Dressing Down

So here's a picture of a small group of members of a Lutheran congregation with their pastor. Which one's the pastor? Not sure? Not surprising.

I've noticed that in recent times it's pretty common to see feature stories about pastors with their people, or pastors involved with various church projects, whether in Lutheran publications, or in the newspaper, and the accompanying picture shows the pastor in a simple open collared shirt, or a knit shirt, or something very casual.

To be sure, I might occasionally attend a council meeting dressed like this, and on a Friday I can routinely be seen in such clothes, but what I'm wondering about is whether pastors who are to be photographed as representatives of their churches ought to be so dressed.

Is the dressing down of clergyman a growing phenomenon?

First, they eschewed the clerical garb in favor of neckties and sports jackets; now they're removing those as well. Something tells me this is another little gnawing anticlericalism on the part of the clerics themselves, that is, that they want to affirm their membership in the priesthood of all believers and put off all sense of the office they hold.

While the office they hold is not one in which wielding authority over the people is becoming, that is a far cry from denying that they have authority. One would think that Christian people expect their pastors to be comfortable with this authority; after all, they come hear them on Sundays; they come to be trained, edified, comforted, encouraged, fathered. How can a pastor with no authority do those things? And how can a man who's uncomfortable in the garb which bespeaks the pastor's position be such a pastor?

The Allure of a Foreign Accent

People are always stacking up the good parts and the bad parts of various church bodies, and debating the merits and demerits. Especially these days among bloggers with whom I have become familiar this seems to have become an exciting pastime.

The Roman Catholics have ecclesiastical integrity, episcopal decorum, apostolic succession, and a really cool pope.

The Orthodox, of course, have lots of the same, and though they lack a pope, this fact is usually counted as a plus.

The Lutherans, well, we languish and struggle with strife, etc. Integrity is a byword, decorum is hit-or-miss, and despite all our best efforts at churchmanship, we struggle with things like Ablaze!, church growth, and a whole smattering of terrible practices.

Who'd ever want to be among the lowly Lutherans?

Well, here's one. Count me in.

Offhand I could rattle off all kinds of confessional reasons for this, but you could read them for yourself here and here and here for starters. You know, the Lutheran Confessions.

I could also point out some of the historical follies of both Rome and the East, and let me tell you, there are some real lulus.

But instead, today I'd like to suggest another reason I am not as taken with them as some of my compatriots have been in recent years. Or put conversely, a possible reason those compatriots have been taken with them.

I think it has something to do with their foreign accents.

Most of the great Lutheran scholars I know have American accents. That certainly doesn't exude an ecumenical or global, catholic spirit to Americans. But if you're American, and you have an awareness that the Church is greater than you are, then maybe you find yourself with a sort of instinctive attraction to people who speak English with a foreign accent.

Of course you'll never admit this to me, but I will admit that I do have a sneaking suspicion.

As for me, I'll satisfy my own similar desire for ecumenicity by using the King James Bible. Do the same, and perhaps you'll save yourself some unfortunate side effects of that itch.

It Was Ever Thus

A true mark of vanity is someone who quotes himself, so I guess that means I qualify. But actually, I'm just too lazy to write this all over again, so I'm just going to offer it up again for consideration.

I refer to an article I wrote some years ago on the fact that the Church has always, in all her history, struggled with heresy, dissent, schism, and trouble. The article recounts some of the bitter controversies in the early and medieval centuries, and is called, perhaps poorly, "Clergy Support in the Early and Medieval Church." Read it in its entirely here, in pdf format. Here are some excerpts:

Where is the golden age? When was the golden age? In short, there never was one, and the Christian faith has been attacked and placed under siege by the devil and his minions ever since the struggle between Peter and Paul, a struggle seen in every single century since. In every century the Church has been, as the hymn says it, “by schisms rent asunder, by heresies distressed.” Our age is no different. . . .

Thus, to sum up with broad strokes, when we look to the Church of the first millennium, we see no golden age, but continual struggles against heresy . . .

. . . let no one say we have never been here before. We have always been here before. This is life in the Church Militant. Get used to it. And let no one deceive you.

[to repeat, you can read the whole thing in pdf here]

Blog Pong

My sons just put a ping pong table in the basement, so perhaps it's fitting that I find myself meanwhile, and surprisingly, occupied with a little game of blog pong.

It seems that Dan Woodrung has taken my previous post as an opening volley, to which he replied, not here, but over on his own blog.

Fair enough, I guess, since I did not reply to his musings about his journey to Rome on his blog in the first place. Fine. So now, in the spirit of blog pong, I'll reply to his blog, yet not there, but from my end of the table.

First, he says he thinks, and then, that at least he "rather hopes" that I did not mean to say that Cyprian said both that there is no salvation outside the church and that the church is where her marks are.

No, sir: I did not mean to say that Cyprian was responsible for the second part; but then, you did know that about me, didn't you. This "rather hoping" of yours seems rather unnecessary.

What I do mean to say is that there is no salvation outside the church. Now if you consent also to the idea that the Church of Rome is the church, then unless there is some qualification you must believe that I am outside the church, and that I am among the damned. And this, though I believe the Gospel, that Christ is the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. That's a problem, it seems to me.

Next, Mr Woodrung quotes Cyprian at some great length in an attempt to show that Cyprian must mean that the church may only be found where the Bishop of Rome is.

Now here's where it gets interesting. To my rescue comes my old friend Fr Gregory Hogg, an Orthodox priest, providing some additional Cyprian quotes to provide what he calls "balance": these quotes show that Cyprian is not as monolithic about the authority of the See of Rome as Mr Woodrung was evidently seeking to show.

To this Mr Woodrung cries foul, and says, if I get this right, that because the balancing quotes were (so he thought) merely lifted from another web page, therefore Fr Hogg was behaving in a "shameful" way. What, because he lifted quotes from another site (which he insists he did not do)? But even if he had done so, so what? How would that be shameful? A Cyprian quote is a Cyprian quote. Who cares where it came from?

This caused me for the second time in one sitting to raise an eyebrow. What's going on here? Are we cross?

All of this is really very intriguing to me. Perhaps I should just let Mr Woodrung and Fr Hogg debate the matter while I watch.

I guess maybe all of this would make Fr Hogg the Blog Pong referee? Not sure.

Pssst!: "You (whoever you are) are outside the Church"

Although the matter of Lutheran pastors going off to other church bodies is a serious one -- the latest being the defection by one LCMS pastor Dan Woodring to the Church of Rome -- I confess that one of my knee-jerk reactions to his expressed reasons for doing so was a touch of amusement.

Sorry, sorry . . . it's not a laughing matter, I know. But sometimes I can't help myself. Listen, I'll be glad to admit that maybe the reaction, and, for that matter, this blog, are merely opportunities for some catharsis. It's no fun seeing people leave, and they leave behind people who had trusted them, and etc. etc. . . . yes, I know it's hard to take all that.

So why else might I have grinned?

Well, there's just this. One of the common threads I see in these defections is the claim by those making them that they have finally found the Church. Before this they hadn't yet found the Church. But now they have. Ah, the Church! She is here! I've come home at last! Home at last!

Yet they're not all going to the same place. Generally the two big options are to go to Rome or to the East, though I have in my vague long-term memory some recollections of some who have gone elsewhere with the same notion, viz., the idea that at long last they have found the Church.

And to be sure, today, since it is in vogue to sound irenic in their ecumenical dialogues, people try to down-play something that was once up-front and center among them: we are the Church and you are not. Once upon a time it was stylish even to put heretics on the rack, to set an example by which peasants learned to stay at all cost in the Church. OK, so those tactics have changed, thankfully, but perhaps the allegation itself remains intact.

Anyhow, here's what amuses me: that allegation has always come with an air of great authority and dignity, no matter from whom it came.

And yet, there have been enough people making it, all over the globe, that the bottom line is this: no matter who you are, you can always find somebody of great authority and status who will charge that you (whoever you are) are outside the Church. Most times these days that claim is whispered or implied, but it is unquestionably in the air.

Therefore I propose that the debate over who is in the Church and who is not must begin with this rule: no appeals to sentimentality are allowed. No exclamations of final relief are permitted. Keep your Alka-Seltzer for that.

As for me, I still maintain with St. Cyprian that there is no salvation outside the Church, and that she is present wherever her Gospel is preached and her Sacraments administered rightly. Here is a mystery: sometimes her disguise is thicker than others, sometimes she is less evident than others, and sometimes she is well-nigh impossible to find. Of course, the same may be said of the glory of God, which is why we do well to apply a theology of the cross to the Church as well as to our individual lives.