Messages

1

Your Turn / Re: Basic idolatry

« on: December 15, 2020, 07:16:53 PM »

https://www.firstthings.com/web-exclusives/2020/12/the-tragedy-of-transhood

2

Your Turn / Re: Christianity and Marxism

« on: June 30, 2020, 02:16:28 AM »

I think this is an appropriate thread for this link, though it could just as easily fit in the race discussion thread.

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/black-lives-matters-a-thing-of-the-left-anchored-on-a-cop-hate-strategy/

You're braver than I am.  One side here wants to discuss ideas and where they come from, the other wants to emote. No matter how clearly you delineate a thesis, the emoters will reply by calling you a hateful person.

This dynamic is not an accident.  "Black Lives Matter" is in part an organic, unorganized movement among people who want to fight against racism, particularly as it might manifest itself among law-enforcement officials.


A group of self-proclaimed Marxists have formed an entity and named in Black Lives Matter.  This group has little concern about the actual lives of black people.  Its agenda is nothing short of upending the country's political, social, and economic order. 


Those falling into the first group should be among those most strongly disassociating from the second.  After all, the organized entity advocates policies that are once again causing a spike in the murder of African Americans in cities across the country.  To the Marxists, these deaths are either irrelevant or somehow useful to the cause.  But for some reason, many actually defend the Marxist entity against those who simply want to shine a light on what it is and stands for.

Black Marxists perhaps should read more Marx: https://marxists.catbull.com/archive/marx/works/1862/letters/62_07_30a.htm

3

Your Turn / Re: A Call for Racial Justice Reform in the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod

« on: June 24, 2020, 03:52:42 PM »

_Reading Religion, Race, and Culture in Philemon_, Matthew V Johnson, et.al, ed. (Fortress, 2012) might be an interesting place to start to look at different points of view but I don’t think it’s for a popular audience.
Lohse’s Colossians and Philemon commentary from the Hermeneia series is still useful on technical aspects if one is brave enough. From a bit more conservative point of view, J. D. G. Dunn’s volume on Colossians and Philemon in Eerdman’s NIGTC series is probably also worth a look.

4

Your Turn / Re: Coronavirus news

« on: June 23, 2020, 10:31:14 AM »

I am highly skeptical of Krugman’s opinions because I do not trust his judgment:

1. New Keysians are most famous for trying to undo the failures of Keysians old and new.

2. He fell for a classic “you have child p*rn on your computer” scam in January of this year.

3. He predicted in 1998 that the economic impact of the internet would be negligible by 2005 because people would have nothing to say. In all fairness, he was half right. People have nothing to say but they use the internet to do it.

5

Your Turn / Re: Fixing systemic racism

« on: June 17, 2020, 05:54:59 PM »

Did anyone else within earshot ever have coffee in the Eric Gritsches' kitchen at Gettysburg Seminary, overshadowed by the poster of Aunt Jemima flipping viewers the bird? They knew the trademark was racist then, in the mid-80s.

Yes.  That poster was in Eric and Ruth's kitchen when I was at Gettysburg in the late 1970s.  Good coffee, too.

Tom Pearson

Yes, I lived next door.

6

Your Turn / Re: Discussing race productively in the church

« on: June 17, 2020, 11:01:34 AM »

Dave and Matt,
Thank you calling attention to the articles from the BCC and Fr. McCaulley. They give me more hope than I have had in quite a while. What has been missing for me in what I have read from the ELCA in its various expressions has been authentic and theologically sound arguments instead of thought stopping cliches and things like “In the name of the Parent, The Rebel, and the Spirit.“

7

Your Turn / Re: Mockingbird on Confederacy

« on: June 12, 2020, 11:18:50 AM »

You stretch the "possibilities" to the extreme, Pastor Charlton. It doesn't help.
I do note that the population of the New Jersey town where Beloved Spouse and I lived was about 40 percent Jewish, and that included the neighborhood around the Lutheran Church.
The church had a carillon that played at noon and six, sort of a Lutheran Angelus, the carillon powered by disks of hymns. One afternoon, the church and the town received worried and angry phone calls from residents.
It seems that the carillon was playing "Glorious Things of Thee Are Spoken," the hymn with the same tune as "Deutschland über alles." the German national anthem. Happily, the pastor was good friends with local rabbis, was able to write a letter to congregations apologizing for the tune. And the church quickly threw away that particular disk.
I heard, but did not personally experience, that a former Lutheran "Altenheim" nursing home in New Jersey had some problems because the residential songfests included "Ich hatt' einen Kameraden," a soldiers' song from the 19th Century still sung by troops in the 20th. When the facility came to have a few Jewish residents, they did not want to hear that tune in their hallways.
Heard out of any historical context, the "Horst Wessel Lied" (Die Pfanne hoch) is as fine a military anthem as ever was, but in historical context, it is terrifying and obscene.
Songs, symbols, names, uniforms and flags carry their histories with them. There may be places in the world where a statue of Luther would be terrible. I'm not sure statues of Confederate Generals should stand anywhere among us today.

The Horst Wessel was never a “military anthem” but was purely a production of the Nazi party and was published by Goebbels in _Der Angriff_ as a memorial to Wessel who had been an SA commander. The song is outlawed in Germany and Austria. There is a Wikipedia article for more (without the burden of having to read a history book).

8

Your Turn / Re: Lutherdom Has Become the Sleeping Pygmy

« on: June 11, 2020, 09:45:27 AM »

L’ironie devient presque douloureuse.

9

Your Turn / Re: Rev. Dr. R. Guy Erwin Named United Lutheran Seminary President

« on: June 11, 2020, 09:31:30 AM »

Speaking of Rev. Doctor R. Guy Bishop Erwin, I don't think there is any danger that his regime will be more hostile to students who hold traditional views on marriage than the current regime is.  He might even be more respectful of people with traditional views, if Pastor Tibbett's experience is indicative of his attitude.

It could turn to be a shrewd decision. He has to raise money or fall into the trap Southern did with LR’s Faustian bargain. If he can do that and operate above board, he will be a big improvement. It may also be that he is positioned to be able create some sort of order out of the chaos with students and faculty because none of the usual trump cards can be played (except being cis-gendered, I guess).

10

Your Turn / Re: Trinity Sunday

« on: June 08, 2020, 04:30:11 PM »

What’s the over/under on how many more posts it will take to get to homosexuality?

11

Your Turn / Re: Trinity Sunday

« on: June 07, 2020, 08:15:00 PM »

Tom writes:
 The writing (in Sunday’s and Seasons) is at best clumsy and often excruciatingly bad.
If you can restrain your knee jerk reactions to criticism of the ELCA—including by those of us who are still in it—I doubt you would sign off on publishing much of what is in Sundays and Seasons.

I comment:
You probably do not remember the times here when I have been critical of the ELCA and have specifically voiced my not so humble opinion that S&S is often a terrible mess of inelegant,inept language and goofy riffs on theology. I frequently rewrote most of the prayers and usually did not use the tinkering with “traditional” (At least since 1959) liturgical language. If I felt the need for alternatives to the SBH or LBW, I generally went to the Book of Common Prayer.

Charles,
I don’t think we disagree then.

p.s. Smallmouth on a fly rod are a lot of fun.

12

Your Turn / Re: Trinity Sunday

« on: June 07, 2020, 04:39:56 PM »

Why?
You don’t believe in God, the creator?
You don’t believe in Jesus, the Christ?
You don’t believe in the Holy Spirit?
And if you choose to say that something “smells” like Sundays and seasons, that suggests to me that you are predisposed to dislike what you are reading.
Beloved Spouse and I “attended” worship at the national Cathedral in Washington DC this morning. Terrific music. A wonderful sermon by Bishop Budde that stated clearly the events of the past week and told how God who is creating, loving, and empowering as Father, Son and Holy Spirit can serve us and how we should serve that God known as Father, Son and Holy Spirit by being creative and loving and using our “powers” for good.
Elegant Book of Common Prayer language, too.

Steven, thank you for looking it up.

Charles,
I am happy for you that you had a worship experience that had faithful preaching and a theologically orthodox and beautifully written liturgy. Not everyone is so fortunate.
The triune God in all three persons creates. This is clear from the Genesis reading.
The three persons in their perichoretic relations are God. The proper name of God is Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. “Creator” does not name the first person of the Trinity. Reducing the three persons to functions is modalist. The benediction I cited fails to name God properly and should not have used.
In my judgment, Sundays and Seasons is in general a cesspool of poor, if not heterodox theology driven by being in bondage to sin and the Zeitgeist. The writing is at best clumsy and often excruciatingly bad.
If you can restrain your knee jerk reactions to criticism of the ELCA—including by those of us who are still in it—I doubt you would sign off on publishing much of what is in Sundays and Seasons.
Now I’m going fishing...
Tom

13

Your Turn / Trinity Sunday

« on: June 07, 2020, 12:28:40 PM »

Below is the benediction from today’s worship at a local ELCA congregation. It smells like Sundays and Seasons but half of me hopes I’m wrong and the other half would be relieved that it wasn’t produced by the new pastor.

“God, the creator, Jesus, the Christ, and the Holy Spirit, the comforter, bless you and keep you in eternal love.”

To this all were supposed to say “Amen” but I cannot.

14

Your Turn / Re: Fixing systemic racism

« on: June 05, 2020, 07:43:22 PM »

Perhaps this discussion would benefit from a better understanding of what "systemic" actually means and how it manifests itself...

"Systemic" means it's built in and functions without anyone's having to intend it--like the house percentage at a casino. That's why no one takes personal blame.

I would say that systemic means it's part of the system to keep a group of people in a general state of dishonor. It's a general acceptance of stereotypes based on race. It was part of American culture from the beginning. Laws and policies that treated Natives as less than human. The laws and policies that treated blacks as lesser humans. Remember that our constitution originally said: "Representatives and direct Taxes shall be apportioned among the several States which may be included within this Union, according to their respective Numbers, which shall be determined by adding to the whole Number of free Persons, including those bound to Service for a Term of Years, and excluding Indians not taxed, three fifths of all other Persons."

Not everyone was counted as people in America. That's systemic racism. Redlining was systemic racism. What we did with German-Americans during WWI and Japanese-Americans during WWII was systemic racism. The "system," i.e., the laws allowed us to discriminate against people because of their race.


The largest massacre of Chinese immigrants in the U.S. happened in Rock Springs, WY, where I used to live. 28 is the official total killed, but unofficial estimates place it at 40 or 50. The hatred and killing by the white miners against the Chinese miners was systemic racism.

It's hard to know where to begin.


The "three-fifths" provision in the Constitution does not mean, and never did mean, that black Americans were considered to be 3/5 of a person. If you didn't sleep through junior-high civics, you know this.  That provision is in the Constitution only because the anti-slavery states demanded it (or that slaves not be counted at all).  Indeed, southerners, and slave owners in particular, wanted to count each slave as a whole person.  Why?  This would have increased the number of House seats allocated to slave states.  Anti-slave states recognized the abject unfairness of counting slaves when apportioning House seats but then denying those same people the right to participate in selecting those House members. 


The provision regarding "Indians not taxed" has a much less clear history.  What is known, though, is that this provision applied to Native Americans who had chosen to remain within their tribal systems rather than avail themselves of the benefits of citizenship in a US state. Those American Indians who had availed themselves of the benefits of citizenship in a state were counted.


US history includes far, far too many shameful acts of racism against black and Native people.  But enactment of the two Constitutional provisions that you cite are not among them.

Why do you think the question of counting or not counting slaves even came up? Why do you think some whites would even consider not counting them as part of the population? Yes, the 3/5 was a compromise between 0 and 1; but I maintain that the whole discussion was based on racisms and/or classism.

Part of the aim of the compromise was to limit the number of representatives for slave owning states.

15

Your Turn / Re: Stanza 1“You Are the Way,” George W. Doane [Tune : Dundee]: LBW vs. ELW

« on: May 13, 2020, 02:54:25 PM »

But what do the more progressive voices in this forum think is the motive behind the conservative preference for the other translation?

Nostalgia. Especially when one already has the old language memorized.


Another explanation can come from personality type preferences. Some types (SJ) prefer tradition, while others (SP) prefer the new and different. Some notes I have on these types and churches.


One of the mottos of the SJs is “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it,” so they tend to rebel at anything that may threatened their tradition or way of doing things.

SPs are the most fun-loving of all the types and seldom has the church been characterized as a “fun‑ loving” place. Worship was often a place where one had to be quiet, sit still, and seldom smile.

SPs may be more attracted to the free-flowing, Spirit-led, Charismatic congregation, where worship may be mostly unplanned, led by the spontaneous prompting of the Spirit. Prayers are never written or read from a book, but always impromptu, often uttered by anyone who feels led to pray.

SPs may be attracted to a mission congregation where everyone has to be active, often doing very practical jobs – setting up chairs, moving furniture around, etc. – as long as their job didn’t become a rut.

SJs, in sharp contrast to SPs, desire structure and organization in a church, so that they will be told the proper way to act. If they were brought up being told, “Church isn’t supposed to be fun,” that is the way church is supposed to be.

You missed the whole point of the thought experiment. Even without prior familiarity or knowing which came first or what hymnal they appear in, it was clear that conservatives would prefer the one translation and progressives would prefer the other. As a conservative, I can understand what motivates both sides while thinking my side has the better argument. My thesis here is that progressives do not and cannot understand conservatives nearly as well as conservatives can understand progressives. That is why progressives nearly always fall back on some kind of bigotry or ignorance to explain the motivation behind the conservative position. If even one person really has a racist or sexist reason for preferring the conservative position, that person is taken as typical; it frees progressives from the need to come up with a more plausible explanation for why anyone disagrees.

“Leftwing people find it very hard to get on with rightwing people, because they believe that they are evil. Whereas I have no problem getting on with leftwing people, because I simply believe that they are mistaken (Sir Roger Scruton).”