You’ve got to read “Being Lutheran”

You’ve got to read “Being Lutheran” May 25, 2016

There is a new book out from CPH that is very much worth reading:  Being Lutheran by A. Trevor Sutton, a young pastor in Michigan. In the vein of my Spirituality of the Cross, this book explains in an utterly fresh way not only what Lutherans believe but also what it feels like to “be” Lutheran.  This is a book for life-long Lutherans, confirmation drop-outs, “seekers,” interested fellow-travellers, non-Christians, millennials, and “nones” who are “spiritual but not religious.”   I wrote the foreword.  An excerpt from that, plus a link to Amazon, after the jump.

From my Foreword to Being Lutheran by A. Trevor Sutton:

The theology—Christology, justification, the Word of God, Baptism,  Holy Communion, vocation—is all here.  Trevor Sutton expresses it and explains it in utterly fresh ways, in terms that never existed in previous centuries.   He draws analogies and examples from the world of open source software, contemporary science, and today’s social scenes.   He does not fawn over contemporary culture as do so many Christians-who-try-too-hard.  In fact, he criticizes contemporary culture; but he is also communicating with it. . . .

As an example of how the author uses a contemporary cultural movement to drive home important Lutheran teachings, consider what he does with localism.  Reacting against today’s uprootedness, mass consumerism, and cultural homogenization, many people today are rediscovering the value of a sense of place.  They are cultivating an appreciation for the “local.”  They want to eat food that was grown by nearby farmers, drink beer that was brewed where they live, and live in unique local communities.  Sometimes, of course, the impulse to eat locally, drink locally, and act locally devolves into just another kind of consumerism, but it arguably comes out of a healthy reaction against today’s impersonal mass society.  Pastor Sutton shows how Lutheranism emphasizes the local:   God localized Himself by becoming incarnate as a specific human being in a specific locale at a specific time in history.   This incarnate God, Jesus Christ, is locally present in the bread and wine of Holy Communion.   He is thus present and active in the local congregation, however humble it may seem.

Also unique in this treatment is that Pastor Sutton not only treats Lutheran beliefs.   He also treats the attitudes and mindsets that those beliefs inform.  Thus, he divides his book into two parts:  What Lutherans challenge (being closed, lukewarm, ignorant, lazy, and “pastel”), followed by what Lutherans cherish (the restored, the ordinary, the unresolved, purpose, and the local).  This helps explain the quirks of Lutherans—why they are so doctrinally rigorous, yet so fond of paradoxes and unresolved doctrinal tensions; why they seem both conservative and radical; how their theological strictness manifests itself in a spirit of freedom; how they can make such strong supernatural claims, while also focusing on the much-neglected spiritual significance of what is ordinary—while also accounting for what we could describe as the Lutheran theological culture.

To further ground this theology, this spirituality, in real life, Pastor Sutton includes in each chapter a “vignette” of an actual person who has lived out the issues he has been writing about.  All of this in a style that is original, stimulating, and (significantly) humorous.   

For the already Lutheran, this treatment takes beliefs and practices that have become so familiar that they have been taken for granted and defamiliarizes them, presenting them in a new way so that they can be experienced as if for the first time with full astonishment.  For Christians in other traditions, this treatment shows what a Christ-centered theology built wholly around the Gospel looks like.  For non-Christians, this treatment presents a compelling proclamation of Christ, one that points to His saving work and where He can be found.

You can read the rest of my foreword, as well as sample the book, at the “look inside” feature at Amazon.

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