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Your Turn / Re: Stop...Go...Wait...Uh...
« on: Today at 09:31:23 PM »But again, it is a burgeoning movement that has only recently gained much strength (rejecting parochial schools for homeschooling, for example, has a long niche history but in the last five or ten years has become mainstream in the LCMS), and the surrounding culture, which has always been problematic, has moved drastically away from its Christian moorings in the last few years. As I said in the other thread, I think the rapid and highly visible success of the trans movement was the straw that broke the camel's back (along with justifications of the murderous destruction of the Floyd riots and subsequent kowtowing to anti-Christian CRT). Sure these fringe conservatives supported Harrison against Kieschnick. And sure, Harrison hasn't changed. Nor, really, have those who elected him. What has changed, in their mind, is the urgent need of the moment. When Harrison was elected, gay marriage was illegal and candidates of both major parties campaigned against it. The idea of the culture totally dedicated to normalizing drag queens among schoolchildren is recent. Harrison was elected before all that to hold the line. But since then, in their view, the line has broken. What they want now is someone who will lead the effort in the LCMS to regroup as an unapologetic counter-culture now that holding the line within the culture is a lost cause.I was unaware of the Large Catechism project and the furor that sprang up around it. After learning about it here, I came upon some Facebook exchanges that surprised me further. (I've intentionally isolated myself from synod matters so I can focus locally.)I think so, not about the election but about the willingness of the LCMS to become a recognizable. cohesive counter-culture as opposed to trying to be a faithful presence within mainstream culture. In short, it was an attempt to force a general referendum in the LCMS on the sanity of mainstream American society. Very much akin to the ruckus over wokeism at CUW. To those on the right, the time for going along to get along has passed. The time for choosing has come. Any effort to make Lutheranism of the Christian life seem more palatable to academia, mainline protestantism, of modern society generally is a surrender.
Does the furor look to others like a political test flight, to see who would rally to a cause and measure possibilities for change?
My sense, though, is that the folks calling for great change were once supporters of the current leadership. They are people who formerly were excited about projects coming out of synod but have grown more cynical and hostile. They haven't gotten what they wanted.
My children attend or attended LCMS parochial schools. My congregations have been larger and not really part of this movement. I don't know anyone (I don't think) at Gottesdienst. And I think the recent craziness about the CPH catechism was ridiculous. But I think I understand the deeper impetus behind this movement in ways the old moderates of the LCMS can only seems to perceive as rigid narrow-mindedness, and in this case I think the old moderates are mistaken. This is more than just wanting congregations or the seminaries to be more conservative. It is wanting the LCMS to be a recognizably counter-cultural movement and organization. That's why what really bothers them is appeasing efforts, equivocating, and coming across as trying to be acceptable to the culture or even explain ourselves to the culture on the culture's terms. What the old moderates take as doing our best, so far as it depends on us, to get along with everyone, they are taking as the sounding of an uncertain trumpet.
The current team stays politically safe since people to the right and to the left can't join hands to form a significant opposition, I suppose. (The Kieschnick folks and the Gottesdienst folks would have to work together but can't.) Yet the bloom is off the rose.