The American Spectator

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Lutherans and Mighty Fortresses : /p> p>While your contributor is a bit more nuanced, your headline lumps all Lutherans together. I was a pastor of the ELCA until about seven years ago when I could no longer square my ordination vows with the apostasy which the ELCA expected of me. I served as a pastor in a German parish for six years right on the border to East Germany. I could see East Germany from my living room window. I too am appalled by the statements of those who hijacked a church which had nourished my faith. There are many Lutherans who in good Lutheran manner do not confuse a Marxist political agenda with the mandate to preach and rightly distinguish between Law and Gospel. This is one Lutheran who saw the fence which divided Germany for the barbarity it was. I also see the Israeli fence as an attempt to humanely preserve a semblance of civility in the Middle East. Other Lutherans and I refer to the ELCA as ***A since it is no longer evangelical, Lutheran, or a church. Please don't lump us together with our persecutors. br> -- Michael Zamzow /p>

I suppose most denominations have the same thing: a general disconnect between the average believer in the pew and the leadership at headquarters far away. Indeed, while the average Lutheran is more concerned with his parish, the milieu of the ELCA leadership is at the university level where they cruise with the leadership of other denominations as well as breathe in all the enthusiasms and vapors that occupy the minds of higher education. Nothing is so embarrassing as having your denomination out of step with the latest bells and whistles of your cohorts.

As such we are bombarded with the high, almost mystical imperative to promote pathways of simultaneous peace and justice. No one explains what this is to look like. Moreover, there is little recognition that, this side of the Day of the Lord, we often can have either peace or you can have justice; but not both. For when we talk about justice, we should ask ourselves just how much can we afford? We really aren't prepared for the costs of radical justice among us. Justice is a jealous bitch-goddess that unleashes the hounds of war and demands misery, suffering, and rivers of blood.

There is also unrecognized the long record of failure in the promotion of "peace". There is an over weaning faith in the "broken telephone" theory of human conflict which believes that the peoples of the world just don't dialogue enough. If they just sat down, talk and listen to each other, all would be well. The fact is most people hear each other pretty well already and it is not helping things at all.

p>Lastly, one deeply suspects that if Israel for one adopted all the measures the ELCA advocates and Israel ceased to exist our enlightened leaderships would not be bothered at all. This is why a bus could blow up inside Israel killing any number of innocent people and there is no mention of it in the church organs. But the fact that a young boy or girl simply can't step over the border and buy a pack of gum because of the wall is the cause of great outrage and hand wringing. It seems the cost of peace in blood is of little importance. One would think Lutherans of all people would think three or four times before they issue any criticism of the Jews. The shadow of Hitler and the "camps" has not left Lutherans to this day. They would do well to mind their tongue and keep their counsel to themselves. br> -- Michael Dooley br> Indianapolis, Indiana /p>

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