AP Article on “Cooperating in Externals”
Thanks to Oliver Young and another loyal BJS reader for pointing this article out! We appreciate people pointing out items that may be of interest to our readers.
Continuing with our cooperating in externals discussion, this came out yesterday across the AP wire: “Lutheran split over gays and the Bible shakes up multibillion-dollar social service network.” Both are the same article, but this shows it’s got (inter)national distribution.
Interesting quote:
The Rev. Donald McCoid, an ecumenical officer for the Chicago-based Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, said, “we are deeply concerned about the ministries of care that may be challenged by the recent action of The Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod.”
So it’s the LCMS that has made cooperating in externals difficult?
Read 265 times
Even the outsiders can see the writing on the wall:
“However, the guidelines for evaluating the joint relationships made it clear that co-operative work in many of the agencies is likely to end.”
The errorists always blame the Church for difficulties. If only we continued to be blind and deaf on this subject and be more tolerant of heresy (women’s ordination, denial real presence, open communion, Trinitarian errors, wrong views of Scripture, different gospels, false fellowship, gay ordination, defiling marriage beds) then they could continue to use our resources and reputation to do more of their version of “good” in this world (because most of their work doesn’t positively affect the next).
The two are the same AP story… with them “the lutherans” are the elca. You wouldn’t expect them to go behind McCoid’s remark and find out what was really wrong, would you?
This should have been a topic for discussion and decision when elca ordained women, or adopted a heretical view of the Bible, or a selective view of the Confessions. or…. (things already a problem in lcms, like open communion, should have been tackled at the same time).
But it wasn’t/they weren’t.
It remains to be seen what will happen now.
The minority within the ELCA is pushing its views on the much more conservative majority. The ELCA is now an easy target to criticize publicly. In twenty years, the ELCA will shrink to the size of the UCC. Remove the doctrine of Historical Criticism from the ELCA, and the justification for the heresies mentioned by Pastor Scheer instantly disappears.
We will have to “wait and see” how much correction of ELCA doctrinal errors the NALC and the LCMC are willing to make. Are those bodies willing to abandon Historical/Higher Criticism and rely solely on the Bible. I would rather see the LCMS engage in calm, rational dialog with the new Lutheran bodies. With time and patience, they will learn how to become confessional Lutherans. At least I hope that is what will happen. How long do you think it will take?
@Wallenstein #3
Read Herman Sasse as to a church coming back from the ‘Institutional lie” once it has been ensconced in a church body.
Like the Roman Catholic, ‘Infallibility of the Pope’, so the ELCA’s, ‘Infallibility of Reason’, has usurped the place of Christ for as long as this visible church exists.
@Wallenstein #3
The minority within the ELCA is pushing its views on the much more conservative majority.
Truly, I would like to believe this, if for no better reasons than nostalgia. I am a Norwegian baptized in the Danish Synod and confirmed in the American Lutheran Church, both of which through mesne mergers are now part of the ELCA. I can understand that a majority might not prevail for a period of time. But why has this majority not prevailed for now these five decades? That length of time is enough to make a person doubt that the described conservative majority exists.
Can you give some information showing the basis for your believe that a conservative majority exits, and then explain why it does not prevail?
The “conservative” elca are mostly voting from the cemetery by now.
Their children have grown up with historical criticism, confirmation w/o the Small Catechism and women in the pulpit. How would they know what was wrong with all that?
Their grandchildren … are they Lutheran or did they join one of the other libs? Does it matter? They have pulpit and altar fellowship with all of them and what passes for preachers are interchangeable!
Not to gloat; we are at the other end of the same train, unless we get off soon.
@T.R.Halvorson #5
Whether or not the conservatives are the majority or the minority really doesn’t matter much when what things really come down to is this:
1. If the Bible is the true and inerrant Word Of God, I need the elca to show me where it says that(women’s ordination, denial real presence, open communion, Trinitarian errors, wrong views of Scripture, different gospels, false fellowship, gay ordination, defiling marriage beds) is all well and good.
2. If the elca wants to continue to be called “lutheran”, show me in any of the many of Martin Luther’s teachings, that are in accord with any of Pastor Scheer’s comments in parentheses in number one above.
Show me elca !! If the LCMS is wrong, “show us”
Isn’t it funny that Missouri is the “Show Me State”
@Wallenstein #3
It will take an act of God for the LCMC and NALC to repent (as any organization). I hope they see that the same arguments made by libs in ELCA for ordaining practicing homosexuals were the ones used to get women into the pulpit.
@Gene G #7
You have pegged the issue. They lack real proof of the false teachings (because there is none).
Isn’t “external” one of those words for which we have given a new (political) definition? Of course there was the scriptural illustration about the cup, which was washed and clean on the outside (external), but on the inside (internal) was quite dirty.