, they actually repudiated the Protestantism of the Lutherans and Reformed. Anabaptists acknowledged that Protestants were right to break away from the Roman Church, but they judged that the Protestants fell well short of the more extensive social, moral, ecclesiastical, and theological reforms that were needed and had succeeded only in creating another institutional church, to which the Anabaptists were equally opposed.

As Lutheran church leaders tried to stabilize support of their churches, the administrator of the Tiegenhof area asserted that church dues were bound to the land. Mennonites "who buy farmsteads from Lutherans ... acquire the customary village obligations toward the Lutheran churches."27 Repeatedly, religious and civil administrators insisted that church assessments were tied to land, not to persons. For their part, Mennonite communities often paid the assessments for widows and others who were in financial need.28

In the Vistula Valley, between the delta and Thorn, there was great variation in education policies. In a few instances, as in Montau, Mennonites were permitted to have their own schools or to conduct classes in their church buildings. Lutherans also established schools, but they increasingly found that Catholic bishops were determined to control education. Thus, in 1745 the parish of Sibsau near Schwetz recorded 308 Catholic, 203 Lutheran, and 236 Mennonite school children. Pressure from the local bishop eventually brought almost all schools in surrounding villages under his control.78 Similar episcopal policies were implemented in the Lubin parish, where 85 Lutheran, 94 Mennonite, and 9 Catholic farm owners all had to contribute to the maintenance of five schools under Catholic direction.79 Likewise, in Schonsee, where Mennonites had been given extensive privileges as early as the late sixteenth century, an unsympathetic official in 1725 declared that although "the parish is filled with many Anabaptists or Mennonites,"80 payment of (Catholic) church and school dues should be rigorously enforced.

It was the Lutheran and Reformed churches in Germany that gave Hitler his biggest headaches. His early years of power were marked by futile attempts to reconcile the thirty warring Protestant factions and bring them under one overriding authority, some loosely constituted council of churches that would unquestioningly accept the primacy of the state and the Nazi policies it enforced.

The true function of the Law is to accuse and to kill; but the function of the gospel is to make alive. 1483-1546 GFRMAN PRIFST WHO FOUNDED THE LUTHERAN CHURCH

The pastor at Pittsburgh’s Trinity Lutheran Church agreed, calling the sermon competition “a concentrated and remarkable contribution to the cause of freedom.

Alas, how many who call themselves Lutherans prove themselves unworthy of the fathers! In large territories of the Lutheran Church, purity of teaching is held in but low regard, and a spirit of indifference can calmly see one scriptural doctrine after the other thrown overboard, while but little effort is put forth to indoctrinate the Church’s youth in church and school.

The universal tendency of our times is to “get together.” Isolation in church life is regarded as intolerable. Those who keep themselves separate for the sake of the truth are denounced as bigots. The well-being and prosperity of the Church is sought in the merger of church bodies even at the cost of truth. Sad to say, this destructive virus of unionism has infected also many Lutheran circles. This modern striving after external union despite spiritual disunion brings to one’s mind the words that God spoke to Israel by the prophet Isaiah: “Do not call conspiracy all that this people calls conspiracy, and do not fear what they fear, nor be in dread. But the Lord of Hosts, Him you shall honor as holy. Let Him be your fear, and let Him be your dread” [Isaiah 8:12–13].

2016 Norway's Lutheran Church adopts new rules allowing gay couples to marry in church weddings.

Instead of tinkering with style, for better or worse, churches need to deal, in a serious way, with the content of their teaching. Specifically, they need to find effective ways to rescue people from their life-and-death spiritual problems, particularly those that are characteristic of our age.

But Luther’s Reformation of five hundred years ago was different from those Protestant revolutions that would soon follow. His goal was to reform the Church, not demolish it and build something better on its ruins. He did not want to start a new church, but to reform the only Church that existed. He sought to correct abuses that thoughtful Christians throughout the Middle Ages also criticized. (Notice how Dante and Chaucer also attacked the sale of indulgences.) He sought to recenter the Church on its essential message: namely, that God became flesh in Jesus Christ, who died to take away the sins of the world and who rose again from the dead for our salvation.

Instead of serving in our vocations, we want to be served. Instead of loving our neighbors, we often harm them or use them for our benefit. Parents are to love and serve their children, not abuse them or abort them. Husbands are to love and serve their wives, not belittle or mistreat them. Businesses should serve their customers, not cheat them. Government officials should love and serve those under their authority, not tyrannize and exploit them. In a church, members should love and serve one another, not stir up conflict by insisting on their own way.

The Lutheran Church is actually not only “a” but “the” true visible Church of God on earth, insofar as “true” means nothing other than “as it should be according to the Word of God.

The Lutheran Church is actually not only “a” but “the” true visible Church of God on earth, insofar as “true” means nothing other than “as it should be according to the Word of God.” We neither can nor do we want to boast before other churches about our pious behavior. But we can and must boast about the pure doctrine which, by God’s grace to us poor sinners, shines among us like the clear bright light of the sun.

I was never an Eagle Scout, but I did become a Cub Scout and learned how to salute by bringing my index and middle fingers together and touching my forehead just above my right eyebrow. With the other fingers curled around touching each other in the palm of my hand, I could snap a smart salute and did so whenever, or not, the occasion arose. Evening meetings were held in the parish hall of the Lutheran Church, within walking distance of home. My uniform was second hand and already had most of the required patches sewn onto it. It was quite worn and had a faded look, which suited me just fine. It gave the illusion that I had been around a while, and wasn’t just the tenderfoot that I really was.

Christians can relax a bit about the world and its politics: not to the point of indifference or insouciance or irresponsibility, but in the firm conviction that, at the extremity of the world’s agony and at the summit of its glories, Jesus remains Lord. The primary responsibility of Christian disciples is to remain faithful to the bold proclamation of that great truth, which is the truth that the world most urgently needs to hear.” 7 Or, as John Henry Newman put it, “[ The Church’s task is] not to turn the whole earth into a heaven, but to bring down a heaven upon earth.” 8 Christians, then, have the task of leading the world to the truth about itself. But in our time—as in the time of Diognetus—the world doesn’t want to hear it. The world hates the story Christians tell. It no longer believes in “sin.” It doesn’t understand the forgiveness of sinners. It finds the ideas of a personal God, immortality, grace, miracles, the Incarnation, the Resurrection, and the whole architecture of the sacraments and the “supernatural” more and more implausible. It sneers at the restraints the Gospel places on appetites and ego. And in place of the Christian narrative of history, it lowers the human horizon to a relentless now of distractions, desires, and suppressed questions about meaning. This empty shell of a life leads in small, anesthetic steps to nihilism: In effect, the “truth” of our time in the world seems to be that there is no truth, that life has no point, and that asking the big questions is for suckers. The Lutheran theologian Robert Jenson has observed that we live in a world that has lost its story. 9 Thus the Church’s task is to tell and retell the world its story, whether it claims to be interested or not.

Against this pastoral, God-fearing backdrop, I exhibited my first signs of blasphemy. At a funeral in that solemn, banner-hung church, I turned to my mother and demanded, "WHERE'S YA NIPPLE, MOMMY?" She clapped a hand over my mouth and carried me out amid a loud chorus of Lutheran gasps. I could not see why. My yearning for the invisible was just as legitimate as theirs. It would not be the last time I tried to locate a nipple in church, but it would be the last time I announced it.

Some churches count as members everyone baptized within that tradition, so that “Christian” becomes a default status in official surveys and virtually means “none of the above.” “You’re not a Catholic? Not a Muslim? Not a Jew? Fine, I’ll put you down as a Lutheran”—or an Anglican, or some other group, depending on the country in question. This tactic accounts for the inflated numbers claimed by English Anglicans, German Evangelicals, or Italian Catholics. The Church of England claims the loyalty of 25 million baptized Anglicans, even though less than a million of those are ever seen within the precincts of a church.

You don’t have to call me nigger. You don’t have to tell me that black lives don’t matter. All you have to do is do what the Lutheran church has been doing for five hundred years. Introduce me to Jesus. He looks nothing like me, so I’m left thinking he can’t possibly be for me. If he looks like all the folks who have, in fact, told me that black lives don’t matter, how can I trust that he believes my life matters? This Jesus who doesn’t look like he was born in Nazareth in the Roman province of Palestine, who doesn’t look like a Jew from the Middle East. This Jesus who looks like you, not me. You have taught a five-year-old me that I am not like the creator of the universe—but you are. You and he look like cousins, as if you played together as children, as if he just dropped you off on his way to see the rest of your family.

I stay, kneeling on the hearthstone, till the clock on the table strikes four with its silvery little chime and I realise that I have been in a trance of prayer for hours. I have prayed and I believe that I have been heard. I have spoken and I believe I have been answered. No priest took my confession or gave me absolution, no church took my fee, no pilgrim badges or miracle cures or little pieces of trumpery helped me to come into the presence of God. I simply asked for His great mercy and I received it, as He promised in the Bible that it should be granted.

Our churches do not dissent from any article of the faith held by the Church catholic. They only omit some of the newer abuses.

] It can easily be judged that if the churches observed ceremonies correctly, their dignity would be maintained and reverence and piety would increase among the people.

Our churches condemn the Pelagians and others who teach that without the Holy Spirit, by natural power alone, we are able to love God above all things and do God’s commandments according to the letter.

We recognize far too seldom that religious and confirmation instruction and the Sunday school can in no way give what previous generations knew from home through Bible reading and what was learned from pious parents. Today the need of the hour for the Lutheran Church is to become a teaching church again.

Church teaching misled people into believing that by following such regulations they merited God’s grace and favor. Such a theory is entirely contrary to the Gospel, overturns the all-sufficient merit of Jesus Christ, and replaces Him with human works

White Lutheranism never confronted Dylann’s white-supremacist beliefs, and we need to examine our church structure, theology, and communities to understand why.

In the first place, I ask that men make no reference to my name; let them call themselves Christians, not Lutherans. What is Luther? After all, the teaching is not mine [John 7:16]. Neither was I crucified for anyone [1 Cor. 1:13]. St. Paul, in 1 Corinthians 3, would not allow the Christians to call themselves Pauline or Petrine, but Christian. How then should I—poor stinking maggot-fodder that I am—come to have men call the children of Christ by my wretched name? Not so, my dear friends; let us abolish all party names and call ourselves Christians, after him whose teaching we hold. The papists deservedly have a party name, because they are not content with the teaching and name of Christ, but want to be papist as well. Let them be papist then, since the pope is their master. I neither am nor want to be anyone’s master. I hold, together with the universal church, the one universal teaching of Christ, who is our only master [Matt. 23:8].

Rader loaded Hedge’s body into the trunk of her car and drove to Christ Lutheran Church, where he and the family spent their Sunday mornings singing hymns, listening to sermons, and helping out with things. Because of all his work at the church, he had a key to the place. He carried Hedge downstairs to the basement and laid her out on the floor. A few days earlier, he’d put black plastic over the windows and taped everything up so that nobody could tell if he was down there with the lights on. He unrolled the blanket and spent the next few hours posing her body in a myriad of positions, snapping pictures of her. Playing the role of a deranged fashion photographer, he searched for the perfect shot. He’d tie and then remove his various bindings from around her lifeless limbs.

Nuclear Operations Instructor, James Ledford, called Technical-Jesus.com and HyperEvolution.com, as well as a self-published book all of which promote “Christian Transhumanism.”[147] Liberal theologian Paul Tillich is frequently cited in support. Lately, transhumanism has found theological justification in the work of ELCA Lutheran theologians like Phillip Hefner, Ted

Embedded in the Microsoft proprietary Rich Text Format (RTF), the file contained the first name of the BTK Killer and the physical location at which the user had last saved the file. This narrowed the investigation to a man named Denis at the local Wichita Christ Lutheran Church. Mr. Stone verified that a man named Denis Rader served as a church officer at the Lutheran Church (Regan, 2006). With this information, police requested a warrant for a DNA sample from the medical records of Denis Rader’s daughter (Shapiro, 2007). The DNA sample confirmed what Mr. Stone already knew—Denis Rader was the BTK Killer.