February 3, 2012

A Statement on Recent HHS Decision and Religious Freedom

We are deeply distressed by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ (HHS) recent decision to require nearly all private health plans, including those offered by religious employers, to cover contraceptives. This will include controversial birth-control products such as “Ella” and the “morning after” pill, even though the Federal Food and Drug Administration (FDA) warns that such drugs can cause the death of a baby developing in the womb. The Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod (LCMS) objects to the use of drugs and procedures that are used to take the lives of unborn children, who are persons in the sight of God from the time of conception, and we are opposed to the HHS’ decision mandating the coverage of such contraceptives. This HHS action relates to a provision in the “health care reform” legislation (the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act) signed into law in 2010. The church’s benefits partner, Concordia Plan Services, which provides health care coverage to nearly 48,000 people, has been actively monitoring this legislation and, as a result, Concordia Health Plan (CHP)—the LCMS church workers’ health plan—has been maintained as a “grandfathered” plan. As such, employers and workers participating in CHP would not be subjected to the mandate. However, many religious organizations do not have grandfathered plans and cannot avail themselves of the extremely narrow religious-employer exemption, which only is applicable to religious employers that primarily serve and employ members of that faith. For centuries, Lutherans have joyfully delivered Christ’s mercy to others and embraced His call to care for the needy within our communities and around the world. In a nation that has allowed more than 54 million legal abortions since 1973, we must consider the marginalization of unborn babies and object to this mandate. In addition, I encourage the members of the LCMS to join with me in supporting efforts to preserve our essential right to exercise our religious beliefs. This action by HHS will have the effect of forcing many religious organizations to choose between following the letter of the law and operating within the framework of their religious tenets. We add our voice to the long list of those championing for the continued ability to act according to the dictates of their faith, and provide compassionate care and clear Christian witness to society’s most vulnerable, without being discriminated against by government. The Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod, a church body of sinners redeemed by the blood of Jesus, has affected the lives of millions of people with care, aid, housing, health care, spiritual care and much more. We have been a force for good in this nation, promoting education (the nation’s largest Protestant school system), marriage and giving people the tools and assistance to be good citizens. We live and breathe Romans 13:3–7. The governing authorities are “God’s servant for good.” We pray constantly for our President and those in authority. We have sent our sons and daughters to fight for this country. We have provided military chaplains, elected officials, officers, including some who have held the highest military offices and other appointed positions in this country. Our people have and are serving as congressmen and women and senators. Increasingly we are suffering overzealous government intrusions into what is the realm of traditional and biblical Christian conscience. We believe this is a violation of our First Amendment rights. We will stand, to the best of our ability, with all religious and other concerned citizens, against this erosion of our civil liberty. Come what may, we shall do everything we can, by God’s grace, to “obey God rather than men” (Acts 5:29).

The Rev. Dr. Matthew C. Harrison President The Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod

Pastor Vinovskis sent me an update and more information on that beautiful high resolution image of earth that the Goddard center put together using the latest satellite technology. Apparently, a faithful LCMS layman is deeply involved in the project please follow this link to learn how they put this image together and to see the “other side” of the earth, as pictured below. Here is a link to the highest resolution version of this image:

NASA has a new sattelite and it has generated the high resolution image of the earth ever produced. It is simply breathtaking. I’ll post it here, but I encourage you to download the original 8,000 x 8,000 pixel version here. The image is free and in the public domain, subject to this Creative Commons license. Image from NASA Goddard Photo and Video.

Sunday and Roe v. Wade

by Rev. Dr. James I. Lamb

Executive Director, Lutherans for Life

God and abortion come face to face this year with the anniversary of Roe v. Wade, January 22, 1973, falling on a Sunday. People will gather to worship the Lord and Author of Life on the day when, thirty-nine years ago, the U.S. Supreme Court effectively took the right to life away from the defenseless unborn and declared the right to murder them constitutional.

Since then, over 54,000,000 little lives have been slaughtered under the death cry of “the right to choose.”

Many would say I exaggerate the importance of the convergence of Roe v. Wade and Sunday. They maintain there is no connection. Their oft repeated mantra: “Abortion is political and the Church exists to proclaim the Gospel not to be ensnared in politics.” This flawed and deadly reasoning is precisely why the carnage of abortion continues.

The killing of little boys and little girls at any stage of development for any reason is a travesty. Killing little boys and little girls created and gifted by God, purchased by the blood of Jesus, and children God desires to call into an eternal relationship with Him is a travesty against our Triune God.

Therein lies the connection. Abortion is not just a choice that destroys life. It destroys life precious to God.

Add to this the immeasurable guilt and regret an abortion choice eventually brings to the hearts of those involved in that choice and you have a set of circumstances that compels the Church of Jesus Christ to speak and act. You have a mission field tailor made for the proclamation of God’s law and especially the proclamation of His life-changing Gospel.

For the Christian, abortion is at its core idolatry, a failure to “fear, love, and trust in God above all things.” We choose the death of the helpless to deliver us from a difficult situation rather than trust in God “my help and my deliverer” (Psalm 40:17).

But the Church dare not merely pound her pulpits and demand, “Trust God, choose life” as if trust in God is something we can conjure up if we just try hard enough. Time and time again the Scripture associates help from God with salvation from God. “Help us, O God of our salvation” (Psalm 79:9). Those who profess Jesus Christ as the source of their salvation must be led to see and trust that the God who saved them from sin is the source of their help and will never abandon them.

“What then shall we say to these things? If God is for us, who can be against us? He who did not spare his own Son but gave him up for us all, how will he not also with him graciously give us all things?” (Romans 8:31-32 ESV)

Because God’s love for us was demonstrated on the cross, we can confidently trust that nothing “in all creation will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord” (Romans 8:39b ESV). Christ’s Church has a responsibility to help her people connect this wonderful promise to the life issues.

Our prayer at LFL, is that the Church will make this connection, not just this Sunday, but frequently Sunday after Sunday. We stand ready to help and equip the Church to connect and apply what she is already proclaiming, the Gospel, to these issues of life and death. It is the Gospel that truly changes hearts and lives.

You may find this useful as you peruse the Internet or for life in general…I present:

The Drama Button

Mr. Norman Teigen has written to me expressing his concern with a comment I made in response to a comment he posted on my blog. He believes that I have defamed him and publicly slandered him. I have therefore retracted my comment and offer this public apology to him. Always happy to be corrected. Sorry, Norm, for misreading your comment.

And this is why we must always be grateful to live in a country that has religious freedom….what a mess in Israel.

In Israel, a clash over religious gender segregation
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By Judith Sudilovsky
Jerusalem, 12 January (ENInews)–Should Israel allow segregation by gender in the public sphere simply because one religious group — ultra-Orthodox Jews — demand it? This issue has become a focal point as Israel struggles with its identity as a Jewish democratic state.

“This is taking us straight to the most important dialogue [for the country]: what kind of values do we want for our Jewish state?” said Anat Hoffman, executive director of the Israel Religious Action Center, in an interview with ENInews.

The ultra-Orthodox have until recently only imposed their rules regarding the separation of the sexes — including separate sidewalks for men and women — in their own neighborhoods, but they have begun trying to enforce those standards in other areas. They maintain the separation is necessary in order to protect the modesty of women and is mandated by the Halacha, or Jewish religious law. However, a prominent conservative rabbi, Eliezer Melamed, said in his weekly newspaper column that it is “optional” not “required” under Jewish law.

Alon Visser, 22, a Jerusalem resident who initiated a bus protest on 1 January against segregation, said the issue was one of “freedom in the public sphere and of religious coercion.” He said that “there are certain values I want to see this country retain. I don’t want to see this country turning into a fundamentalist bastion.”

Several women have been exposed to verbal abuse in recent weeks as they refused to move to the back of an unofficially gender-segregated public bus. A young modern orthodox girl was spat at by an ultra-Orthodox man on her way to school in the town of Beit Shemesh just west of Jerusalem because he deemed her long skirt and shirt to be not modest enough, according to media reports.

Gender segregation has been illegally imposed on sidewalks where women are allowed to walk on only a certain side of the street and men-only public health clinics. Some public advertising campaigns have refrained from posting images of women in deference to ultra-Orthodox sensibilities. There was outrage among secular Israelis when a sole woman recipient of a Health Ministry award was excluded from the award ceremony because her presence offended religious sensitivities and when women speakers were excluded from a scheduled gynecological conference.

In response, women have held a “flash mob” dance performance in the center of Beit Shemesh, groups of “Freedom Riders” have ridden segregated buses, women have lent their image for an advertising campaign on private property and have held public “sing-offs” in protest of the growing extremism.

“People confuse the concept of multi-culturalism,” said Laura Wharton, 49, a member of the Jerusalem City Council from the left-wing Meretz Party, who last week boarded a segregated bus in an organized protest. “It means you can celebrate whatever holidays you want … It doesn’t mean you can invent your own laws.”

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Look Who’s Talking about The Church from Age to Age

Scholars

Dr. H. J. Selderhuis, a Dutch scholar of the Reformation and an editor for Vanderhoeck & Ruprecht projects, cited The Church from Age to Age positively in a recent review article regarding religious faith and the problem of violence. If you read Dutch, you can see the article here.

Dr. Nathan A. Finn, Associate Professor of Historical Theology at Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary in Wake Forest, has kindly reviewed and commended our book. You can read his review here.

Solid Ground Newsetter, a publication of evangelical apologists at Stand to Reason, is carrying The Church from Age to Age as a recommended resource here.

Students

Concordia University, Ann Arbor, students recently lined up to get their copy of the book as a textbook for their required church history class.

Pastors

Rev. William Weedon of Saint Paul Lutheran Church in Hamel, IL states that he is “MEGA impressed. . . . This volume is exceedingly well written.” He kindly recommended our book on his blog here.

Families

Mr. Peter Reske purchased The Church from Age to Age for his wife as a Christmas present. He was surprised to find his five year-old making it part of his bed time reading!

Why is this church history receiving so much attention? It is the most affordable, readable, one-volume church history available! Order your copy here. Get the Kindle edition here.

Be sure to click on the picture to get the full size version to display…

I appreciated this blog post by Pastor Dan Hinton and thought I’d just repost it and share it here. It touches on some internal Missouri Synod issues, but the point he makes is applicable to all situations where the ordination of women has been embraced, and of course, wherever the ordination of women has been embraced in the 20th century by a church, the ordination of actively homosexual persons is sure to follow as we have seen in the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America and nearly every other mainline protestant denomination here in this country and elsewhere in the world.

Recently a group has sprung up on Facebook advocating that “the ordination of women should be publicly discussed in The Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod.” Many of you may not know that this issue is what finally drove me from the ELCA to the Missouri Synod. I read the LCMS rationale for their practice, and was impressed that it seemed to flow from Scripture, despite how increasingly unpopular it made them. I wanted to know what the ELCA’s rationale was for its practice, so I started asking around. At the time I was about to begin applying to one of their seminaries, so I thought I ought to take care of this issue right off the bat. To make a long story short, not even the systematics chair at their seminary could defend the practice from Scripture. I swam across the Mississippi River so fast I didn’t even get wet. But I find it sad that this professor could not make a good defense, especially because, after years of reading about it in print and online and following discussions such as the aforementioned Facebook page, I have discovered the secret to arguing in favor of women’s ordination.

Step 1. Adopt Enthusiasm Early On

By this I do not mean what the term as come to mean, i.e., that you are passionate and excited. Here I intend the enthusiasm defined in the Smalcald Articles (III VIII 3ff). Of course, that same article staunchly condemns this idea, but hey, the Confessions are “living documents,” which means you’re totally free to disregard them when you need to. No, this enthusiasm is the one that says God the Holy Spirit tells you stuff apart from and before the Word.

Try this one: “God has given me all these gifts and He wants me to use them to glorify Him.” If you’re one of those stuck-up Missouri types, you might be inclined to object that Scripture doesn’t speak this way, but this objection is no problem for the Enthusiast. You know what God said because… well, you just do. And because God’s thoughts just popped into your head, no one can question them! But closely tied to this step is the next…

Step 2. Monasticism is Your Friend

I have to become a nun? Of course not! You want to bypass that entirely and be a priest, or maybe even the bishop. After all, the Kingdom of God is a hierarchy, and the closer you are to God in the organizational chart, the better. Why risk your salvation on staying a laywoman? Everyone knows that being a pastor is, like, a Get-Into-Heaven-Free card. And of course it goes without saying that pastors are by their very nature holier than anybody else, so don’t be stingy in pointing out that those mean Missourians are holding back all those goodies from thousands of women.

Think of the argument from Step 1. Not only do you have all these swell gifts, and you’d be just as good a pastor as any man, but you know the only way to use these gifts is to be a pastor. Remember: Only pastors are really serving God. Feel free to step on any other vocation in order to make that of pastor even higher — that’s what monasticism’s all about, remember? Fair warning: your pesky opponents might force their brainwashed wives into arguing along with them that they are content that they serve God “in their own vocations as wife and mother.” Whatever. No woman really thinks that way. The more you denigrate the vocations of wife and mother, the stronger your argument becomes. Bonus points for throwing stay-at-home mothers and homeschoolers under the bus as well.

One thing to remember: try to avoid too much talk of exactly what pastors are, what they do, and how they get to be pastors. Doubly so when engaging biblical texts on the matter (we’ll cover that in Step 3 in greater detail). Your new appreciation for monasticism reminds you that the pastor is just the guy in the church that God likes best, so feel free to point out how Jesus seemed to hold women in high regard. Holding women in high regard = He wants them to be pastors. Your opponent won’t understand what that argument means, but hey, he’s probably a man.  Remember how Yahweh said in the Old Testament, “I like Levi best, so his sons can be priests, but I hold all the other tribes in lower regard, so none of them gets anything special — especially Judah.” It’s somewhere in one of those long boring lists of names.

Step 3. Two Words: Higher Criticism

This step is probably remedial for you, but if it isn’t, you’ll need to understand how higher criticism works. Don’t worry, it’s really easy. You already know what God is like, right? He’s a lot like you. So throw out all the times when God (or Jesus) does or says something you know He wouldn’t, throw out all the commands that you know God wouldn’t really have made, and definitely throw out all the events you just know couldn’t really have happened. When’s the last time you saw a blind man see again without millions of dollars worth of surgery? I thought so.

But what does this have to do with women’s ordination? Well, remember, your opponents are basically knuckle-dragging, mouth-breathing fundies with academic credentials only slightly higher than Oral Roberts — so they’re going to be using the Bible as a crutch. They can quote the Bible all day long, but remember they approach it like total simpletons and take it at face value. You know better. You know what Jesus is really like (see Step 1), and He was all about radical inclusion. Again, your opponent will have no idea what that means, but you know it means He totally wants women pastors. They might bring up the fact that Jesus didn’t actually bother to make a woman a pastor during His earthly ministry, but you can just counter by thinking of the name of a woman in the Bible and claiming she was really a pastor.

Oh, and don’t forget the value of the New Perspective on Paul. Jesus was the radical inclusivist who wanted everyone to be happy and get along and never said a mean word to anyone, but then Paul came along and gave the church that nasty mean streak. Learn it well, because your opponents will be quoting Paul. A lot.

Step 4. Argumentum ad Misericordiam

Lastly, never underestimate the power of an argument from your own personal suffering. After all, you have a husband, parents, children, neighbors, coworkers, and fellow citizens, but there’s no one for you to serve until those meanies let you be a pastor. Be sure to include as much detail about your own suffering over this as possible. Remind everyone how you feel like you’re on the outside because they won’t let you in. Remind everyone about how many great gifts you have that can only be used if you were wearing a collar. What a burden that must be. Oh, and feel free to inflate the number of fellow sufferers there might be.

There’s much more that could be said, but that should give you a good start.

I know for you people out in the wild west, this is no big deal, but…this pretty kitty was caught in a trap about 2 hours SE of my home, here in Missouri. Recently, some have said that there have been no legitimate sightings of mountains lion in southern Missouri and have dismissed them as people with a healthy imagination. Well, I hope this convinces them. Click on the pictures to see the large versions. I do not think this cat is particularly happy.

Here is the story that came along with the picture. I was amused by the speculation that it may have been a family pet, and that it was being released near Deer Run Park, I guess to make sure the park lives up to its name?

(KMOV.com) – An unexpected animal was caught in a trap in Reynolds County, Missouri on Tuesday afternoon. County Commissioner, Wayne Henson, found a mountain lion in a trap typically used to capture coyotes and bobcats. The animal was not injured.  At this time it is uncertain if the lion was a pet or from the wild. The Reynolds County Conservation Department is expected to release the animal in the area of Deer Run Park.

Ecumenical News International
Daily News Service
3 January 2012

Vatican launches Catholic home for U.S. Episcopalians
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By David Gibson — ENInews/RNS
3 January (ENInews)–American Episcopalians upset with their denomination’s acceptance of gay and female clergy can now convert to the Roman Catholic Church while keeping many cherished traditions in a special new U.S. diocese that was established on 1 January by Pope Benedict XVI.

The Houston, Texas-based diocese, called the Personal Ordinariate of the Chair of St. Peter, will allow a special Anglican-style Catholic Mass that can include sections from the Book of Common Prayer and other Anglican liturgies, Religion News Service reports.

This new structure grew out of a controversial 2009 effort by Benedict to convince conservative Anglicans to align with Rome under an exemption that allows Anglican priests, laity, and even entire congregations to convert while keeping their prized music and prayers.

Bishops who convert under the rite will be allowed to function as Catholic priests, but not as bishops. Married Anglican male priests will be able to remain married and serve as Catholic priests, though unmarried priests who join will not be able to marry later without renouncing their priesthood.

The American ordinariate is only the second such jurisdiction established since Benedict launched the process; the first was set up a year ago in England, the birthplace of Anglicanism, and others are being considered for Canada and Australia.

It is still unclear how much of a draw the new jurisdiction will be. So far, some 100 former Episcopal priests have applied to become Catholic priests in the U.S. ordinariate, and about 1,400 individuals — as well as six small congregations — have sought to join the Catholic Church under the new provision.

After a year in existence, the ordinariate in England and Wales still counts only 1,000 former Anglican lay people and 60 former Anglican priests as members. Some Episcopalians in the U.S., like some Anglicans in other countries, have opted to affiliate with conservative Anglican bodies or breakaway traditionalist groups rather than becoming Catholics.

The U.S. ordinariate will be led by the Rev. Jeffrey N. Steenson, a former Episcopal bishop of New Mexico and father of three who became a Catholic in 2007 and was ordained a Catholic priest in 2009.

In a statement on 2 January, Steenson was enthusiastic about the new rite, but also cautioned that Episcopalians who join face “a steep learning curve” in trying to integrate under such a novel arrangement.

“Pray that we may strive to learn the faith, laws, and culture of the Catholic Church with humility and good cheer,” Steenson said. “But pray too that we do not forget who we are and where we have come from, for we have been formed in the beautiful and noble Anglican tradition.”

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