The American Spectator

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Pastoral Letter From the Future II

By Lars Walker on 7.3.07 @ 12:08AM

The following letter (acquired through a reliable but anonymous transtemporal source) will be written by the Rev. Dr. Judith Hardanger-Hansen, archbishop of the American Archdiocese of the Lutheran Companionship of the Benevolent Deity Spiritual Movement (BDSM) sometime around the second decade of the 21st Century.

Beloved in the Offspring:

I would like to thank all those who have written and e-mailed in response to my previous pastoral letter. Thanks to those who expressed their support.

The rest of you should be aware that your messages have been forwarded to the Tolerance Directorate for possible prosecution.

A question has been raised in the media recently concerning demographic changes in our Comradeship. Figures have appeared claiming that our Lutheran body now includes only a 17% male membership, and that most of that 17% is boys under twelve years of age. Only 6% of our pastors (according to our own statistics) are male, and half of those are gay.

First of all, I must state that we dispute some of these figures. Several of them have not been generated through official channels. We have very rigorous, subjectively controlled procedures for calculating membership statistics within our organization, and our figures place our male membership at nearly 29%.

But even granting, for the sake of argument, the lower figure, how are we to account for such disappointing engagement among almost half the population?

The charge that men have been "elbowed out" of participation and leadership is unworthy of serious consideration, and I shall ignore it.

I see two credible explanations.

The first is one advanced by my personal friend, Rev. Dr. Sophia Wolhammer-Smith-Guevera of Union Theological Seminary, in her groundbreaking book, The Gentile Sex. In this seminal work, she propounds the theory that males are, in fact, "sinners."

She points to numerous biblical passages (I haven't time to look them up just now) which have, traditionally, been translated to say, "All men are sinners, and are under judgment."

It is her thesis that such passages should be understood literally. In the fall of Adam (which, it should be noted, is never called "the fall of Eve" in scripture) it was the male who sinned and became subject to judgment.

In this view, original sin applies only to males. Women have never "fallen," and require no redemption.

It follows that men are naturally resistant to all that is good, and are uncomfortable in the nurturing environment of the contemporary church.

Dr. Wolhammer-Smith-Guevera leaves the question open as to whether the gospel should be preached to men or not. She notes that in the view of many modern theologians, such souls as men possess are probably not worth the trouble. And we're all aware of what men did with the church when they were running it. It may be best to let bad enough alone, especially in view of recent advances in fertility science, which promise to make men entirely superfluous.

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