The Core of Lutheran CORE

Paul Harvey

Several posts down I put up an interview with our contributor Jon Pahl, my former colleague at Valparaiso Univ. and author of Empires of Sacrifice, just out with NYU Press.

Jon has another piece, more specific to some issues within contemporary Lutheranism but I think of interest to some of you here (especially to the anonymous commentator who has complained about our lack of coverage of Lutheranism in the past): "The Core of Lutheran CORE," from the Journal of Lutheran Ethics. Jon's piece is a blistering critique of this movement for reform within the ELCA (Evangelical Lutheran Church of America). Apart from a specific controversy within Lutheranism (especially, I gather, over sexuality, something like the same fights that are going on within Anglicanism and many other traditions), there are also substantive issues of the history of religious demography. A taste:

And, finally, in several recent jeremiads, Lutheran CORE leader Robert Benne imagines that the ELCA is in decline because it has accommodated itself to American "liberal Protestantism." "Skewed commitments," by which Benne means the liberalism of Lutherans in the ELCA, "led to dramatic membership losses."¹⁴ Apart from the fact that this is lousy history, it also reveals again American millennialist and dualistic scapegoating — someone must be to blame for declension — as a founding assumption underneath the movement.

[13] Historically speaking, in fact, immigration patterns and birth rates have far more to do with Lutheran membership ebbs and flows in America than anything else. It's not as if Lutherans used to be great evangelists and theologians and have now become lousy at both. Instead, as E. Clifford Nelson's classic The Lutherans in North America documents, Lutheran growth in the United States can be traced directly to the waves of immigrants from European countries that hosted Lutheran majorities.¹⁵ Most of these early Lutheran immigrants to America also procreated enthusiastically; it was necessary to have large families to counter high infant mortality rates and to provide laborers for the farms most Lutherans worked to make a living.

[14] In recent decades, and especially since the dramatic changes in immigrant law established by Congress in 1965, immigrants to America have come primarily from Latin America, Africa, and from South and East Asia, and decidedly not from Scandinavia and Germany.¹⁶ Couple that with the fact that in the late twentieth century Lutherans began to practice birth control and to have smaller families (to their moral credit, globally and ecologically speaking), and the causes for Lutheran "decline" clearly take root not in some imagined Lutheran doctrinal purity or its absence, but in documented demographic shifts.¹⁷

[15] Furthermore, it is not just liberal churches that are suffering numerically. Even culturally "conservative" churches associated with European enclaves (such as the LCMS and the Roman Catholic Church — if you subtract Latino/a membership increases due to the new immigration) are now losing numbers across North America.¹⁸ And perhaps most substantively, for many decades, if not centuries, Americans have chosen churches less for their theological heft than because of their ethnic identity, geographical convenience or entertainment value.¹⁹ The millennial (if not apocalyptic) rhetoric of declension that marks Lutheran CORE masks demographic causes for change that can explain, without blame, why Lutheran congregations are closing and denominational budgets shrinking.

Robert Benne, a board member of CORE, responds to Jon's critique here. He writes:

But the strife over homosexuality is symptomatic of the larger debate, which has to do with the nature of the Gospel in its larger sense, the role of the Law in the Christian life (of which there seems to be none in Pahl’s rant), what is authoritative in the life of the church, how that authority is exercised, and what is central and what is peripheral in the life and mission of the Lutheran church. A large number of people in the ELCA — including some its most devout members — are deeply disturbed about the direction of the ELCA on these matters, and CORE takes them up as genuine concerns.

25 years ago Joan Scott published her well-known article "Gender: A Useful Category for Historical Analysis," a staple of history graduate course readings still. I don't think she had religious history much in mind in that piece, but I'd like to see someone develop an article-length equivalent for religious history, something like "Gender as a Religious System: A Useful Category for American Religious History." That would shed much light on the coalescing gender/sexuality divisions that are so central to American religious institutions today, and certainly something I saw fought out emotionally and searingly during my two year sojourn at Valparaiso.

In the Footsteps of Phoebe

Welcome guest blogger, Cheryl D. Naumann. She is the author of In the Footsteps of Phoebe: A Complete History of the Deaconess Movement in The Lutheran Church–Missouri Synod. She is a graduate of Valparaiso University and a Lutheran Deaconess.

In the Footsteps of Phoebe
Cheryl D. Naumann

I commend to you our sister Phoebe, a servant of the church in Cenchrea. I ask you to receive her in the Lord in a way worthy of the saints and to give her any help she may need from you, for she has been a great help to many people, including me. (St. Paul writing to the Church at Rome –Romans 16:1-2)

In May I celebrated the 30th anniversary of my consecration as a deaconess in The Lutheran Church–Missouri Synod (LCMS) and that same month saw the publication of my book, In the Footsteps of Phoebe: A Complete History of the Deaconess Movement in The Lutheran Church–Missouri Synod.

Covering the entire span of LCMS history, from the time of the Synod’s inception to 2009, In the Footsteps of Phoebe covers material that has previously never found its way into the historical annals of the Synod. This is not to accuse the Synod of not caring about women—but simply to observe that LCMS historians have consistently documented general histories without including an examination of what was happening with LCMS female workers at the same time and in relation to that history. So this book takes a close look at the initial and continued formation of diaconal ministry in the Synod, and how deaconesses have been intricately involved in the church’s mission, its doctrinal struggles, its renewed emphasis on Confessionalism, and so forth.

As the story of the deaconess movement unfolds, it overlaps with the stories of many other synodical interests—the LCMS Board for Missions, Board for Higher Education, and Board of Directors; the Lutheran Women’s Missionary League; the Walther League; Lutheran nurses and Lutheran hospitals; scores of Lutheran congregations and institutions; Radio Station KFUO; Valparaiso University; the Concordia University System; and countless elected synodical officials. I also look at deaconess identity, the importance of God’s Word, and the concepts of sisterhood, vocation, consecration, and a servant’s heart.

From 1919 to 1979, the Lutheran Deaconess Association (LDA), an autonomous organization (that still exists), trained women to serve as deaconesses in the Synodical Conference and the Missouri Synod. Graduates of LDA deaconess schools gave faithful service to hospitals, missions, and congregations of the Synod, where they engaged in a ministry of mercy that complemented the pastoral office—the ministry of Word and Sacraments.

The professional identity and role of deaconesses in the church evolved as the LDA sought to keep in step with changes in American society. When doctrinal disputes erupted within the LCMS from the mid-twentieth century onward, members of the LDA, those who educated deaconess students on behalf of the LDA, and the Lutheran Deaconess Conference, increasingly embraced theological positions contrary to orthodox LCMS teaching. Many members of the LCMS became disenchanted with the LDA and its training program, concluding that the Synod should assume responsibility for educating its own deaconesses. They concluded that the LCMS needed to train its own deaconesses to ensure faithfulness in their teaching, leadership, and service.

In 1979, the LCMS authorized its Board for Higher Education to direct Concordia University, Chicago to establish a full deaconess training program on its campus by the fall of 1980, and in 2001, the Synod sanctioned additional training programs at Concordia Seminary, St. Louis, and Concordia Theological Seminary, Fort Wayne. In 1980, nine deaconesses founded the Concordia Deaconess Conference—Lutheran Church Missouri Synod, to aid the Synod in “upholding and promoting deaconess service,” and to “provide opportunity for spiritual, professional and personal growth and fellowship” for deaconesses of the Synod.

Today, LCMS deaconesses continue to dedicate their lives to a ministry of mercy, at institutions, in congregations and schools, on synodical boards and committees, and in the home and foreign mission fields of the Synod. The deaconess community is growing, and perhaps for the first time in LCMS history, diaconal ministry appears to be embraced by the entire synod as a legitimate way for women to serve their Lord within the church.

I invite you to visit a website that supplements the reading of In the Footsteps of Phoebe at www.deaconesshistory.org. The site includes illustrations for the book, a comprehensive Bibliography, book reviews, and extended quotations (for example, an entire speech or sermon from which only a part is quoted in the book), as well as my “Woman of the Week” and “musings about history” blogs.