The NALC is, in fact, the North American Lutheran Church, as opposed to the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, from which congregations are fleeing like Democrats from Congress.
Just what we needed. Another Protestant denomination. This one to straddle the biblicism of the Lutheran Church–Missouri Synod and the bibliphobia of the ELCA, presumably with its ratio of traditional exegesis/engagement with modernity balanced so precisely that an ambitious busboy could lay his tray of half-eaten cheesy nachos on its presuppositions without fear of tippage.
I sympathize with those Lutherans who could no longer suffer the leftward march of their denomination into the abyss of irrelevancy, and those who find the denomination of my youth tiresome in its calculation of how grizzlies managed the voyage on the ark without their Dramamine. Yet another denomination can only spawn yet another denomination and so on, until there are so many congregations and so little coherence that only a swift end to history can stifle the cacophony of competing theological claims.
And so I have vowed to give up organized religion for Lent. I remain neither spiritual nor religious, but a Lutheran, sans pew.
via Just What We Needed. Another Protestant Denomination. » First Thoughts | A First Things Blog.
I’m not convinced there is anything wrong, per se, this side of eternity, with having lots of denominations. But Christ in His prayer wanted us to be unified! Yes, and so it is in the sense that matters most, that all believers in Christ are united in Him.
I do agree that unity of confession and doctrine and unity of fellowship in the people holding them is important. But where is there more unity? In a large organization in which people have so many different beliefs that they are always fighting with each other? If that organization split into two or more groups, each one of which consists of people who agree with each other and get along, wouldn’t there be more unity, not less? There would then be two or more unified, peaceful groups.
Yes, Christians should find the church that they believe teaches the truth. In principle, all churches should teach this same truth. But in practice, different views about what that truth is mean the need for different options. At the end of time, we will know who is right, but until then, people should congregate where they find agreement.
Maybe this is the Protestant mindset and that those who crave unity should look to Rome. But is the Roman Catholic church all that unified? It too has its conservatives pitted against its liberals, its factions of feminist nuns and pro-abortion professors, its Thomists arrayed against its Phenomenologists. Institutional unity without confessional unity doesn’t seem all that unified.
And if Mr. Sacramone dislikes both the ELCA’s liberalism and his own Missouri Synod’s creationism, it sounds like the new NALC may be just right for him! That would be better than not going to church at all. And during Lent!
UPDATE: This has succeeded, as I hoped, in luring Anthony Sacramone from his self-imposed exile (comment #12). He says, “touche,” as if I have jabbed him with a fencing foil, meaning, I think, that he concedes something of what I said, and then goes on to lay out his serious concerns. Can you answer them?
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