NOTE: This letter was prompted by the list of links that existed at the WordAlone website earlier this year. While their web page has undergone many changes and no longer includes the links in question, I believe the concerns I raised about "theological reform" versus "political reform" are equally valid today.
Greg M. Johnson
pterandon at yahoo dot com
New York State
January 20, 2001
WordAlone Network Chair
Dear Friends in Christ,
As the "reform movement" called Word Alone grows in numbers and influence, this potential supporter must ask the question, will WA be a force for theological conservatism or political conservatism?
I support WA's efforts on CCM. Thank you for resisting the church's drift away from the Confesssions. Likewise, I see in your newsletters interest in the issue of human sexuality. WA could provide a much-needed, theologically conservative alternative to doctrinal movements which would rewrite the entire doctrine of sin in order to accomodate one sinful act. "Christ has destroyed sin," some say, in a context that would make the ELCA a church of "cheap grace" for everything from gossiping to torturing a dissident in apartheid-era South Africa. WordAlone is desparately needed for these good theologically conservative "reforms."
I also see on your web page, however, links to Richard John Neuhaus' groups, the Institute for Religion and Democracy (IRD), and reform movements in the other Protestant denominations. I see links to Lutherans for Life (which I support) but not to Lutheran Peace Fellowship (which I also support). Can we make predictions about WA's next crusade based on these links?
In the February 2001 issue of First Things, we find an IRD critique of the ELCA's position papers on Israeli treatment of Palestinians. The IRD analysis determined that the ELCA fell into this error because its bureaucrats don't believe in the Old Testament and are ticked that Israel didn't side with the Soviet Union during the Cold War. That reminds me of what they said of those who criticized South Africa. Indeed, one can find on the web page of the reform group "Concerned Methodists" a RJN-endorsed paper entitled, Betrayal of the Church: Apostasy and Renewal in the Mainline Denominations. The paper described the mainline churches' activities related to South Africa and El Salvador in the 1980's as "constant verbal tirades against whatever government the Marxist-Leninists were trying to destroy."
I for one am glad that our former Bishop Chilstrom walked hand in hand with Bishop Medardo Gomez of El Salvador, certainly a nonpartisan in that conflict who drew fire (literally) from the Right for his work in repatriating refugees. I am glad that our church published Dateline:Namibia where we saw the picture of the Namibian boy whose face was burned by a South African soldier as a random act of cruelty. I am glad that the ELCA published video interviews of Rev. Farasani (?), the black South African Lutheran pastor who was tortured by the South African security forces. I am glad that an ELCA bishop visited a Lutheran Palestinian's whose farm was bulldozed by the Israeli security forces.
Who else will hear the cry of the poor? Too often, political conservatism demands that we must support the brutal actions of the armies of our allies simply because they are our allies. It's kind of like saying you either have to support Janet Reno's handling of Waco or take responsibility for the Oklahoma City bombing, like saying you have to support Rev. Phelp's views on homosexuality because it's the only reasonable alternative to Bishop Spong.
Political conservatism diverges from theological conservatism again when it comes to a theology of the marketplace. Other chapters in Betrayal of the Church criticize the Methodist church's involvement in the INFACT boycott of Nestle' over the morality of marketing infant formula to poor breastfeeding women. We are warned that:
"The real mission of anticorporate activists was not only to save babies, but to replace the free market with socialism or a welfare [state bent on] providing every person with material comfort"And this is especially wrong because, as Betrayal reminds us:
Most American Christians, as we shall see, overwhelmingly support free enterprise. A great many mainline church bureaucrats and the anticorporate activists they support, do not.I by the way prefer free enterprise over communism, too. These reformers, however, associate apostasy with calling corporations accountable to a higher standard of behavior. Luther, meanwhile, wrote in Trade and Usury:
Among themselves the merchants have a common rule which is their chief maxim and the basis of all their sharp practices, where they say, "I may sell me goods as dear as I can." They think this is their right. Thus occasion is given for avarice, and every window and door to hell is opened."We find the same arguments in our Confessions. In his Large Catechism, Luther calls this kind of economic libertinism a violation of the Seventh Commandment:
Everyone misuses the market in his own willful, conceited, arrogant way, as if it were his right and privilege to sell his goods as dearly as he pleases without a word of criticism... If, when you meet a poor man who must live from hand to mouth, you act as if everyone must live by your favor, you skin and scrape him right down to the bone, and you arrogantly turn him away whom you ought to give aid, he will go away wretched and dejected, and because he can complain to no one else, he will cry to heaven. Beware of this, I repeat, as of the devil himself. . .Turning back again the the writings of Concerned Methodists, we find a quote from Michael Novak. Novak criticizes the modern church for continuing its ancient teachings which emphasize on giving to the poor; he worries that the "the discoveries of modern economics seem to have hardly affected it at all."
Which way WA? Just what sort of arguments would WA-types have made against ELCA pension fund divestment from South Africa two decades ago? Whom would a WA-blessed bishop have walked hand in hand with in 1980's El Salvador? Would a WA-blessed LOGA write papers condemning Palestinians kids for throwing stones, blaming them for Israel being "forced to" destroy farms as retaliation? Would WA gear up to repeal the criticisms of economic libertinism in our Statement on Economic Life?
Until I know, you can count me as your "loyal opposition."
Sincerely,
Greg M. Johnson
cc: local pastor, synod bishop, ELCA bishop, Nestigen, friends
