I always enjoy reading the accounts of how Christian leaders from conservative and more orthodox Christian churches “lay down the law” when speaking to Protestant liberalism that has gripped much of Western Christendom. Here is another example, by Metropolitan Hilarion of the Russian Orthodox Church, speaking to an Anglican gathering in England, at the Archbishop of Canterbury’s palace. But the remarks could easily have just as well been addressed to the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America.

We are also extremely concerned and disappointed by other processes that are manifesting themselves in churches of the Anglican Communion. Some Protestant and Anglican churches have repudiated basic Christian moral values by giving a public blessing to same-sex unions and ordaining homosexuals as priests and bishops. Many Protestant and Anglican communities refuse to preach Christian moral values in secular society and prefer to adjust to worldly standards. Our Church must sever its relations with those churches and communities that trample on the principles of Christian ethics and traditional morals. Here we uphold a firm stand based on Holy Scripture. In 2003, the Russian Orthodox Church had to suspend contact with the Episcopal Church in the USA due to the fact that this Church consecrated a self-acclaimed homosexual … as bishop. The Department for External Church Relations made a special statement deploring this fact as anti-Christian and blasphemous. Moreover, the Holy Synod of our Church decided to suspend the work of the Joint Coordinating Committee for Cooperation between the Russian Orthodox Church and the Episcopal Church in the USA, which had worked very successfully for many years. The situation was aggravated when a woman bishop was installed as head of the Episcopal Church in the USA in 2006 and a lesbian was placed on the bishop’s chair of Los Angeles in 2010. Similar reasons were behind the rupture of our relations with the Church of Sweden in 2005 when this Church made a decision to bless same-sex “marriages”. And recently the lesbian Eva Brunne has become the “bishop” of Stockholm. What can these churches say to their faithful and to secular society? What kind of light do they shine upon the world (cf. Mt. 5:14)? What is their ‘salt’? I am afraid the words of Christ can be applied to them: If the salt loses its saltiness, how can it be made salty again? It is no longer good for anything, except to be thrown out and trampled by men (Mt. 5:13).

Metropolitan Hilarion of Volokolamsk Chairman of the Moscow Patriarchate’s Department for External Church Relations to the Annual Nicean Club Dinner (Lambeth Palace, 9 September 2010). The full text of his remarks follow in the extended entry. HT: Touchstone Magazine.

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A Lutheran congregation in California explains on its blog site why it regards itself as a “progressive” congregation. Here are the standards they strive to uphold:

By calling ourselves progressive, we mean that we are Christians who:

1. Proclaim Jesus Christ as our Gate to the realm of God.

2. Recognize the faithfulness of other people who have other names for the gateway to God’s realm.

3. Understand our sharing of bread and wine in Jesus’s name to be a representation of God’s feast for all peoples.

4. Invite all sorts and conditions of people to join in our worship and in our common life as full partners, including (but not limited to): believers and agnostics, conventional Christians and questioning skeptics, homosexuals and heterosexuals, females and males, the despairing and the hopeful, those of all races and cultures, and those of all classes and abilities, without imposing on them the necessity of becoming like us.

5. Think that the way we treat one another and other people is more important than the way we express our beliefs.

6. Find more grace in the search for meaning than in absolute certainty, in the questions than in the answers.

7. See ourselves as a spiritual community in which we discover the resources required for our work in the world: striving for justice and peace among all people; bringing hope to those Jesus called the least of his sisters and brothers

8. Recognize that our faith entails costly discipleship, renunciation of privilege, and conscientious resistance to evil–as has always been the tradition of the church

I read this first on Dr. Gene Edward Veith’s blog, who read it at Joe Carter’s blog, who in turn found it on the Internet. OK, now that we have the hat tips out of the way, here is a great interview with Rodney Stark.

Read this interview with sociologist Rodney Stark on how the so-called “mainline” liberal denominations have dwindled into irrelevance: Are Evangelicals the New Mainline?. Among the many interesting points he makes is that the only congregations in those traditions that are doing well are those with conservative pastors. And when “evangelicals” decide to go liberal, as in the emergent church or progressive evangelical movement, they decline too. He goes into the history of this phenomenon and finds that it goes way, way back.

What will those Anglicans think of next?

Here’s the story of how a dog received the Sacrament in an Anglican parish recently:
http://www.thestar.com/news/gta/article/838717–can-a-dog-receive-communion

Here’s a snippet:

“In my opinion, Christ would have thought it was neat. It was just being human. And it made everyone smile.”

In light of the LWF’s meeeting in Stuttgart this month, these thoughts from Hermann Sasse are eerily and dramatically prophetic:

Dear Brothers in the Office!

Three years have passed since the first of these letters came into your hands. That letter sought to depict, in brief strokes, the situation faced by the Lutheran Churches as it made note of the two-fold tendency in the most recent history of our church: a strong external ascendancy of “Lutheranism,” which is accompanied by a threatening diminution of the dogmatic-confessional substance. Most of you will agree with me that the developments of the past three years have corroborated this viewpoint. It is to be feared that the meeting of the Lutheran World Federation in Hannover will not contradict this view. How pleased would we all be, all of us who are so very concerned for the future of our church, if this meeting would prove us wrong, if it shall have revealed something of an ascendancy of the inner spiritual life of the church, of a renewal of the old faithfulness to the confession of the eternal truth, which once found a home in Lower Saxony. But from what one reads in Lutherischen Rundschau of the preparations in Hanover it appears to be much like the massive marches and manipulating demonstrations which the evangelical churches of Germany inherited from the Third Reich, which satisfy a deep psychological need of modern masses. There is no doubt hat the Hannover session of the Lutheran World Federation will be just as beautiful and enchanting as the Berlin Kirchentag of the EkiD and as the great royal nuptial celebrations of Hannover in previous years. The very same men who in Berlin were so enthused over the unity of the Evangelical Church in German [EkiD] (“We are still brothers!”), will be enthused in Hannover over the Lutheran Church. And they will proudly allow the church banners to stream, among which also is the banner of the LWF with Luther’s seal, just as at royal weddings the old Hannoverian flags suddenly fluttered again and the old uniforms of the Hannoverian army of 1866 experienced a remarkable resurrection. What a testimony of loyalty that was! Only it was forgotten that it was all merely a beautiful show [see note -compiler]. The princes no longer rule. The flag of a state was displayed which has long since gone under. The people passionately celebrated a loyalty, which had long since been violated. That is the genius loci of Hannover. Should it also rule the session of the Lutheran World Federation in August? If not, then it is time to exorcise it. We theologians in any case will remain sober and guard ourselves from the enthusiasm which in every form is the mortal enemy of the true faith. With Lutheran sobriety, which means for us at the same time with constant faith in the reality of the Church of God, we desire to seek to understand the situation of Lutheranism regarding a few essential points at the beginning of this fateful year.

— Hermann Sasse

From Letters to Lutheran pastors No. 22: ‘The De-Confessionalisation of Lutheranism?’(1952); trans. by Rev Matthew Harrison and available in full here: http://www.clai.org.au/articles/sasse/deconfes.htm

Compiler’s Note – Sasse must have had in mind the nuptial celebrations of 5th September, 1951, when Prince Ernest Augustus of the House of Hanover married Princess Ortrud of Schleswig-Holstein-Sonderburg-Glücksburg. The wedding was attended by many royal figures, including the heads of the houses of Saxony, Hesse, Mecklenburg, Oldenburg, and Baden, all of whom had long since been deposed from their thrones. The wedding was followed with a reception at Herrenhausen, the only part of Hanover’s former palace still intact in the aftermath of World War II. Sasse suggests that the essential meaninglessness of the pomp surrounding such celebrations is comparable to that which surrounds great ecumenical gatherings like the Berlin Kirchentag and LWF Assemblies. It is something which theologians have a responsibility to resist with ‘Lutheran sobriety’.

The Presbyterian Church USA met in its national convention recently and made some dreadful decisions, similar to those made by the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, on gay clergy and gay relationships. Here is a helpful interview with a leader of the leading conservative reform movements within the PCUSA.

For those who keep saying that the ordination of women has no bearing on the issue of the ordination of homsexuals, please note the comment in bold/itals (emphasis mine) in the story below.

Presbyterians take step towards ordaining homosexual clergy
ENI-10-0477

By Chris Herlinger
New York, 9 July (ENI)–The general assembly of the Presbyterian Church (USA) has approved a measure that would allow those in committed same-sex relationships to be ordained as clergy.

The proposed change to the denomination’s polices must still be approved by the U.S. church’s 173 presbyteries. In 2009, 94 of the local bodies voted against the change following a similar decision by the 2008 general assembly.

Proponents of the measure said the move that was made on 8 July is a historic step that puts the Presbyterian Church on the right side of history.

The denomination, meeting for its 219th assembly in Minneapolis, Minnesota, also debated whether to broaden its definition of marriage to include people in same-sex relationships.

The assembly, however, voted to maintain the current definition of marriage – between a man and a woman – in its constitution.

Lacy Morris, a delegate to the assembly quoted by the Presbyterian News Service, said that on the issue of ordination, the church had to decide which was worse: possible division or failing to do what was right.

“We’re talking about history, but we need to talk about the future,” Morris said, noting that the ordination of women also risked divisions, but had proven to be the right decision.

There was no immediate comment from traditionalist groups within the denomination about the move, though on its Web site, Presbyterians for Renewal, had said the previous day that “the news is not good from the Twin Cities” (of Minneapolis and St. Paul).

The move would change language for the denomination’s Book of Order, which only permits ordination for those who are either married or celibate.

If approved by the two-million-member denomination, which is the 10th largest in the United States, the church would join a number of Protestant denominations, including the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, that in recent years have changed their ordination rules regarding gay and lesbian clergy.

Debates over the issue of sexuality have proved contentious, though, and have caused splits within the U.S. Episcopal (Anglican) Church and between it and other Anglican churches elsewhere in the world. [360 words]

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Dr. Jack Kilcrease, a former member of the ELCA, had a great blog post recently, talking about his reading in the word by Werner Elert titled The Christian Faith. It has never been formally published, but a translation done years ago has been available for quite some time. Dr. Kilcrease makes some great points, well worth pondering. How did liberal Lutheranism in this country reach a point where they eschew Trinitarian language, and embrace deviant human sexuality, all in “light of the Gospel.” Here’s how:

“I’m in the process of re-reading Werner Elert’s The Christian Faith. It’s a bootlegged translation done back in the 70s (I have the manuscript from Luther Seminary, which I still have borrowing rights from). From what I heard (and Pr. McCain can correct me) CPH bought the rights and then found that a lot of it was heretical. So they translated the non-heretical parts and then not the rest. I will grant that a great deal of it is heretical. It is interesting and insightful at certain points though.

“This brings me to one of the points where Elert fails seriously, namely the doctrine of inspiration. He makes a series of weird statements about the authority of the Bible. First, he thinks that all Scriptural authority is based on the gospel. I don’t even know what that means. When I was in the ELCA, I had professors claim this- but I never really bought it. The difficulty with this that the gospel makes no sense if you don’t have the law. Both together don’t make any sense if you don’t have them within the context of salvation history. So, saying “the gospel” is the thing that makes the Scriptures authoritative, doesn’t make any sense, since the gospel makes no sense without things that aren’t gospel. Consequently, they must also be authoritative and then logically a subset of a larger phenomenon known as the “Word of God.”

“What I think is really going on is his existentializing and psychologizing tendency. This leads us into the next weird claim, that it’s the content of the Scriptures, not the Scriptures themselves which are authoritative.

“What? How can the content be authoritative, without the thing itself being authoritative? In other words, are you claiming that the Lutheran scholastic authors claimed that if the Scriptures were stripped of their content their would be something left over which would be authoritative? Certainly not. The content and the thing itself is no different.

“What he’s really getting at is this: he thinks that a person denigrates the authority of the gospel if you ground it in a prior theory of inspiration. In his way of thinking you’re saying “I believe the gospel, because I believe in a theory about inspiration.”

“But of course, not one really says this. David Scaer has consistently pointed to the Christological basis of the doctrine of inspiration particularly in his early work The Apostolic Scriptures. The Scriptures are authoritative because they are inspired. This inspiration is anchored in the authorization of the Old Testament (“the scriptures cannot be broken…) and the authority of the Apostles who wrote the New Testament (“those who hear you, hear me…” “I will send you the comforter, who will lead you into all truth…”) by Jesus.

“If I believe in Jesus, I will believe in the inerrant Biblical Word that he authorized. In fact, I will no other access to his person and work than to that witness. So, by believing in him and his trustworthiness, I will automatically believe in the trustworthiness of his Bible. This is what was often referred to by the Lutheran scholastics as the inner testimony of the Spirit regarding the authority and infallibility of the Scriptures.

“In the end, what Elert wants is to place authority in act of believing in Christ and his gospel and then to exclude a doctrine of inerrancy and Scripture inspiration on this basis. No one is disputing that faith comes first and this faith leads one to acknowledge the Scriptures. What Elert’s move does is in fact internalize authority in a psychological event of coming to faith. It takes the locus of authority away from the external Word and places it within the individual and their faith in Jesus.

“In the end, as we can see, this is a false decision of either/or. Faith in Christ automatically means both/and. Ultimately Elert’s reductionism gives us the current LWF and the ELCA. For this he and his companion at Erlangen have much to account for.”

Last Saturday I was having a thoroughly enjoyable conversation with Rev. Dr. James Voelz, Dean of Faculty at Concordia Seminary, St. Louis. He was telling anecdotes from his fascinating and varied academic experiences. He said what really impressed him was when he was a  young man studying in Cambridge, the famous liberal theologian, JAT Robinson, came in to lecture. Somebody asked him about something in Romans, a key passage, and without blinking an eye, Dr. Robertson simply said, “Oh, yes, of course Paul said that, but Paul was wrong.” Dr. Voelz pointed out what a completely honest response that was.

But what so often happens among liberals, particularly those in mainline protestant churches, is that they do not have the personal integrity to say simply, “Paul was wrong” or “Christ was wrong” but they play all sorts of games trying to explain how, well, that was what Christ said, or what Paul wrote, but the words don’t mean what they say, or appear to mean, or they did not really say what we think they said. In other words, they indulge in fundamentally deceptive ways of getting around the plain meaning of the text.

We see this all over the place in the recent ELCA decisions regarding homosexuality and we saw it all over the place in the days of Seminex in our own Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod. I shared with Dr. Voelz one of my favorite stories about the Seminex days in our Synod, told me by an eye/ear witness. One of the Seminex professors, when asked if he personally believed that the account of Christ walking on water was true and if Christ did in fact walk on water paused for a long time and said, “Well, I certainly would not want to say Christ could not have walked on water.”Dr. Voelz, who was a student at the time during the years of the Seminex crisis confirmed that this kind of duplicitous way of approaching the issues was standard operating procedure among the pro-Seminex theologians on the campus of Concordia Seminary.

Most recently, on this blog site, when I posted something about why it is so important to maintain that there was a real Adam and a real Eve, a liberal theologian popped on and asked me where Christ ever said there was a real Adam and Eve. He is indulging in the kind of passive-aggresive, dishonest game playing that characterizes so much of American liberalism in many of the mainline protestant denominations. Liberal theologians know that, in varying degrees, the rank and file members of their congregations still believe the “old myths” they were taught as children, and so they dance around and play with the text of Scripture, trying to cover over their own utter disbelief in what the Bible clearly asserts.

Years ago when I was a young pastor, a neighboring pastor friend of mine who visited a newly installed ELCA Lutheran pastor told me about his conversation with her. When he asked her what she personally believed about the resurrection of the dead and Christ’s own bodily resurrection, asking her this question as they stood in the grave yard of her church, she said, “Oh, of course, I don’t believe in all that anymore.” And when he asked her, “Well, what do you preach about then?” She quickly said, “Oh, I preach what I know my people want to hear about these things.”

This is the kind of game-playing that goes on constantly; tragically, through these kinds of games, many are deceived. But God is not mocked. (Galatians 6:7)

A guest post by Rev. Dr. Holger Sonntag. Since Dr. Sonntag is from Germany and very familiar with the ecclesiastical situation, I asked if he would have any thoughts on the resignation of Dr. Margot Käßmann, who was the head of the EKiD and the bishop of the largest territorial Lutheran church in Germany recently. She is an advocate for homosexuality and, of course, the liberal theology of the state church in Germany. Here are Dr. Sonntag’s comments:

On February 24, 2010, Dr. Margot Käßmann, the chairperson of the Council of the Evangelical Church in Germany and the bishop of the largest Lutheran territorial church in Germany, resigned from all her offices. She had been a bishop for a bit more than ten years and at the helm of the ECG for about four months. Prior to becoming a bishop she had held a parish pastorate for only a few years; instead, she had spend much of her time holding various functions in the global ecumenical movement.

What caused her to resign? On February 20, at 11 p.m., the Saturday after Ash Wednesday, she had been caught running a red light while intoxicated. The police established her blood alcohol content as .154%. While her fellow council members assured her of their ongoing trust in her in a telephone conference on February 23, but left the final decision up to her, she resigned nonetheless on the following day. As she put it once, she wanted her “personal power to convince” to be “unhampered.” And this public moral failure was apparently seen by her as a major hindrance to such authenticity.

The reactions in Germany range from dismay (not so much about her drunk driving, but about her resignation) to respecting her integrity. Many saw her as a dynamic, honest leader who made the church credible again in the eyes of non-members. Others, however, saw her as a divisive figure who felt constrained to comment on any number of social and political issues, even without (or against) God’s clear Word, and who personalized her office as probably no one had done before in recent history.

What can be said about this major event? First of all, it was perhaps providential that she resigned from her offices on the day of St. Matthias, the man who was chosen to replace Judas. Important are these words in Acts 1: “For it is written in the Book of Psalms, May his camp become desolate, and let there be no one to dwell in it; and Let another take his office [episkopee, same word use for bishopric]. So one of the men [andres, males] who have accompanied us during all the time that the Lord Jesus went in and out among us, beginning from the baptism of John until the day when he was taken up from us — one of these men must become with us a witness to his resurrection.” All apostles, thus, ought to be males; accordingly, all pastors ought to be males as well. This is what God’s Word here and elsewhere teaches. Therefore, even though Dr. Käßmann had occupied her episcopal office for over ten years and women’s ordination is seen by many in the Protestant church as normal, it bears repeating that she should not have held this office in the first place. What is more, not only did she hold this office illegitimately, she also, during her tenure as bishop, ensured that those objecting to women’s ordination would not be allowed to enter into the ministry in the first place. The fact that this totally unscriptural practice did not cause an outcry in Germany and around the world speaks volumes about the level of indifference and ignorance regarding the deformation of an institution of the Lord of the church.

Read more…

The wolves discover that wearing a smile is just

as effective as wearing sheep’s clothing.

HT: The Sacred Sandwich

US Episcopal Church votes to lift ban on consecrating gay bishops
Ecumenical News International
Daily News Service
15 July 2009

By Daniel Burke

Anaheim , California, 15 July (ENI/RNS)–The U.S. Episcopal Church on 14 July overwhelmingly voted to lift a three-year-old moratorium on consecrating gay and lesbian bishops, despite warnings that the ban was necessary to preserve unity in the wider Anglican Communion.

A large majority of Episcopal bishops, priests and lay delegates gathered here for the church’s triennial General Convention asserted that “God has called and may call” gays and lesbians in lifelong committed relationships “to any ordained ministry in the Episcopal Church.”

More than 70 percent of lay and clergy delegates in the church’s House of Deputies approved lifting the moratorium on 14 July; the church’s House of Bishops had approved it the day before by a 2-to-1 margin.

While the resolution clears the way for gay and lesbian bishops, it does not mandate that dioceses must consider them, nor does it guarantee that, if elected, they will receive the necessary ratification votes to serve.

“This is a day to rejoice for the Church – no, let me be more specific, this is a day to rejoice in the Episcopal Church, which once again has stood for the full inclusion of all,” openly gay Bishop V. Gene Robinson of New Hampshire wrote on his blog.

Robinson also wrote that bishops who voted to lift the ban “will pay a price for opening their hearts, much as gay and lesbian people in this Church have paid a price for their exclusion. I applaud them for their courage and will stand with them in the consequences of their vote.”

Also late on 14 July, Episcopal bishops debated a resolution that would begin the development of liturgical rites to bless same-sex unions, and enable bishops in states where gay marriage is legal to change marriage rites in the Book of Common Prayer to be gender neutral.

The resolution, if passed by the bishops, would also need the approval of lay and clergy delegates before it could become church law. Robinson’s consecration in 2003 caused a furore in the 77 million-member Anglican Communion, which counts the 2.1 million-member Episcopal Church as its U.S. branch. Many Anglicans, particularly in the Global South where their numbers are growing rapidly, say homosexuality is sinful and unbiblical.

Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams, the spiritual leader of Anglicans worldwide, warned in mid-2008 at a meeting of more than 600 bishops from around the world that the communion would be in “grave peril” should the moratorium on gay bishops be lifted.

Addressing the General Convention as it opened last week, Williams said, “Along with many in the communion, I hope and pray that there won’t be decisions in the coming days that will push us further apart.”

Since Robinson’s election in 2003, every key intra-Anglican body – from leading archbishops to international councils – has warned the Episcopal Church not to consecrate or elect any more gay bishops.

Already, several archbishops, particularly those in the Global South, have severed ties with the Episcopal Church over its gay-friendly policies. In the U.S., four dioceses opposed to those policies and dozens of parishes have seceded from the denomination and formed the rival Anglican Church in North America.

The Anglican Communion Institute, a think tank, said that “The Episcopal Church is already out of communion with the majority of the world’s Anglicans,” and predicted that more dioceses would leave the church.

Bishop Henry Parsley of Alabama, who voted against lifting the moratorium, said, “I long for us to be an inclusive church, but not a polarised church,” according to Episcopal Life, the denomination’s official news outlet. “We need to be part of the larger Anglican Communion in what we do in this matter.”

Urging fellow delegates to reject the resolution, Zack Brown, a lay youth delegate, said, “Please don’t vote in a way that makes more conservatives feel the way I do now: like I’m the only one left.”

The resolution on gay bishops also encourages Episcopalians to “participate to the fullest extent possible” in the Anglican Communion, and reminds the global church that the Episcopal Church contributed more than US$660 000 – almost one-third of the budget – to funding the communion’s bureaucracy in 2007.

While some Episcopalians argue that their church never enacted an official moratorium on gay bishops, it voted at its last meeting, in 2006, to urge dioceses to “exercise restraint” by not electing bishops “whose manner of life presents a challenge to the wider church and will
lead to further strains on communion”.

No gay bishops have been elected since that resolution was passed at the urging of the church’s then-newly elected Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori, though several dioceses have considered gay and lesbian candidates. Jefferts Schori voted on 13 July to lift the moratorium.

The Rev. Susan Russell, president of the pro-gay Episcopal group Integrity USA, said the resolution “was another step in the Episcopal Church’s `coming out’ process — and it sends a strong `come and see’ message to anyone looking for a faith community where God’s inclusive love is not just proclaimed but practiced.” [855 words]

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