Messages

1

Your Turn / Re: Church Staff Intellectual Property Rights

« on: October 08, 2015, 06:26:25 PM »

I'm sure I'm unrealistic or idealistic in this but when it comes to church work product I'm one who has always believed there should be no copyright protection provided others do not seek to use the material for profit.

My reasoning is thus:  those who create such materials as part of their employment have been compensated already; those for whom it was created have received and used what they have paid for and are entitled to nothing else in return for it, if they share it with others.


Distinctions might be made I suppose for musicians who are compensated for actual performance while material created for perform might be considered their own.

2

Your Turn / Re: Communion choice

« on: July 21, 2015, 08:44:04 PM »

I often hear Lutheran pastors and official statements (The Use of Means of Grace) offer support for communion in one kind (with or without an explicit discussion of concomitance).  Yet, I have discovered several comments in Luther which challenge the propriety of receiving in one kind only.  I also have seen several instances of Lutheran dogmaticians who cast a skeptical eye on the assurance that the whole Christ is received in one kind.

Can anyone offer positive affirmation of the approval of reception in one kind, so long as it is a matter of individual choice, or of a positive affirmation of concomitance dervided from Lutheran confessional writings?

3

Your Turn / Re: Supreme Court extends same-sex marriage nationwide

« on: June 30, 2015, 10:18:48 PM »

For all you serious history buffs, what is your understanding of how soon various civilizations "fell" after endorsing homosexuality?  Egypt, Babylon, Greece, Rome, Victorian England, etc.

... Fletch

Do you mean the Victorian England that sentenced sodomites like Oscar Wilde to two years at hard labor?...Some endorsement.

4

Your Turn / Re: "Liturgical Dance? Really?"

« on: June 06, 2015, 07:23:53 PM »

For all those who got the vapors over what the dancer wore at the MNYS assembly, it was pretty much what you would see any young man wearing while doing a gymnastics floor exercise, though no flips or tumbles were involved.  Anyone scandalized during the Olympics?
 

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Your Turn / Re: Is the torture report indicative that it is time for national repentance?

« on: December 11, 2014, 06:48:35 PM »

The gang of Bonnie and Clyde had killed at least 9
policemen in their robbery of banks and stores.
Killing police will get you to the top of the public
enemy list.  As murderers this gang became wanted
dead or alive.

I understand the circumstances that led to the ambush and the crimes for which they were accused (and surely committed). 

The question raised about the manner in which they were killed (rather than any attempt at apprehension) is one of due process within our system of justice; which is the one behind the drone issue, if I understand it correctly.

If "wanted dead or alive" is an appropriate attitude to be struck toward those at the top of the public enemies list...why not the terrorist attacked via a drone?

Obviously with a drone attack the issue of colateral damage (as it is so euphemistically expressed) is at least one issue.

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Your Turn / Re: Is the torture report indicative that it is time for national repentance?

« on: December 11, 2014, 06:42:27 PM »

I am not responsible for what the other side does. I am responsible for what my country does.

I've never understood this, so I'm asking for help.  What does being "responsible" (in this sense) have to do with making a moral judgment?  Just because I'm not "responsible" for what the other side does, how does it follow that I can't make a moral judgment about what the other side does (but only about what "my country does")?  I'm not "responsible" for the political and sexual shenanigans committed by Italian President Silvio Berlusconi, but I can still judge them immoral, right?  I'm not "responsible" for the faked studies on stem cell research concocted by Korean scientist Hwan Woo-suk, but I can still tell my students that it is decidedly wrong to do so, can't I?  The implication seems to be that I can only make moral judgments about things that are, in some sense, under my immediate control.  That can't be right.

Tom Pearson

I don't think this statement is intended to say we cannot judge the actions of others; but rather that we cannot use the actions of others to excuse actions we might do. 

I have heard argued that any of these "interrogaction tactics" are permissiable because these our enemies want to destroy us and themselves engage in brutality and savagery as we have seen exemplified in 9/11 and by ISIS and the like.
Thus:  the distinction, quite simply, is that the heinous acts committed by another cannot be justification for acts I might otherwise regard as heinous, especially when I go out of my way to characterize those acts as heinous by others. 

This is textbook hypocrisy.

Perhpas a tweaking of the proposed axiom will help.

I am not accountable (before God) for what others (my enemies) do or permit.   That is to say, there sins are their own.
I am accountable (before God) for what I do/permit my country to do.                 That is to say, my sins are my own.   

7

Your Turn / Re: Is the torture report indicative that it is time for national repentance?

« on: December 11, 2014, 06:18:31 PM »

No, this report is not indicative of a time for national repentance.  The report is an obvious final slam on the Bush (Boosh, Boosh, Boosh) Administration to take our eye off of all the imperial decrees of the current administration.   

Yes.  Why not repent for the drone assassinations carried out on American citizens by the Obama Administration?  Why not repent for Obama's failure to close Guantanamo?   Why not question the methods used to locate Osama bin Laden after Bush left office?  Why not repent for Obama's expansion of government spying on citizens?

Is there a moral difference between the "drone assassinations" and the way outlaws such as Bonnie & Clyde or John Dillenger were ambushed and gunned down? (I believe they were US citizens.)   
Shall we debate the use of shoot to kill orders for "public enemies," those sought for notorious crimes? 

The citizenship issue in the drone attack is of little importance to me; I see no reason that we should behave differently toward non-citizens than citizens, and vice-versa if they are acting outside of the law. 

Many of our "rules" such as Miranda, the posse comitatis act, and the like are as much about the restraint of government power as they are the rights of suspects.

I, for one, would argue that they are morally dubious and unnecessary if arrest and capture are possible.  But what if a criminal or terrorist is so protected or outside of our normal reach so as to make apprehension impossible, can technology such as drones be applied?

8

Your Turn / Re: ELCA's "Table and Font: Who is welcome?"

« on: September 22, 2014, 11:53:44 PM »

"Initiation" has a vexed history. A beginning, for sure, but baptism is also the completion of the "New Life In Christ". One never is any more or less than a "Baptized Christian." "Initiation" in many traditions is the beginning of a lifelong process moving towards some sense of a fulfilled state to be obtained through trial, testing, and tribulation-- a notion of a progressive journey toward the "Holy" which should not be encouraged. Lutherans have generally objected to the notions connected with personal progression in Holiness.

Lou

I suppose "initiation" may have that feel in some contexts...and I think it may also carry the sense opposite your concern that initations indicate the end of a journey. 

The life of the baptized is certainly more than that.  I would never say that one's baptism is complete.  We are not merely born again, but we are being born again daily.   In the Renewing Worship materials they offered a prayer that spoke of the deceased baptism being complete in death.  At first I liked it, but came to reject that image.  Our baptism is only complete in the ultimate and final rising from the grave.  For that reason I only said in a sermon recently we never should speak of baptism in the past tense.  Not I was or we were baptized, but I am and we are baptized.  It is not completed.  It is ever present, though sometimes walked away from and to which we return. 

In my comment I borrowed the term from Rome's RCIA.  To be sure there are some differences in our understanding the sacraments that it may rub up against.  But to suggest that there is no progression or growth in righteousness and yes holiness in the Christian that is expected to follow baptism is to undermine a wholesome understanding of sanctification and destroy the tension that lives in the space between the poles of the paradox of simul justus et peccator.  To be sure sanctifcation is God's work not ours; but it is being worked in us. 

9

Your Turn / Re: ELCA's "Table and Font: Who is welcome?"

« on: September 20, 2014, 03:29:45 PM »

An element that you left out of this, is that the non-baptized were dismissed prior to the Service of the Meal. Holy Communion was a private event for the baptized. Thus, in our liturgies; there is a type of second greeting with the passing of the peace that can be seen as beginning the Meal section. (It could also be seen as ending the Word section where it could be a "good-bye" gesture for those who were leaving. It marks a transition from the public - for all - to the private - for the baptized.) The offering was the presentation of the bread and wine which were not on the table up to this point.

Your point is well taken...the unity of baptism and eucharist was clearer when the eucharist was not shared in the "public" portion of the liturgy.  Given that baptism itself was conducted somewhat in camera (being in the nude and all) one might also wonder whether baptism was performed as a public act before the unititiated (save for those about to be baptized).  Who was admitted to the baptistry to watch?

10

Your Turn / Re: ELCA's "Table and Font: Who is welcome?"

« on: September 20, 2014, 03:27:40 PM »

The fundmental error in this discussion is understanding baptism as a requirement or prerequisite for communion, rather than both as fundamental to the rite of Christian initiation itself.  To call baptism a requirement or prerequisite is at best conceptually anachonistic.

 

Anachronistic? For a Lutheran to speak of the Sacraments as "fundamental to the rite of Christian initiation" is anachronistic.....


Not on this page at all.....


Lou

I'm not sure what your objection is.

Perhaps my meaning was not clear.  The use of the words "requirement" and "prerequisite" are anachronistic because the early church would never have understood he reception of baptism and eucharist to be separated from each other.  As in the East, the very notion that a baptized Christian is not a communicant is absurd--thus parallel that no communicant is unbaptized.  The language of the "radical hospitality" argument that eucharist can lead to baptism is be absurd because one cannot be separated from the other.

Is not a liturgy of baptism, confirmation (laying on of hands), chrismation, eucharist (the liturgical structure of the Vigil of Easter) appropriately called the rite of Christian intitation--the begininng of new life in Christ? 

11

Your Turn / Re: ELCA's "Table and Font: Who is welcome?"

« on: September 20, 2014, 03:12:24 PM »

So then, if one follows what you say, Jim Krauser, if someone comes without ever intending to be Baptized and of course therefore not being baptized... then he should not partake of the Supper, right?  Or wrong?

Right...  The first reception of the supper takes place with baptism.

12

Your Turn / Re: ELCA's "Table and Font: Who is welcome?"

« on: September 20, 2014, 12:07:42 PM »

I've made this point in other forums and so I'll make it here....(apologies if someone else has made the point...I haven't had time to read all the posts)

The fundmental error in this discussion is understanding baptism as a requirement or prerequisite for communion, rather than both as fundamental to the rite of Christian initiation itself.  To call baptism a requirement or prerequisite is at best conceptually anachonistic.

When we look to adult baptism as the basic form we recognize that one's first communion is meant to be received with baptism, at the same service on the same day.  We have allowed the exception of infant baptism (made for perfectly valid and good reasons) to skew the fundamental understanding of the fullness of baptism as a rite within the eucharistic assembly.  When the ancients said that they did not give communion to those who were not baptized, it was because they the understood that these things were a unity, not stages in a progressive revelation of teaching or inclusion in the community.

For those in the East the relationship between baptism and eucharist has been maintained through infant communion.  But this topic has been a difficult and rocky one among Lutherans.  UMG moved the ball on this by lifting the ban on infant communion so stridently introduced into the joint ALC/LCA Statement on Communion Practice in 1980.  [It was practically a non-sequiter to the sentence that it followed.]

I am coming to believe that my intellectual support for "communion of all the baptized" needs to find more application in teaching and practice, if for no other reason but to demonstrate and reinforce in the church the connection between the two great sacraments of the church.

Baptism is not meant to lead to Eucharist;  Eucharist is not meant to lead to Baptism. 
They are meant to be of a piece.  They are meant to be received together. 

13

Your Turn / Re: The US Flag

« on: July 16, 2014, 11:59:55 PM »

From the amount of hostility being shown here toward the US flag and military honors at funerals (is it really to God's honor to offer to throw dirt on the US flag? must we be sure to put the veterans who usually do the honors in their {not honored} place?)
Dan

I don't think anyone spoke of throwing dirt on the flag as a matter of disrespect.  It is a simple statement that the military honors need to go first because it is disrespectful to throw dirt on the flag, therefore it needs to be removed before that part of the committal prayers.  The casting of earth on the coffin is the last vestige of the actual burial taking place as part of the rite at the grave if the coffin is not going to be lowered during the service.  In the LBW and its Manual, it was strongly urged that the coffin should in fact be lowered into the grave during the rite itself.  This is how we did things for my father's funeral.  That necessitates the removal of the flag first.  Respect for both traditions is thus maintained.  The military honors go first, because the traditional elements of Christian burial cannot take place while it still lies over the coffin.

14

Your Turn / Re: The US Flag

« on: July 16, 2014, 11:52:29 PM »

I do not understand how it is possible to display the U.S. flag in the sanctuary of a Christian church and also comply with flag etiquette.  When displayed, the flag is supposed to be accorded the place of honor.  In the sanctuary, the cross belongs in the place of honor.

I don't see the conflict, as the flag etiquette defines for itself what the place of honor is:  on its own right in advance of the assembly.  We don't have such a definition for the place of honor.  In most of our churches the cross is not off to the right, but somewhere in the center, what we consider the place of honor.

15

Your Turn / Re: The US Flag

« on: July 09, 2014, 12:56:58 PM »

I removed the flag from the chancel of my last congregation but do not necessarily consider it wrong to have the flag. We might have the flag as a symbol that we are located by God in time and place and that we, like the Jews in Babylon, pray for the peace and prosperity of our context.

What if someone objected that praying for the president or governor by name in church bespeaks a sectarian note against the catholicity of the church? After all, if we're going to pray for our governor, shouldn't we pray for all 50 governors by name? If we're going to pray for President Obama by name, shouldn't we pray for every world leader by name? Otherwise, do we sound as though we only care about or guy? I don't think so. I don't think the flag in the chancel is necessarily bad for the simple reason that if I went to church in Canada and there was a Canadian flag in the chancel I would not be offended or feel somehow excluded.

But on balance I think the flag detracts from rather than adds to the decor in the chancel, which is why I removed it. But it is really a matter of emphasis and flavor rather than doctrine.

I think praying for public officials by name is not a problem, it is praying for those God has set in authority over us.  My congregation is in New York, Gov. Cuomo is in authority over us; Gov. Christie is not.   Rep. Boehner might be regarded as one in authority as a leader in one of the branches of government, while Senator Sessions is not in the same way.  Though we might well pray for the congress or state legislature as wholes. 

Praying for the nation is similarly not a problem.  There are times when we might pray specifically for other world leaders or nations as circumstances demand.  If the logic that suggests prayer for particular individuals should be avoided lest " we sound as though we only care about our guy" then we wouldn't be able to pray for anyone by name for any thing, so that we not look indifferent to those not mentioned.

You raise a question that I'm curious about.  In what other countries is the national flag given a place of honor in the sanctuary?  Is there a state-church connection in such places?  Could those who have served outside of the US comment?