A friend sent me a snap of the cover of Lutheran theologian Carl Braaten’s new book. Unsurprisingly, given The Lutheran propensity for long names and acronyms, it is titled American Lutheran Publicity Bureau: A Harvest of Lutheran Dogmatics and Ethics: The Life and Work of Twelve Theologians 1960-2020.
My immediate response to the photo was, “Ugh.”
To which my friend responded, “Ugh?”
For context: Robert Jensen’s granddaughter was recently featured in a really odd personality article in The New York Times, featured for being the “wife” of a cancelled Princeton professor. Yes, it’s about as bad as it sounds. Read at your peril. He is one of the professors featured in the book, and I think of it as an example of the rightward tipping off this group. [note an earlier version of this blog post mistakenly said it was Braaten’s granddaughter. Thank you to readers for pointing out the error.]
Thus the “ugh.”
But we ended up in a long and fruitful conversation. I’m going to invite you all into that conversation and see where it goes.
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I went to seminary from about 1995-2002 (it’s normally a four year program but I took a couple of breaks to serve as a missionary in Slovakia). This was a period in time when the men (yes, they are all men) featured in Carl Braaten’s book were all actively teaching in our denomination. A majority were at seminaries, but some were in alternate institutions (like Paul Hinlicky, who taught abroad with ELCA global missions in Slovakia at the same time I was there), or held posts at Ivy League institutions (George Lindbeck was at Yale for over 30 years).
A few were my own professors at Luther Seminary (Gerhard Forde and Paul Sponheim) and most featured in assigned texts we read during seminary (Braaten, Jensen, Benne, and Peters especially).
Together a group of them wrote Christian Dogmatics, a two volume treatment of twelve areas of Christian doctrine that was probably the last truly “common” read of ELCA clergy besides Luther’s catechism.
So you may ask yourself, “If you are feeling ‘ugh’ about this new book, why are you writing about it at all?”
Well, here’s the issue: Lutheranism, if it is a thing among things, is centered in the goal of teaching and preaching in accordance with the Scriptures and the Lutheran confessions.
Other Christian traditions have other centers. Perhaps for Roman Catholics it is the pope. For fundamentalists it is their version of the Bible and that alone. For Episcopalians it’s the prayer book and church structure. Etc. But for Lutherans, it’s Scripture and the confessions. That’s what clergy promise to teach and preach in accordance with when they are ordained.
What does this mean? Well, it means that although we may have problems with Braaten’s implementation of such teaching and preaching, we are more tenuous footing if we neglect to do what Braaten is doing. Maybe we disagree with this or that part of their theological interpretation in the Christian dogmatics, or perhaps we are bothered by the all male cast. But nevertheless, if Lutheranism is going to be a thing among things, it’s going to need theologians stewarding the tradition of the Scripture and confessions in each generation.
It begs the question: where are this generation’s Lutheran dogmaticians?
In the discussion with my friend, he pointed out that we do have Lutherans who fill a teaching role in combination with another field. We have Lutherans who are New Testament scholars, practical theologians, etc.
And we have very popular authors who are good theologians that don’t write dogmatics but instead write memoirs. Most prominent among these is Nadia Bolz-Weber, and we can count quite a few others among the cast, from Lenny Duncan to Elle Dowd to Emily Scott to…
But the cast of academic theologians in my generation or the one below who are really focused on Lutheran dogmatics is really, really small. I mean, those with greater expertise please chime in in the comments, but I can think of Martin Lohrmann, Kirsi Sterna, and that’s about it. And I can think of some practical theologians who publish (I include myself here) like Jason Mahn and…
But there is not a community of scholars interpreting Lutheran theology and the confessions for the next generation, at least so far as I can ell.
I can remember back to my days in seminary. There was a very serious attempt to indoctrinate my cohort of pastors into a rather narrow (if also compelling) approach to Lutheran theology. This path was the Gerhard Forde path (I’ve written at length about this here). It’s most forceful champion was his teaching colleague Jim Nestingen.
I found this path exciting/attractive for a while, but by the time I was finishing up seminary I really felt it had gone of the rails with its narrow-mindedness. This “radical Lutheranism” was against full communion with the Episcopalians, later was opposed to LGBTQIA inclusion, and ultimately ran off to South Dakota to form a new seminary.
Meanwhile, a couple of the twelve featured in the Braaten book kept doing their Lutheran thing, and a few others pursue fascinating “paths not taken.” Most interesting for me among these are Paul Hinlicky, who has seriously considered paths not taken in Lutheran theology (conducting in some sense an alternate history), and Paul Sponheim, who isn’t (I would argue) a Lutheran theologian much at all, but rather a process theologian teaching in Lutheran contexts, and fascinating for that very reason.
I could keep going. I’m probably a member of a rather small group of folks who have read all twelve of these theologians, so I could bore you with reflections on the influence or direction of each theologian in question, but if you are seeking that, you probably want to just read Braaten’s book. It will be better and far more academic.
I’m after something else in this post, and this is it: even if the Lutheran dogmatics of the theologians represented in Braaten’s book are, wrong-headed, out-dated, overly patriarchal and mildly insufferable; even if we spin it that way, nevertheless it’s a real loss if in our generation (the next generation) we no longer have a Lutheran dogmatics we are articulating.
These dogmaticians were academically rigorous, fascinating and careful, even if they also bear a bit of resemblance to Jonathan Swift’s flying island of Laputa, too distracted by the word-play of their theology to concern themselves with mentoring a next generation or facilitating a pragmatic landing of their theology.
However, as I’ve said, if Lutherans stop articulating an actual Lutheran theology sprung from the stewarding of Scripture and confessions, then Lutheran becomes an identity rather than an articulated position, and this is dangerous, the worst kind of outcome of the ethnocentrism of North American Lutherans.
As my friend says, “Being Lutheran becomes part of the furniture and atmosphere. It’s a background matter.”
I consider myself a progressive Christian with a rather tenuous connection to Lutheranism. So I resemble that remark.
But as I’ve continued to reflect on this conversation, I’m dissatisfied with my own overly blithe abandonment of the “Lutheran.” I think I’m a progressive Christian BECAUSE I’m a Lutheran, and my current views as a progressive Christian spring from the deep wells of Lutheran theology I’ve had the wonderful privilege to tap over the last many decades.
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There’s this debate among Lutherans that applies here. Some Lutherans say they follow the Lutheran confessions inasmuch as they faithfully reflect Scripture. Other Lutherans say they follow the Lutheran confessions because they follow the Lutheran confessions.
My friend is a “because” (qua). I’m an “inasmuch” (quia).
I guess in a sense this is the difference between liberal Christianity and fundamentalist Christianity, the extent to which we allow other things like reason or experience to hold a similar level of authority to the texts themselves. Although my friend’s commitment to qua confessionalism springs from a different source than fundamentalism (and I’ll return to that soon), nevertheless what all those who commit to the “because” share in common is a commitment to the confessions themselves.
Which brings us to the more important question (and I have George Lindbeck The Nature of Doctrine I think to thank for this insight): are we actually reading the confessions and articulating responses to them?
It doesn’t really matter in the end all that much whether we are “inasmuch” Lutherans or “because” Lutherans. Lutheranism is a dialogue with Scripture and the confessions. It’s the dialogue that matters. That’s what dogmatics are: intentionally theological and rigorous and academic work in conversation with the Scripture and confessions.
Progressive and liberal Christians have a kind of perilous and tenuous relationship to Scripture and creeds. Because they elevate the experience of living people of faith (especially when experience runs counter to the traditional interpretation of old texts) over those texts, sometimes there’s a risk of throwing the texts out altogether.
And yet we often forget that we arrived at our contemporary, living, faithful viewpoint because of the ongoing conversation that has happened with the Scripture and confessions over generations. Which is to say our reading of Scripture and our reading of the confessions is part of our experience, not separate from it. It’s all of a piece.
So I find myself in the unusual position as a Lutheran of rejecting conservative Lutheran theologians who are fundamentalists about the Scripture and confessions, while also rejecting progressive or liberal approaches to Scripture that reject or dismiss the texts in favor of supposedly self-generated progressive or liberal views.
I’m a progressive who reads the Bible. I’m a progressive committed to retaining the Lutheran confessions as a source of inspiration and guidance.
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I promised I’d mention why my friend’s viewpoint on the confessions springs from a different source. So let me spell this out a bit. This past week our congregation hosted Queer Camp, which is notably the first LGBTQIA+ camp in the south for queer youth. The last two years we’ve had about 80 attendees.
The camp takes place at our church. We host it at church because our facilities are perfect for it, and we own them, so it keeps the costs low, and also because we’re a known safe space in the community.
But we’re also aware that there has been considerable religious trauma among the queer community, and so we do something conservative Christians might find unfathomable: we just host a completely secular camp for queer kids. There’s no religion, and we’re clear about our commitment to this not being a religious camp.
I mentioned this to my friend, and his response (because he’s a progressive like me) was “of course. 100%.”
Then he added, “I read that as: ‘God has created me and all that exits … all this he has done out of his fatherly divine mercy and goodness, without any merit.’”
That’s a quote from Luther’s Small Catechism, explaining the first article of the apostles’ creed. Now, there are many ways to come at this, but I think explaining this particular move is so very important, and illustrates the deepest point.
A progressive Christian might say, “Well, because queer youth have experienced religious trauma let’s just move away from religion altogether. It’s clearly harmful for them.”
But there are other options, and my friend is exercising the confessional one. From his perspective (and non-religious people have no reason they have to adopt or even consider this perspective, other than potential curiosity), hosting a camp for queer youth is a part of a Christian’s freedom illustrated in the first article of the creed.
We’re all created. The creator is merciful and good. Nothing needs to be earned. So we’re completely free to do whatever is the most healing and nurturing and good among the people and in the creation we find ourselves.
We don’t have to instrumentalize things to get people to believe. We don’t have to be manipulative or judgmental. There doesn’t need to be a bait and switch. We aren’t saving souls. We’re just doing soulful work together with others of many different faiths or no faith at all.
And actually, because absolutely no merit is required, and God is merciful and good, we’re completely free to relax, to be open to learn from queer youth, to grow and explore with them, to inhabit safe space with them, etc. And then sometimes one result might be queer young people previously harmed in religious community might say, “It feels good that you have created this safe space for us. Thank you.”
This is what my friend means when he says he remains committed to the Lutheran confessions. He’s saying there is enough and more than enough in our confessions to bring it into conversation with commitments like queer inclusion that we intuit but haven’t yet hosted dogmatic conversations around.
It’s a kind of reclamation. Rather than allowing a breach between Lutheran dogmatics and our contemporary life, it builds a bridge. And by building a bridge, it makes Lutheran more than a vacuous “ethnic” identity. It gives it content, a form or pattern of speech, a way that maintains dogma as a vital conversation with feet on the ground.
"Lutheranism, if it is a thing among things, is centered in the goal of teaching and preaching in accordance with the Scriptures and the Lutheran confessions."
True, and I think this is still the case at the individual congregational level. But at the Synodical* and Churchwide levels, the church's center has shifted to social justice in general, and Anti-Racism in particular. But you can't be a good theologian if you can't go where Scripture and the confessions lead, and right now, if they lead to a critique of the ideas of Ibram X. Kendi or Robin DeAnglelo (or whatever the current trends in Anti-Racism are), the ELCA would not tolerate the (white, male) theologian following.
*I'm a gay man, in San Francisco, and thus in the Sierra Pacific Synod, so my perspective may be warped. But I see plenty of Lutherans here who would confess their racism 100 times without it ever occurring to them to confess their envy, or greed, or wrath. Or whose land acknowledgements break the eighth commandment because people are more concerned with performing the land acknowledgement than with making sure they accurately state the history of native american tribes in the area.
If you want to claim Queer Camp as the first LGBTQIA+ camp in the South, run that past folks at Spirit Pride Project (https://spp.camp) and see if they identify as being in the South. Texans identify in various ways geographically.