What Is the Common Good?

Last updated on: April 30, 2020 at 5:18 pm By Gene Veith

Should we be most concerned with preserving our personal liberties or with promoting the welfare of everyone? Conservatives have lately been debating whether their priority should be the individual or the “common good.”

This theoretical discussion has suddenly become very practical with the coronavirus epidemic: To what extent should the government restrict its citizen’s freedoms (to worship, assemble, conduct business, work, travel, etc.) in order to protect the public as a whole from a deadly disease?

The term “common good” is associated with Roman Catholic social thought. In the debates among conservatives, Catholics are often lining up behind that concept, while Protestants are defending the priority of the individual. And yet there is a debate among Catholics too about what the “common good” means. That debate can clarify the issues for Protestants as well.

Catholic theologian C. C. Pecknold summarizes the dispute in First Things. I’ll quote him, suggest how this clears up misconceptions on both sides, and then see how Luther might factor into this debate.

From C. C. Pecknold, False Notions of the Common Good, in First Things:

On one side of the dispute were well-known personalists such as Jacques Maritain, who argued in Scholasticism and Politics that the human person was the fundamental unit of society. “The primacy of the person” provided both a standard for the pursuit of the common good and a powerful check against totalitarian forms of nationalism wreaking havoc on the world. Personalists like Maritain seemed to balance two pillars of Catholic social teaching at once—the dignity of the person and the common good—and won widespread approval. . . .

In 1943, [Charles] De Koninck wrote a powerful essay, “On the Primacy of the Common Good, Against the Personalists,” which sent shock waves through the Catholic world. . . .

What concerned De Koninck most was that personalists refuted modern individualism with nothing more than the primacy of the person, “as if the common good were not the very first principle for which persons must act.” He maintained that this approach doesn’t really combat modern individualism, but rather reinforces it, and makes the common good into something alien to the person. . . .

De Koninck began his 1943 essay with a simple Aristotelian alternative: “The good is what all things desire insofar as they desire their perfection.” The “primacy” should be given not to the person as such but to the good that all persons desire, since this good is what is really good for the person. You and I might love this or that particular good—a smartphone or a car—but these don’t perfect us the way our love for our family, our city, our nation, our church, or even our love for the universe can perfect us. . . .

We have to presuppose that the goods we desire as persons depend on the primacy of the common good of the family, the city, the universe. De Koninck writes, “this conception will certainly be rejected if one thinks of the singular person and his singular good as the primary root, as an ultimate intrinsic end, and consequently as the measure of all intrinsic good in the universe.” . . .

The common good elevates us. While it is good for us to love particular goods, the common good of the family, the political community, or the church calls us to a much greater love of the good than the love we have for particular goods.

[Keep reading. . .]

Notice that the dichotomy here is not the good of the individual vs. the good of the group. Both sides are against “individualism,” though De Koninck thinks “personalism” unwittingly reinforces it. Both sides support the concept of the “common good,” though they differ in what it means.

According to this analysis, the common good is not just what the group wants, nor is it simply what the whole wants. The emphasis in the concept is on “good” and how it is good for all–what is meant by “common”–including the individual.

As I understand the debate, Maritain believes that the common good can be defined as what is good for the person. De Koninck believes that the common good refers to the good that all persons should aspire to.

Though these Catholic thinkers are disagreeing with each other, they would probably agree in condemning Luther, whom they would blame for the rise of “individualism.” To be sure, Luther did stress the individual Christian’s personal faith in Christ, and we Protestants–as well as we Americans–don’t see “individualism” as such a negative term. And yet, Luther can contribute to this debate and can, perhaps, help to resolve it.

In his ethical thought as developed in his doctrine of vocation, Luther emphasizes loving and serving our neighbor. He warns against our tendency to “turn in upon ourselves,” stressing the importance of doing good not just for ourselves–including doing good works as a way to increase our merit so that we can go to Heaven– but that our works should be oriented outside of ourselves, towards helping an actual, concrete human being.

This is not individualism. It is not individual autonomy.

Nor is it pursuing the good as an abstraction or attempting to benefit a collective humanity.

ur neighbor is another person. Not ourselves. We are denying ourselves, even sacrificing ourselves. But we are doing so for a person, someone like yet other than ourselves. This is true “personalism.”

At the same time, we Lutherans have to be struck by the way Prof. Pecknold, in discussing De Koninck’s critique of personalism, keeps referring to the common good in terms of the family, the city/nation/political community, and the church (as well as “the universe”).

These are Luther’s three estates: the household (the family + the economy), the church, and the state. (Luther also speaks of “the common order of Christian love,” the miscellaneous relationships we have, which would surely include “the universe.”) [See Luther’s “Confession of 1528”; Luther’s Works, 37.]

These are the social orders that God created human beings to inhabit. They are the spheres for the various vocations that God calls us to. They are concrete embodiments of the various relationships that we have with our neighbors.

If we think about the “common good” in terms of our love for our family, our country, and our church and what is best for them, the abstract concept is brought down to earth. And when we think of doing good for our specific neighbors in these estates (our spouse and children; our fellow citizens; our congregation), we avoid the problem of directing our ethical obligations to an abstract and impersonal collective, which can never motivate us and which sometimes can be twisted into justifications for tyranny (as in “the greatest good for the greatest number,” or the ironic rationalization of Caiaphas: “It is better for you that one man should die for the people, not that the whole nation should perish” [John 11:50]).

How would we apply Luther’s understanding of the common good, in light of the estates and the love of neighbor, to the epidemic? What would be best for our family and for the economy by which we make our living? What would be best for our church? What would be best for our local community and for our country?

These considerations would surely include how we might love and serve our neighbors by caring for those who are sick and seeking to protect our neighbors from infection. But it would also include loving and serving our neighbors by protecting their livelihoods, their spiritual well-being, and their social relationships. And it would include standing up for their rights.

Photo by Alec Perkins from Hoboken, USA / CC BY (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0) via Wikipedia Commons

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A Nomination for Lutheran Sainthood?

Last updated on: April 27, 2020 at 8:26 am By Gene Veith

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Although we Lutherans will use the title “saint” to refer to Biblical heroes of the faith, such as “St. Paul” and “St. John,” we don’t have a mechanism for giving other Christians that title. Indeed, we affirm that ALL Christians are “saints,” as well as simultaneously being “sinners.”

But if we did have some kind of process for recognizing remarkable and imitation-worthy Christians, which we don’t and don’t want to, I would nominate Norman Borlaug.

The Roman Catholic Church, which has such a process, requires that the person recommended for sainthood perform miracles. How about this miracle from Norman Borlaug? Eliminating world hunger.

Borlaug was the scientist who launched the “green revolution”–not “green” as in environmentalism, but as in an agricultural revolution on a par with the industrial revolution. By crossbreeding and genetic study (not genetic modification), Borlaug developed new strains of crop plants that resisted disease and insects, grew better, and produced much greater yields. As a result, combined with innovative farming practices that Borlaug also developed, the global food supply soared.

Thanks to Borlaug, the perennial problem of global hunger essentially went away. Of course, hunger and starvation still exist, as in North Korea and Venezuela, but the reasons now are mainly political and economic. But there is plenty of food.

Borlaug is credited with directly saving over a billion lives.

Although he concentrated his work on poor countries with food problems–particularly Mexico, India, and Pakistan–his innovations have also helped those of us in more developed nations. Americans now spend just 9.7% of their disposable income on food. Throughout history, getting enough to eat has been a major preoccupation for human beings in a never-ending struggle for survival. Now we Americans have food even in the midst of an epidemic and economic shutdown (though, as we blogged about earlier this week, those political and economic factors are getting in the way).

Malthus (1766-1834) had predicted that since population rises at a greater rate than growth in food supplies, overpopulation would lead to mass starvation. His theories led to the “population explosion” fears, as in the books of Paul Ehrlich, who predicted in 1968 that India would be doomed by 1980 and that nothing could save its vast population. That was about the time Borlaug went to India, where he solved its food problem, which, in turn, became the foundation of its economic Renaissance.

Borlaug won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1970. Also the Presidential Medal of Freedom and the Congressional Gold Medal, among many other honors. The magicians and fraud exposers Penn & Teller hailed him on their TV show as the “Greatest Human Being That Ever Lived,” even though, they observed, “you’ve probably never heard of him.”

Borlaug lived 95 years, from 1914 to 2009. I blogged about him when he died. Read his Wikipedia article for his life, research, and contributions.

As that article says, Borlaug was a life-long Lutheran. His parents were Norwegian-American farmers who settled in Iowa. He was baptized and confirmed in the Saude Lutheran Church, presently a congregation of the Evangelical Lutheran Synod. He attended the University of Minnesota, though he at first failed the entrance examination, going on to get his Ph.D. in plant pathology and genetics. At some point he became affiliated with the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America.

In an obituary published at the ELCA website, the pastor who presided at his memorial service in College Station, Texas, where Borlaug served on the faculty at Texas A&M, said that the scientist often talked about his Lutheran faith. And the pastor observed, “He got the connection between his faith and his commitment to his work.”

That is to say, he “got” vocation.

What qualifies Norman Borlaug for the Lutheran equivalent of sainthood is that he carried out his work in light of the doctrine of vocation.

He loved and served his neighbors by using his God-given talents and opportunities. God worked through him to bless the world.

God, in his government of the world, mitigated human hunger through natural, physical means: a scientist studying and applying His creation. God preserves and sustains His temporal kingdom primarily by means of material reality and vocation, and he did so in a spectacular way through an Iowa farm boy who at first flunked his college entrance exam.

All of this is very Lutheran.

Why do I bring up Norman Borlaug now? Because a PBS documentary is attacking his legacy. In “The Man Who Tried to Feed the World: A Tale of Good Deeds and Unintended Consequences,” Borlaug is given credit for his work in feeding the world. In the words of a critique of that documentary in the Wall Street Journal, the film goes

light on the lives saved and heavy on the “unintended consequences.” These include everything from diminished water supplies and depleted soil to increased urbanization in Mexico and a “broken society” in India. What these critics never say is what the alternative was, or answer whether their implicit message is that it might have been better if Borlaug had done nothing and let tens of millions of people starve.

But even in his lifetime, Borlaug had his critics. The Wikipedia article quotes his response:

Of environmental lobbyists opposing crop yield improvements, he stated, “some of the environmental lobbyists of the Western nations are the salt of the earth, but many of them are elitists. They’ve never experienced the physical sensation of hunger. They do their lobbying from comfortable office suites in Washington or Brussels. If they lived just one month amid the misery of the developing world, as I have for fifty years, they’d be crying out for tractors and fertilizer and irrigation canals and be outraged that fashionable elitists back home were trying to deny them these things.”

He did take environmental concerns seriously, pointing out that increased crop production can prevent deforestation, which is usually caused by the need for ever more farm land. But I most appreciated this answer:

He stated that his work has been “a change in the right direction, but it has not transformed the world into a Utopia”.

He was not presuming to solve all the world’s problems by his own human efforts. Utopias in this fallen world are impossible–those cursed man-made political and economic problems keep getting in the way–but we can do what we can. We can do what we are called to do. This too is very Lutheran.

Photo: Norman Borlaug (2004) by Ben Zinner, USAID / Public domain via Wikimedia Commons

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The Religion of Desire

Last updated on: April 16, 2020 at 5:57 am By Gene Veith

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In my new book Post-Christian: A Guide to Contemporary Thought and Culture, I explore the phenomenon of “secularism,” the attempt to do without religion and the prospects of bringing it back. Among many other things, I look at what has been happening in Europe, for most of its history the heart of Christendom, but not any longer.

The French political scientist Olivier Roy has written a book on the subject entitled Is Europe Christian? It’s a more complicated question than it sounds. Judging from a review in the Wall Street Journal and reading the “Look Inside” feature on Amazon, his findings seem to support my own, though I am more optimistic than he is about the possibility of Christianity–if not political “Christendom”–making a comeback.

Prof. Roy makes the point that “secularization. . .does not necessarily mean dechristianization.” And, unlike so many other scholars, he emphasizes the difference between Lutheranism (which, with its doctrine of the Two Kingdoms and vocation is “self-secularizing,” giving religious significance to the secular realm) and Calvinism (which tends to seek Christian rule of the secular order). He also notes the difference between both of these traditions and American Protestantism.

The reviewer, Walter Russell Mead, notes that American Christians, being individualists, approach such questions as the title of this book in terms of the number of Europeans who believe the Christian message. Europeans, though, approach religion more collectively, “as a public, political, and legal force.”

Indeed, many religions–Islam, Judaism, Hinduism, Buddhism, Shintoism, etc.–are matters of cultural identity, rather than, or at least in addition to, an adherent’s personal beliefs. Christianity, in contrast, is for people “from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages” (Revelation 7:9) and has to do with a person’s faith in Christ. And yet, sometimes Christianity too is reduced to a matter of what group you belong to rather than what you believe. Thus, Catholic politicians can support abortion, though it violates essential teachings of their church, and still insist they are “good Catholics” because their church membership goes back in their family for generations. Often this belonging rather than believing mentality is connected to ethnicity–with Irish, Italian, and Hispanic Catholics; Russian, Serbian, or Middle Eastern Orthodox; and, yes, German or Scandinavian Lutherans.

So Prof. Roy focuses not upon beliefs or church attendance (a measure favored by social scientists since it is so quantifiable), but on Christian identity and Christian culture. These are still very much evident in Europe. I make the point that although they are not saving faith, but they are not nothing, and they constitute an infrastructure that could bring true Christianity back, especially with the influence of immigration from Africa, Asia, and the Middle East–the rest of the world that is emphatically not secularized and where Christianity is booming–and the extraordinary phenomenon of Muslims in Europe converting to Christianity.

Prof. Roy, though, thinks even Christian culture, while significant, is fading away now. In a compelling and widely applicable analysis, he says that Christianity is being replaced by “the religion of desire.”

From Walter Russell Mead, ‘Is Europe Christian?’ Review: Good Faith Estimate: As European churches vanish, the struggle continues between Christian republican virtue and the new religion of desire, in The Wall Street Journal [subscription required]:

In Mr. Roy’s account, the real break came in the 1960s and ’70s. Up until that time, Christians and non-Christians in Europe largely shared a moral code. On issues such as homosexuality, abortion and the place of women in society, Europe’s communists and socialists found themselves in broad agreement with traditional Christian ideas. In most European countries, secular law tracked classical Christian moral codes pretty closely. The number of Christian believers was gradually and even inexorably declining, but the Christian foundations of public morality and public law remained strong.

Then, in the 1960s, Europeans (and Americans) began to leave traditional morals behind. Mr. Roy understands the shift as the emergence of an ethic based on the “desiring subject” as the source of all value in morals and of all legitimacy in politics. What humans desire to do, they have an inalienable right and even a duty to do—on the condition that they refrain from injuring others. This was a genuine revolution in civilization, one whose profound effects, Mr. Roy argues, we have yet to fully understand.

This was more than a change in sentiment, Mr. Roy says. Slowly at first and then with increasing force, laws and institutions were transformed by the religion of desire. The legal and cultural revolution continues today; ideas like gender fluidity represent the progress of a new understanding of humanity’s place in the world.

Nothing could be further from both traditional Christian ideas and the rival European tradition of civic republican virtue than the cult of the desiring subject, but so strong was the appeal of the idea that neither religious nor secular practices could stand long against it. Under the force of the transformative youth revolution of the 1960s and ’70s, old taboos against cohabitation before marriage, homosexuality, abortion and much else lost their hold on the public mind. . . .

In a somber conclusion, Mr. Roy speaks of a global cultural crisis. It is not possible, he believes, to build a sustainable social order around a collection of desiring subjects—yet the strength of the ideologies of the 1960s is too great to permit an alternative to emerge. For Europe, beset by a globalization that threatens its coherence and independence from the world’s superpowers, the only answer is to return to its roots. For Mr. Roy, those roots are Europe’s Christian heritage and the tradition of pre-1960s liberalism grounded in the enlightenment and classical ideas of civic and republican virtue. Europe is not, he concludes, very Christian today, and that bodes ill for Europe’s future.

This accords with my book’s contention that objective thinking has been replaced by the exaltation of the will, which, in turn, has meant the unbounded release of the appetite. What Shakespeare calls the “universal wolf” that devours everything, until it devours itself.

Illustration by Tony Fischer via Flickr, Creative Commons 2.0, no alterations.

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When Corporate Worship Is Taken Away

Last updated on: April 13, 2020 at 10:08 am By Gene Veith

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Here is another problem with online worship: Instead of meeting virtually with your own congregation’s service, you can livestream celebrity church!

To help us out with Easter, CNN had a feature From the Pope to Mariah Carey, here are some options for your Easter service livestream. You could link to Joel Osteen’s service, which was featuring the pop star Mariah Carey. For Catholics, you could livestream the Pope. The Presbyterian Church (USA) was offering a 37 minute Easter service for all of their congregations to use. Or you could link to a Charlotte megachurch, with was offering six services throughout Easter day.

Once we get used to online services, will local congregations become obsolete? These star-studded attractions with high production values would have a big competitive advantage over regular churches recording their services with smart phones. Viewers from all over the world could gravitate to their favorite services, forming not just megachurches but gigachurches and terachurches, with virtual denominations and only one pastor. Could online church could do to local congregations what Amazon has done to brick and mortar retail?

Used rightly, online services can help congregations come together virtually when they can’t meet in person, joining with each other to hear God’s Word and to worship Him under the leadership of their own pastor. But there are limits to what online worship can accomplish. Christianity–with its doctrines of creation, incarnation, resurrection, sacraments, and vocation–is an embodied religion. And worship needs to be embodied too. Longtime reader and commenter on this blog Tom Hering put it very well in his comment to our Good Friday/Easter post:

The most unhappy reality of our temporary “exile” is our loss of the full sensory experience of worship. We can still experience online services through sight and hearing, but being reduced to these two senses is a great impoverishment. We don’t taste the bread and wine, or smell the wine, or touch the elements with our hands and tongues. We don’t feel the nearness of other people – something we sense with our whole body. We don’t feel the vibrations from voices and musical instruments. These losses remind us we’re physical creatures. They teach us we can only be happy as physical creatures. A non-physical Heaven populated by disembodied spirits would be no heaven at all. (Our nature as physical beings also explains the revival of ink-and-paper books, vinyl records, film photography, brick-and-mortar shopping, etc.)

Joy Pullman, the executive editor of the The Federalist and a Missouri Synod Lutheran, has pointed to another group of Christians that is denied the opportunity to worship together and to receive the Sacraments: Persecuted Christians. God’s people who are in prison or concentration camps are cut off from their churches, yet they are certainly faithful and cared for by God. In our current circumstances, we can think of them. We are not suffering as they are, but we too, in a much lesser way, are experiencing what it’s like to have the government telling us how we may or may not worship.

In another article, Pullman shows how some jurisdictions are putting more restrictions on churches than they are on secular gatherings. Where meetings of 10 people or fewer are allowed with social distancing, churches trying to set up small groups of that number to worship and receive the sacraments are being threatened with punishment. Some authorities are forbidding “drive in church,” in which worshippers stay in their cars to listen to the corporate service on the radio. The governor of Kentucky has said authorities would write down the tag numbers of cars in church parking lots on Easter morning, whereupon their owners would be thrown into a mandatory 14-day quarantine.

Pullman reports how the governor of Indiana, a Republican, is presuming, among many other things, to tell churches how they are supposed to conduct communion. Among his guidelines:

It is preferred that no communion be distributed.
In instances when communion is distributed, only prepackaged communion may be used and must be prepared and distributed in a manner that meets food safety standards.

He is referring to those little fast-food-style packets with a small cracker and a sip of grape juice. We Lutherans, as well as other sacramental churches, would never use those! For one of many reasons, because Christ’s institution requires actual wine. (Nor may we have bread and wine at home that the pastor consecrates online. Nor may the pastor consecrate a bunch of elements, then send them out to members at home. For why, see this.)

To be sure, we are in the middle of a pandemic. Churches ought not completely defy the civil authorities, as some are doing–this Pentecostal megachurch in hard-hit Louisiana held an Easter service for 1,000 worshippers, distributing “anointed handkerchiefs” to heal them of any diseases they might get–refusing to submit to the lawful magistrates, a violation of Romans 13, and refusing their obligations to love and serve their neighbors, a violation of Christ’s command to do so. But churches that agree to follow the social distancing requirements and other COVID-19 requirements ought not to be shut down by the state.

Some of our politicians are exercising their emergency powers with too much relish. In their apparent zeal to outdo each other in the severity of their measures to slow the epidemic, they are not letting any other considerations get in their way. Not economic needs, and certainly not civil liberties. They are running rough-shod not just over the freedom of religion but also other guarantees in the Bill of Rights. The government’s prudential measures to require social distancing and staying at home might make it impossible for a business to function, but does it really have the authority to order private businesses to shut down? Can’t there be some crafting of measures that keep civil liberties in mind?

So far, the courts are sending mixed messages. A federal judge has blocked the mayor of Louisville from banning COVID-19 emergency-compliant drive-in services, marveling at the overreach in eloquent terms:

“An American mayor criminalized the communal celebration of Easter,” U.S. District Judge Justin Walker wrote in a temporary restraining order issued Saturday. “That sentence is one that this Court never expected to see outside the pages of a dystopian novel, or perhaps the pages of The Onion. … The Mayor’s decision is stunning. And it is, ‘beyond all reason,’ unconstitutional.”

Meanwhile, the Kansas Supreme Court upheld the right of the Governor to put limitations on religious gatherings.

“But these measures are necessary!” we might be told. “Besides, they are only temporary. Even Abraham Lincoln suspended civil liberties in time of war. When we are trying to save lives, civil liberties are a luxury. You have to be alive before you can worry about freedom.”

We might wonder, though, how long is temporary? One month becomes two, and the whole timeframe is open-ended. And even when the epidemic fizzles out, what precedents will have been set? Will we have become used to the government restricting our liberties, for our own good, of course? Will we start accepting that as the price of the government taking care of us?

As for invoking “necessity” as the all-justifying reason, I can’t help but think of the line from Milton: “Necessity, the tyrant’s plea” (Paradise Lost, Book IV, ll. 393-394).

UPDATE: A California county ruled that online worship services may not include singing.

UPDATE: For more examples of ridiculous abuses of power, read this.

UPDATE: For what is happening in democracies around the world–ruling by decree, suspending civil liberties, cancelling elections, intrusive use of police, etc.–read this, originally from the Washington Post: Leaders seize new powers to fight coronavirus, fears grow for democracies.

UPDATE: The Justice Department says it will investigate cases of local governments that are unfairly targeting churches.

Photo credit: Breawycker / CC BY-SA (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0) via Wikimedia Commons

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Classic Pestilence Prayers & Maundy Thursday

Last updated on: April 5, 2020 at 5:29 pm By Gene Veith

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Here it is Maundy Thursday and we can’t go to church for Communion! But we can still celebrate this holiday, this holy day.

The church gathers around Word and Sacrament, Pastor William Cwirla has observed, and the individual Christian has recourse to the Word and Prayer. Even when the churches are closed due to the coronavirus, we have access to the Word of God through Bible reading, and we can pray any time we want. Online worship lets us hear the Word of God in preaching and lets us join with our fellow church members in prayer.

And there is another facet of Maundy Thursday that we often overlook, but that we can now dwell on. The word “Maundy” comes from the Latin mandatum, meaning “command,” as in “mandate.” On the Thursday before His death, Jesus not only instituted the Lord’s Supper, He washed His disciples’ feet and gave His followers a new mandate:

A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another: just as I have loved you, you also are to love one another. By this all people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.” (John 13:34-35)

We can do that even while we are quarantined. In fact, I am seeing it more and more, as Christians connect with their neighbors and members of their congregation, check on each other, offer to get supplies for those most at risk for the virus, and in other ways follow Christ’s new commandment despite their forced isolation. The “mutual consolation” of fellow Christians goes on. We may not be able to have Communion on Maundy Thursday, but we can still have the Communion of the Saints. Both of which have to do with Christ’s Body.

We can see some of that even on this blog. Last week I posted a prayer “In Time of Pestilence” from the 1860 Lutheran Prayer Book by Benjamin Kurtz, which had been forwarded to me by a friend. In the comments, Setapart shared a prayer on the same subject by C. F. W. Walther, no less, the key founder of the Lutheran Church Missouri Synod. Then I heard from a reader named Ziggy Rein who went to the trouble of translating a “Prayer in pandemics, plagues, and fear of death” from a German book published by Concordia Publishing House in 1895. And also in the comments P. T. McCain recommended a collection of classic Lutheran prayers published by CPH, which I subsequently ordered and am finding to be wonderful.

So, honoring Maundy Thursday as a time of prayer and joining together in Christian love in the shadow of the pestilence, let us pray. . . .

C. F. W. Walther, “Time of Epidemic,” General Prayers #101, in For the Life of the Church — A Practical Edition of Pastor Walther’s Prayers and Addresses,” trans. Rudolph Prange (St. Louis: Concordia Publishing House, 2011), p. 126:

Almighty, eternal God, Lord of life and death, we thank You that in these evil times You have graciously cared for us. Indeed, You are wielding over us the stern rod of a pestilence that has, sadly, taken many a dear brother and sister out of our midst; but even so You have our welfare at heart.

Through the present epidemic You remind us that we must die, not to frighten us and to drive us to despair, but in order that we may divorce ourselves from this perilous world, be awakened from every sinful slumber into which we may fall, set our house in order, acknowledge our sins, and, above all, through firm faith take refuge in Your dear Son, our only Savior and Conqueror of death.

Grant, we beg of You, that Your call to repent and to prepare for death may be ignored by none of us, but that we may all take refuge in Jesus Christ, cling to Him day and night, and finally depart in peace.

You do not want us to abandon Your work at a time like this, but to ‘work while it is day, for the night is coming, when no one can work’ [John 9:4].

Oh, therefore grant us grace in this evening hour, as at the portals of eternity; to deliberate in Your fear upon those things that are beneficial to Your dear children To that end direct our understanding and our minds and let our efforts be crowned with success according to Your gracious will and for the sake of Jesus Christ. Amen.

This collection includes yet another prayer by Walther for this need, obviously common in the 19th century, “In Time of Epidemic,” General Prayers #20. You can access it through the “Look Inside” feature on Amazon.

Ziggy Rein, translator, “Prayer in Pandemic, Plagues, and Fear of Death,” from Evang.-Lutherischer Gebets-Schatz. [Ev.-Lutheran Treasury of Prayers]. (St. Louis: Concordia Publishing House. 1895), pp. 339–341. Posted here with the permission of the translator:

Almighty, eternal God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, Lord of heaven and of earth! We poor, miserable sinners must confess that we have offended You, O God, with our sinful life and being in the most detestable way. You therefore are pouring out Your wrath upon us justly and You attack us with various plagues, epidemics, and illnesses.

What are we to do now? Should we despair? Far be it from us! We realize indeed that we not only have deserved this prevalent epidemic now as punishment for our various sins, but also doubtlessly greater and worse punishments.

Where shall we flee to then, where shall we turn to, that we may be safe from this and other epidemics and plagues? Alone to You, Lord Jesus Christ. We have no other consolation, neither in heaven nor on earth, without You, You Who have redeemed us.

Indeed, You will not cast away Your creation; therefore, we call out, groan, and shout to You humbly from our whole heart and say: God, have mercy and obliterate all our sin according to Your enormous grace, goodnes,s and mercy. Cease Your disfavor, fury, and wrath over us. Show us again Your grace and spare us graciously from this now prevailing epidemic and horrible illness. Let us entreat You, O Lord, let us entreat You, and spare us. Protect and shield us in a fatherly manner that this epidemic won’t harm or strike, snatch away or carry off anyone.

If it is, however, Your divine will that our life is ended in such an epidemic and we shall depart this life, Your gracious will be done, which is always the best. We commend ourselves with body and soul, with wife and child, and the entire household into Your divine mercy and fatherly hand, ask humbly from our whole heart, if we are thus overtaken by such a last hour and it is now that our body and soul shall part, You would graciously keep us in our right senses that we can commit our soul with a clear mind and grant us a blessed end as well, so that we may thus enter into eternal life through temporal death, which is an end to all affliction and misery and which opens the door to eternal life, the sooner to be with the Savior and to rejoice eternally in heaven with all God’s chosen.

This You would, O faithful God and Father, grant through Jesus Christ, our Lord, Who lives and reigns with You and the Holy Spirit, one God, lauded for eternity. Amen.

It turns out, the German prayer book that contains this prayer has been translated in its entirety as the Lutheran Prayer Companion, trans. Matthew Carver (St. Louis: Concordia Publishing House, 2018). This is the very book that P. T. McCain recommended!

We learn that the above prayer, entitled “Prayer in Contagious Epidemics and Plagues” (#427 on p. 263), is from the Riga Prayer Book of 1719, from what is present-day Latvia.

This collection is indeed a treasury. It includes 482 prayers like this–tough-minded, passionate, reflecting deep spiritual experience, from a more devout time than our own–drawn from the rich heritage of Lutheran spirituality. The prayers cover just about any topic you can think of.

For example, there is a whole section on “Vocation,” with 58 prayers on topics such as “Prayer when choosing a vocation,” “Prayer when a person begins a business,” and “Prayer for comfort in trials related to one’s calling.” Most of these are about the family vocations, with prayers on marriage (including bad and troubled marriages), having children (including having a stillborn baby and the risk of death in childbirth), and family life (sending one’s children off to school, moving to a new residence, etc.)

There are also prayers for extraordinary situations that most of us hopefully will ever experience but which are fascinating and edifying to read nonetheless. For example, “Prayer against the fear of strange apparitions” and others involving spiritual warfare against the demonic realm. And at least five prayers for the use of those who are about to be executed.

Illustration: “Praying Hands” (1508), by Albrecht Dürer / Public domain via Wikimedia Commons

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Good News and Bad News on the Family

Last updated on: March 11, 2020 at 1:51 pm By Gene Veith

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The divorce rate has dropped dramatically since its high point in the 1980s and, particularly, since the “Great Recession” of 2008. But so has the marriage rate of the middle class.

First, the good news:

In 1980, there were 22.6 divorces for every 1,000 marriages. That number has been in a gradual decline, but after 2008, when there were 18.7 divorces per thousand, the rate has dropped rapidly, as of 2008, to 15.1.

Now divorce rates and statistics are notoriously problematic and difficult to define, for reasons explained in this article. The above numbers are for a single year, though marriages typically last for a number of years. Statistically, the possibility of divorce for any given marriage grows with the number of years. But other factors are also involved in such calculations, such as the divorced-but-remarried. It used to be said that half of all marriages will end in divorce. That generalization was contested, but it had some validity.

But not anymore. However you run the numbers, the drop-off since 2008 shows a significant decline in divorce. According to W. Bradley Wilcox of the Institute of Family Studies, discussing the findings, “This means the fabled statistic—that one-in-two marriages end in divorce—is no longer true.”

More good news is that the percentage of children being raised by their parents in intact, married families is now 62.6%. This 2019 data is up from 61.8% in 2014, with the number going up each year. (For the whole report, go here.)

Now, the bad news:

In addition to all of these improving numbers still being way too high, the bad news from the Institute of Family Studies is that divorce and single parenting are still high among the poor and working class of all races. But another study has found that the sharpest drop in the marriage rate is taking place among the middle class.

Americans whose income is in the middle three-fifths of the population–that is, those earning from $25,000 to $125,000–have the highest decline in marriage rate of any other demographic. This has been the trend from 1980 to 2018.

People who make below this range–again, the white and black working class–still have the lowest marriage rates. In 2018, the marriage rate for Americans in the lowest one-fifth income group was only 26%. In the middle one-fifth, it was 52%. This is a drop of 16% since 1980. In contrast, the most affluent Americans, those in the top fifth income range, have a marriage rate of 60%. This is a reverse from what it was in 1980, when the middle cohort had a higher marriage rate than the top income group.

What is going on? In an article on these findings in The Wall Street Journal [subscription required], Janet Adamy and Paul Overberg suggest a cultural as well as an economic shift. Young adults used to get married as the beginning of their careers and their adult life. Today young adults see marriage as what they do after they attain success in their careers (if they ever do) and as the pinnacle of their adult life (if they ever attain one). This shift in the way people think about marriage would also explain the phenomenon of delayed marriage, as well as the declining birth rate.

The article quotes sociologist Susan L. Brown: “The meaning of marriage has changed, and marriage is now viewed as this capstone achievement once all of these other milestones have been achieved. . . .It’s almost like a luxury good that’s attainable only by the people who have the highest resources in society.”

The article also says that economic problems play a role in this shift and in the drop in the marriage rates. The article quotes another sociologist, Daniel Schneider: “Economic conditions, even in the good economy, remain difficult for many working Americans. . . .That is not conducive to you feeling like you could get married, or people wanting to marry you.”

But I wonder about this. As Prof. Schneider appears to concede, economic conditions have improved considerably for this middle income range, and yet their marriage rates keep going down. More importantly, the article, as well as the Institute of Family Studies report, show the positive economic benefit of marriage. For example, according to the Wall Street Journal article, among young adults aged 25 to 34–that is, just starting out–married couples have a median wealth of four times that of couples who live together without being married (a growing practice in the middle class).

If marriage is so beneficial economically, one would think that those who are having financial problems would be more willing to marry, not less, as seems to be the case today.

The article cites research showing that among those who are living together but want to get married, over half say they are not financially ready. What do they mean by that? Yes, parenthood is a financial demand, but that’s a separate question, and many cohabiting households already have children. From what I have seen, what holds them back is often the financial resources needed for a wedding. The average cost of a wedding now comes to five figures, with one calculation coming to $25,764 and another coming to $33,391!

You can get a marriage license, for around $50, depending on the state. You can get a Justice of the Peace or your pastor to conduct the wedding for free, though a donation of a $100 or so to the latter is good form. All of your friends and family can be at the church and the bride can walk down the aisle. You can throw a party afterwards at a local pub, with everyone buying their own drinks. You will have wonderful memories. But a wedding does not have to cost as much as a new car.

I know there are other factors. The difficulty of finding the right person to marry. Confused gender roles. The moral breakdown. Anti-marriage ideologies. Internet pornography, throwing off our sexuality. Above all, the isolation and solipsism encouraged by our culture and our technology. (All of which are documented in my new book.)

And we need to recognize that not everyone should get married, that not everyone has this vocation (1 Corinthians 7).

Still, three-quarters of young Americans say they want to get married, a statistic that has remained constant since 1976. They want to, but many of them, for whatever reason, don’t. A healthy culture would change to make it easier for them to do so, rather than to make it more difficult.

Image by RENE RAUSCHENBERGER from Pixabay

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