It is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle, than for a gay Lutheran to get into the pulpit, sometimes!

Lutherans define themselves doctrinally, which results in an invitation for Lutherans to argue with each other endlessly over doctrine.

Other churches define themselves, too, in their own ways. Catholics are bound together by a focus on hierarchy. They easily become authoritarian. Methodists have their roots in achieving "holiness", which meant sobriety, hard work, and owning hardware stores. Baptists are big into repentance and instant turnarounds. They testify about how awful they were, and how they love the Lord Jesus so very much, now that they are sinners on their knees.

You get the idea!

We noted, on our recent family tour of ancesterdom, that a lot of the Lutheran churches in rural Iowa had fallen upon hard times. Many of them were out in the countryside, alongside cemeteries, where the settlers had gathered on Sundays to sing and pray, to marry and baptize their children, catechize them in enduring truths and, when the time came, to bury their dead.

There aren't many small farmers, anymore. Even the small towns are de-populating. Many of the churches are empty, and many more are emptying, gradually. But since they are Lutherans, they still know how to argue endlessly over doctrine. These days, they are arguing about the ordination of gay people.

It keeps them busy, deciding whether to leave the Synod, or to split the faithful remnant into two congregations or, more likely, just to go join another church: one that believes the right stuff and does not allow gays into the clergy, or maybe not even women. Certainly not lesbian women!

Meanwhile, the weeds are growing up through the sidewalk.

Comments

The Sea is Rising

Let us just step back: two hundred and fifty years ago, or so, the ships of England and Spain had drifted onto a whole new continent, as they saw it, from far north to a savagely cold south; pole to pole, as if there were such things. Millions of people already lived here, some of them still hunters and gatherers; some of them very wealthy, indeed! Gold and silver stolen from the southern Americas funded Spanish and English dreams. There was land, lots of land, under starry skies above, rich land, and oil and coal and iron ore. The whole western world learned how to build industries not on simple muscle power, but on steam and oil. We farmed, too, of course. All we needed was cheap labor--slave labor from Africa, mostly, so the ships came with slave labor. Chinese labor built railroad beds where there had been rock cliffs. Europeans, long used to killing each other for good, religious reasons, brought their religious savagery with them. Even when all they wanted to do w

That's all we want: fairness! Not more guns and more war! Fairness!

The five police officers who were killed in Dallas are certainly not the officers who killed innocent citizens. There is more than enough tragedy to go around. "What is happening to our country?", Mari asked this morning. I had no answer. We do have an answer. We do not want to say it. There are lots of answers, all of them pertinent. We are a racist society, like most human societies. We are a society in the midst of enormous changes-- social, political, economic--and we do not know what to do about it. We are divided unsustainably into absurdly rich, and an enormous number of crumbling middle class families, and poor. We have guns everywhere; military guns, guns just for killing people, cheap guns, heroes carrying guns into churches and supermarkets, idiots who think guns ought to be allowed in bars and schools and ball games and beauty parlors and political rallies. Our political process is almost useless. There are good people in Congress, but there

SmokeSound

Search This Blog