The Lutheran Zephyr has asked for reflections on What It Means to Be Lutheran. I’m going to split this into two parts: why did I become Lutheran and why do I stay Lutheran.

Embarassing as it sounds, I literally picked the local Lutheran church out of the phone book. My then-fiancée and I were obliged by the church we were getting married in to undergo some kind of pre-marital counseling. Neither of us were churchgoers at the time, and the church where we were supposed to be married was in another city (as well as somewhat theologically uncongenial), so we needed to go local. We ended up receiving counseling from a local Lutheran pastor, a wonderful guy, and started attending worship at his church. Five and a half years and three moves (two of them out of state) later, and we’re still Lutheran.

As to why I stay Lutheran, I’d say it’s because I’ve come to appreciate the way Lutheranism balances the evangelical and catholic elements of the Christian heritage. We have the liturgy, believe in the Real Presence, and hold to the creeds and confessions of the early church, but understand all this through the prism of God’s free saving grace in Jesus. The center of Lutheran faith is undeniably Christological and evangelical. Unlike some, the Lutheran exultation in paradox and dialectic often baffles me. I’m a rationalist at heart and have a hard time making sense of signature Lutheran themes like Law/Gospel, sinner/saint, kingdom of the left/kingdom of the right, etc. But I think documents like Luther’s On Christian Liberty and his Catechisms contain an attractive and compelling vision of evangelical Christianity.

I also like the way that the ELCA, for all its flaws, remains a more or less centrist institution (despite what you may have heard) whose unity is grounded in the Gospel more than in a particular social or political agenda. This doesn’t please the ultra-conservatives or the ultra-liberals, but so far the center has managed to hold. In a time when most people, including many Christians, seem to see religion primarily as a project for moral improvement or social reform (at best), the stubborn Lutheran insistence on putting the good news of Jesus Christ at the center is worth holding onto.

P.S. Feel free to offer comments on what drew you to your tradition, or what you find especially compelling about it.