A Thinking Reed

ELCA – not quite sold out to neo-paganism

Written by

Lee M.

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A couple of the more traditionalist Anglican blogs have linked to the website of Ebenezer Lutheran Church in San Francisco indicating that it’s a kind of logical endpoint of liberal Protestantism (or maybe just Protestantism period?). No doubt this is one kooky congregation, dedicated as it is to “re-imag[ing] the divine by claiming her feminine persona in thealogy [?], liturgy, church structure, art, language, practices, leadership, and acts of justice” and touting such practices as a “goddess rosary.” But are they at all representative of the ELCA, much less Protestantism as a whole? For one thing, this is San Francisco, folks. And secondly, if you look at the congregational stats you’ll see that their membership has dropped by about 90% since 1998.

The ELCA certainly has its problems, but we haven’t become a church full of neo-pagan goddess worshippers quite yet.

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7 responses to “ELCA – not quite sold out to neo-paganism”

  1. Camassia

    Odd, though — in 1998 the church claimed 667 members, but a weekly attendance of only 49. Did all those non-attending members leave in a huff (whatever that would mean), or did the church just clean up the membership rolls to reflect reality?

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  2. Maurice Frontz

    The shameless Frontz-baiting continues…

    Camassia – I think I remember reading probably some of the former, but mostly the latter.

    Lee – I think the larger issue is: what does it mean when this can happen out in the open, a pastor advertising “a goddess pilgrimage” to Crete, etc., this being picked up by several publications and websites (my wife saw mention of it on the Mothering message boards); and the response from the synodical bishop and the Presiding Bishop is…nothing.

    It goes back to your post about “Whither the ELCA.” If this can openly happen, it appears as if the ELCA is in fact an umbrella organization for a lot of religious professionals to creatively theologize (confessionally or not!) and advocate through its Churchwide offering for a narrowly conceived vision of social justice. Proclaiming the Gospel doesn’t seem to have much to do with it anymore.

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  3. Lee

    Although it’s probably wrong to do so, one could look at this as a marketing problem. The Lutheran “brand” has become degraded to the point where there’s very little consistency in terms of what individual congregations offer in the way of theology, worship, piety, etc. Thus the public at large has no idea what “Lutheran” means or why they should be interested. And the managers (bishops) seem to have little inclination to restore the integrity of the brand.

    Of course, this may just be the price we pay for having a relatively decentralized form of church governance. A more hierarchical system might allow for a stronger sense of identity but, as I’ve mentioned before, it might not be an identity that traditionalists or confessionalists or crypto-catholics would necessarily be happy with! (What would a church run by Mark Hanson with an iron fist look like?) At the end of the day I suspect most Lutherans (like most Christians in other denominations I’d guess) are more concerned with how things are going in their own congregation than with the broader church. Hence the lack of an outcry about things like Ebenezer.

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  4. Maurice Frontz

    I think the “marketing problem” issue is a symptom of the problem of identity. Marketers, I think, look to create a sense of identity with their product. (Is this product rugged, irreverent, solid, whimsical, etc?) The ELCA has a slogan, “Living in God’s amazing grace” but very little identity to back up the slogan. There’s no there there.

    Actually, I think once you start marketing a church (which all the mainline denoms have started doing) you’ve sold out in a big way to the consumer culture. You’ve started thinking primarily in terms of brand, advertising, market share, etc. And that is a recipe for irrelevance. You’ll end up on the proverbial shelf of discount CDs.

    If we Lutherans take CA 7 as our guide, there is lots of room for variety within one Lutheran identity. You can have Lutheran megachurches and cathedrals and hippy commune worship and plain old Lutheran worship right out of the SBH. What you can’t have is worship of the goddess, because that flies in the face of the teaching of the pure Gospel and the right administration of the Sacraments. So that is a scandal, and diminishes the name “Lutheran.”

    Let me imagine that a disaffected fundamentalist Baptist in my town is looking around for a new church. One could hope he could have his mind broadened at our local Lutheran church, right? (Or at least hear some better music.) But he picks up a paper one day, or gets on the internet, and reads about Ebenezer Lutheran Church, San Francisco, where Astarte is worshiped. He doesn’t think, “Well, that’s San Francisco.” He thinks, “That’s what Lutherans are doing? What’s the world coming to?” And he’s back in the pews singing “Shall We Gather at the River.”

    BTW, I don’t think “Mark Hanson” and “iron fist” ought to be used in the same sentence. Although he did put the people that tried to disrupt the Resolution 3 vote in Orlando in their place. (In effect, he said, “I have five kids, I think I know you don’t pay attention to spoiled children.”)

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  5. Maurice Frontz

    BTW, Lee, what’s your Lutheran story? Are you a cradle Lutheran or a convert to the cause?

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  6. Lee

    Oh, I’m a convert. I was baptized in a Reformed congregation (now affiliated with the U.C.C. I think) and we attended a Presbyterian church off and on for a while when I was a kid. But from about age 15 when I proudly announced to my parents that I was an atheist til about age 25 I was thorougly unchurched.

    My initial affiliation with Lutheranism was actually incredibly poorly thought out. My wife (then-fiancee) and I were required to get pre-marital counseling somewhere as a pre-requisite for getting married in her parents’ church. At the time I had become a more-or-less convinced theist, but I wouldn’t have called myself a Christian. So, rather than going to counseling at her parents’ pretty conservative non-denominational evangelical church, we ended up going to the campus Lutheran church in the college town where we were both living. All I really knew about Lutheranism at the time was that it was one of the more “catholic” Protestant churches – I think I had decided that if I could be any kind of Christian it would have to be on the more catholic end of things (but not Roman Catholic).

    Anyway, we ended up attending worship there during our counseling and we liked the pastor a lot, so when we moved to California it seemed natural to keep going to a Lutheran church. Though in this case it was the extremely left-wing (liberal would be putting it too mildly) University Lutheran Chapel at Berkeley. Not exactly mainstream Lutheranism! But over our last two moves we’ve stuck with the ELCA. Though we were briefly tempted by St. Mark’s Episcopal when we first moved here to Philly – a high-church Anglo-Catholic parish.

    Not a very inspiring story of Lutheran conversion, I’m afraid!

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  7. Maurice Frontz

    Actually, it’s VERY inspiring! Gives me more energy to do my pre-marital counseling! The hoop jumping made a difference, in your case. Thank you!

    I sincerely hope you can find a good Lutheran church in Boston. They’re a lot rarer in New England than in Pennsylvania.

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