“God bless America” vs. “God bless the whole world”

Last updated on: July 3, 2017 at 8:26 pm By Gene Veith

Some people are saying we shouldn’t say or sing “God Bless America.” That is too exclusive. Rather, we should say, “God Bless the Whole World.”

Matt Reynolds at Christianity Today explains why praying “God Bless America”–and the words are a prayer– is indeed appropriate.

Just as you pray for your grandmother, he says, and not all the grandmothers in the world, it’s right to pray for those who are near and dear to our hearts. We can’t fully comprehend abstractions–like “humanity” or “the world”–so we pray for what is tangible, for actual communities that we are part of.

I would add the vocational point that this is why God tells us to love not the human race but to love our neighbor, that actual flesh and blood person whom our vocations bring into our lives.

Read the essay, excerpted and linked after the jump. Then please join me in prayer: “God bless America. In Jesus’ name. Amen.”

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Marriage Is a Civil Matter, Not a Church Power

Last updated on: June 30, 2017 at 12:37 pm By Gene Veith

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With the government legalizing same sex marriage, many Christians and their pastors are asking, what does marriage have to do with the state? It’s a religious institution. Let the church marry people and the state can stay out of it.

Some pastors are marrying couples who aren’t bothering to get a marriage license. In some cases, elderly couples are asking pastors to marry them “in the eyes of God, but not the state” so that they can avoid the legal entanglements and financial issues that come with an official, government sanctioned marriage.

But Rev. John Frahm explains why the church cannot marry people outside of the civil ordinances. If you are a Catholic, believing that marriage is a sacrament, that might work. But not if you are a Protestant. This was actually an issue during the Reformation. The church had so many restrictions and so much control over marriages that the Reformers pushed for the civil authorities to regulate and conduct marriages, which would then be blessed in a church service. (Or conducted in a church with the pastor functioning as an officer of the state. “By the power vested in me by the state of Oklahoma, I now pronounce you husband and wife.”)

Lutherans particularly cannot “leave the government out of marriage.” Their confessions and theology don’t let them.

This by no means diminishes the value or significance of marriage, which was established by God and which mirrors Christ and the Church. God is still the One who “joins together” (Matthew 19:6). It’s just that God uses the civil realm to bring men and women into this vocation.

But what if the state interferes with God’s design, as it is doing with same sex marriage, easy divorce laws, and the like? Pastors mustn’t cooperate with those. But that doesn’t negate the state’s general responsibility for marriage.

Read Rev. Frahm’s discussion after the jump.

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A painting of “Come, Lord Jesus, be our guest. . .”

Last updated on: June 19, 2017 at 8:44 pm By Gene Veith

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In researching yesterday’s post on Saying Grace, I came across this painting. I said to myself, that’s the Lutheran table prayer!

Come, Lord Jesus, be our guest

And let these gifts to us be blest. Amen

I used to look down on this prayer, when I first became a Lutheran, because it sounded just like a children’s prayer. I do prefer Luther’s Table Prayer given in the Catechism:

The eyes of all look to you, O Lord, and you give them their food at the proper time

You open your hand and satisfy the desires of every living thing

Lord God, Heavenly Father, bless us and these your gifts,

Which we receive from your bountiful goodness.

Through Jesus Christ, our Lord, Amen.

But I’ve come to appreciate the Common Table Prayer. It draws on a powerful Lutheran teaching: Christ’s presence.

Lutheranism is a theology of presence, and this is at the heart of Lutheran Christology: Christ’s real presence in the Sacrament, yes; but also His omnipresence thanks to the communication of attributes with the Father, so that He is present in the Divine Service, in the world, in vocation, and, yes, with families when they sit down together in His name for a meal.

I had never heard of the artist, Fritz von Uhde (1848-1911). It turns out that he was a well-regarded German artist and a devout Lutheran. A pioneer of the realistic style, von Uhde did many works with Christian themes, rendering Biblical scenes with realistic contemporary characters and picturing Christ appearing to common, ordinary folks, including the lower classes and the poor.

This painting, at the Berlin National Gallery, is called “Come, Lord Jesus, Be Our Guest.” This and his other works in this vein (which I think I’ll also blog about) was criticized by Roman Catholic critics for lacking reverence. But he is simply portraying the Lutheran theology of Christ’s presence!

After the jump, read what his Wikipedia article says about him. (more…)

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The cup for the laity

Last updated on: May 23, 2017 at 10:04 am By Gene Veith

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The communion practice of the Roman Catholic Church, up until Vatican II, was for the priests to drink the wine. Laypeople were only given the bread.

Brian Stiller, writing on the Christianity Today site, reflects on Luther and the Reformation as he sits in the City Church of Wittenberg.

He sees a detail in Lucas Cranach’s altarpiece–one that I hadn’t noticed before– that gives him a flash of insight into the Reformation.

Now Luther would not be happy with all of what the author says about Holy Communion, since Stiller believes that the Lord’s Supper consists of symbols rather than the true Body and Blood of Christ. Stiller even extrapolates his conclusions into meals in general.

But he does pick up the detail that Luther is sitting around the Table at the Last Supper with Christ and His disciples. And Luther gives the cup to a servant–a layman, not an apostle. Stiller explains why this is so significant and why offering the cup to laypeople–imaged here on the altar–is so expressive of the Gospel as proclaimed in the Reformation.

UPDATE, FURTHER THOUGHTS: We shouldn’t take this privilege for granted. John Hus was burned at the stake largely because he insisted on giving laypeople the Blood of Christ. For us laypeople to receive the Cup means that we are all priests (the doctrine of vocation) and that there is no spiritual superiority of one caste or another in Christ’s Kingdom. And that He poured out His blood for all.

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“The way of life” vs. “The way of death”

Last updated on: May 18, 2017 at 6:09 pm By Gene Veith

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“I believe that as an abortion provider, I am doing God’s work.” So says Dr. Willie Parker, an abortionist who insists that he is a Christian. New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof, in profiling him, claims that the conservative Christian consensus that abortion is murder is a late development, that the Bible doesn’t address the issue and that evangelicals often approved of it until just a few decades ago.

The estimable Dr. Al Mohler refutes all of this. He admits, though, that one of Kristof’s points is valid: Many evangelicals did approve of abortion or take a “moderate” position on the topic. This was true even of the Southern Baptist Convention and Christianity Today up through the early 1970s. (I believe anti-Catholicism had something to do with this. I’m curious too if there is a relationship between a church’s stance on abortion and its position on infant baptism–do any of you know?)

At any rate, Dr. Mohler says the anti-life position of many evangelicals up until Roe v. Wade was unconscionable. But that soon evangelicals returned to the historical Christian position on the topic. (I believe Francis Schaeffer had a big influence on this.)

As for the historical Christian position, there is no doubt about that. After the jump, I excerpt from Dr. Mohler’s essay quotations from the early church, which addressed abortion explicitly and in depth. (more…)

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Challenges for conservative churches in Scandinavia

Last updated on: May 7, 2017 at 7:16 pm By Gene Veith

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In Finland, I taped three programs for the Christian television network. The host, Leif Nummela, is a well-known figure in confessional Lutheran circles and in Scandinavian Christian circles in general. On his program, Bible Café, we had wonderful discussions of the Bible, Grace, and Vocation (Luther’s three major contributions to Christendom as a whole). The network goes out not only to Finland but to Sweden, Estonia, and Russia.

Finland is more religiously diverse than I had realized. There are quite a few Pentecostals–I talked to a campus pastor from that tradition who said that one of his church’s problems is combatting the Prosperity Gospel–and American style evangelicals (Reformed, Baptist, non-denominational, etc.), though that term is mostly used in the old sense to refer to “Lutherans.” And Emil showed us congregations of Adventists, Baptists, Methodists, Catholics, and Orthodox. There is even a Mormon Temple in Finland, as well as mosques. Most of the programming on TV7 is from the Pentecostal and general evangelical perspective.

Leif told me about some of the challenges for conservative congregations and church bodies in Finland and in Scandinavia as a whole. (more…)

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