Sunday March 6, 2023

The Lutheran Church comes in many flavours. You can’t generalize about them. During the 15 years I edited a clergy magazine, I sensed that in Lutheran denominations, every article, sermon, or policy, had to cite Martin Luther, somehow.
If Christ is the foundation of all Christian churches, Luther is the foundation of all Lutheran churches.
Which can lead to some difficulties for more progressive Lutheran churches, who preach God’s unconditional love for all people, everywhere, regardless of their race or religion. Because Luther himself was vigorously anti-Semitic.
His attitudes must grate uncomfortably against America’s unconditional support for the state of Israel.
Of all Lutheran denominations, the Lutheran Church Missouri Synod (LCMS) is probably the least progressive.
Wes Morgan defined them in the Daily Kos online news service: “The LCMS is a staunchly conservative denomination. They are not welcoming to LGBTQIA+ folks, women are forbidden from leadership roles, they’re loudly anti-choice, and they adhere to Biblical inerrancy and literalism. They don’t participate in ecumenical groups, and they don’t make common cause or share fellowship with conservative Christian denominations outside the Lutheran sphere.”
Morgan summarized: “The LCMS is not anywhere close to what we name the Religious Left.”
If Morgan is right, the Missouri Synod must find me as heretical as I find them hidebound.

Takes a stand
So it came as a pleasant surprise to hear that the president of the Missouri Synod had denounced, without equivocation, what he called “Christian nationalists.”
You know who they are. They’re loud. They have guns. And strong opinions. And in defence of those opinions, they will deliberately drive a truck into a crowd of protesters. Or shoot up a mosque-full of Muslims. Or storm the Capitol in Washington.
According to a Religious News Service story, LCMS President Matthew Harrison said he was “shocked to learn recently that a few members of LCMS congregations have been propagating radical and unchristian ‘alt-right’ views via Twitter and other social media.”
Harrison didn’t back away from naming the “horrible and racist teachings of the so-called alt-right.” He cited advocacy for “white supremacy, Nazism, pro-slavery, anti-interracial marriage, women as property, fascism, death for homosexuals, and genocide.”
RNS stated that Harrison “noted far-right members were causing ‘local disruption’ for congregations and alleged that LCMS leadership and deaconesses had fallen victim to online threats, some of which he described as ‘serious.’
“This is evil. We condemn it in the name of Christ,” Harrison wrote in a Feb. 21 letter to all churches in his denomination.
He called for excommunication – normally associated with the Roman Catholic church -- for the unrepentant. While rarely used, excommunication would bar far-right agitators from participating in anything that could shape LCMS policies.
Although the Missouri Synod does not have a disciplinary system that could control its members or congregations, RNS noted, “Harrison intends to use his bully pulpit as LCMS President to purge these noxious voices from LCMS churches.”

Our own far-right
Let’s be clear, though – this is not just a U.S. issue. Canada has its own “Christo-fascists,” as Wes Morgan called them.
Some may be Lutherans. Judging by their placards and news quotes, though, I’d guess that they’re more likely to belong to the spectrum of evangelical churches, most of whom hold similar pro-Bible, anti-gay, anti-feminist, anti-abortion, anti-newcomer views.
Also anti-vaccine, anti-mask, and anti-Trudeau.
And they wrap it all in the Canadian flag.
Personally, I oppose excommunication. I don’t believe in exclusion; I don’t think Jesus did either.
I’d rather make the far right feel so uncomfortable in congregations and communities that they voluntarily go somewhere else. Not by rejecting them, but by rejecting their opinions. Until they shrink themselves out of existence.
It won’t happen quickly, if it happens at all. Society moves slower than glaciers – although glaciers shrink faster these days than they used to.
Racism in the U.S. goes back to Confederate slavery. Racism in Canada was formalized by the Indian Act of 1876, which consolidated an already existing patchwork of laws and policies subordinating Indigenous peoples.
Recent discoveries of what may be unmarked graves of children who died – or were murdered, or were victims of nutritional experiments in Residential Schools -- prove nothing. Except the callous assumption that Indigenous families didn’t need to be notified when one of their children died. They were natives; therefore they didn’t care; so why bother notifying anyone?
“White nationalism” shaped the Indian Act. It still lurks in Canadian policing, government, and culture.
And a significant portion of Canadians still hold those prejudicial views.
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Copyright © 2023 by Jim Taylor. Non-profit use in congregations and study groups encouraged; links from other blogs welcomed; all other rights reserved.
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Your turn

My column last week about the war going on in Ukraine produced a flood of mail, and then Valentina Gal’s letter – which I sent out as an additional mailing, produced another flood. Here goes with some of it.
Valentina herself sent thanks for including her letter, and added a link to the book about her mother’s experiences in the Holodomor, Philipovna: Daughter of Sorrow. https://www.guernicaeditions.com/title/9781771833691

Carolyn Fraser wondered about those Peace Institutes I referred to. ”I know of the ‘Seven Centres for Peace’ with Rotary. I am not a Rotarian but am in the District where Virginia Nordby donated a sizeable amount to have the first Peace Centre in Duke University in North Carolina.
“She certainly wanted peace to be studied. Since there are now Seven Peace Centres in the world I was wondering if they are doing as Professor Nordby had hoped?”
JT: I should be clear – I was not referring to Rotary International’s Peace Centres in that comment. As I recall the circumstances, I was writing about Canada’s Project Ploughshares project, and followed its links to other national and international centres.

I had asked, “Who benefits from war?”
Tom Watson replied, “Companies who make the instruments of war laugh all the way to the bank. We could find a solution but as long as there's a thirst for power, and money to be made, war will exist. It's the same as: We could find a solution to mass shootings but as long as gun manufacturers can make money from gun sales, and support politicians who will see that the gun culture continues, mass shootings will exist.”

Jim Hoffman sent a quotation: “I believe it was Confucius who said, ‘War does not determine who is right. War determines who is left.’”

Steve Roney pointed out a flaw in my analogy about “creating peace by studying war. Which makes as much sense as studying porn to promote chastity.”
Steve replied, “It actually makes as much sense as studying diseases to promote health.”
In a follow-up letter. Steve added, “I was perhaps especially harsh this column, because you seem to be advocating pacifism, which I fear is an extremely harmful doctrine which leads to much unnecessary suffering and death. It is especially evil, because it masquerades as a higher morality.”

Don McKibbin disagreed with my assertion that “War is never the answer. Never.”
“You must be forgetting the millions of innocent Jews and others who were murdered by the Nazis. If the Allies hadn’t fought the war against the Nazi regime the world would be a different place and we wouldn’t have the freedom to write notes to each other!
“With Putin’s attack against Ukraine there is no moral equivalency between the two sides. Putin is a lying dictator who threatens nuclear war. If he wins the war against democratic Ukraine, he will undoubtedly try to take over the Baltic states. This draws in NATO and possibly nuclear war.
“The Ukrainian ‘war’ has a just purpose and the democracies of the world should try to save Ukraine.”
JT: Several people cited World War II as a necessary war. I argue that WWII started in 1918, when Woodrow Wilson twisted the Treaty of Versailles to make it more punitive for Germany, leading directly to Hitler’s eventual rise to power. If there had been a Marshall Plan after WWI, there would have been no WWII. By 1939, it was too late to seek “peace in our time.”

“Waste of any kind is so sad and war is the greatest waste of all,” Linda Hollstect wrote. “it is sad to think there are so few resources to learn & teach peace. I found this Canadian children’s book What is Peace by Wallace Edwards on YouTube and its questions are useful for individuals as we individually seek peace and for society as we teach it to our children: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ko4DmY99q-w

Bob Rollwagen wrote about Valentina’s letter: “Excellent overview of the Ukrainian history and observation that the west is still rationalizing its level of support for the Ukrainian people in terms of political and economical gain. NATO should have been able to restore the Original Ukraine 2014 border instead of waiting for an opportunity to settle for new borders.”

Jane Wallbrown took a wider view: “I couldn't help but think, Jim, that every country has had its Holodomors [affecting subsequent generations]. In USA it was the Depression. I grew up with adults who had a mentality totally shaped by it and it lasted throughout their whole lives; affected how they raised their children.
“During WW11. We four children were left in a Children's Home in Ohio when my mother was finally able to join my father in Tura. We were all missionary kids. Several had parents in the Philippines who were killed by the Japanese while I was there. WW11 left many families disrupted and forever affected all over the world.
“The Irish Potato famine? Changed Boston's history when the Irish arrived there to escape the famine. Follow that historical line and you have JFK as President.”