American Evangelutheranism and Its Dangers

Recently the ELCA has made some controversial decisions to ordain actively and openly homosexual people to the office of pastor. This has sparked quite some uproar, and many congregations are rightfully breaking fellowship with this “church” body. They are taking Paul’s admonition (1 Cor. 5: 11) not to consider such people as brothers, not even to eat with them seriously. (Well, one wonders when open communion is still the practice whether they really are, but perhaps I am getting ahead of myself. But when Missouri breaks fellowship, that means you aren’t communing with us, and in these splinter groups that doesn’t seem to be what is being said. )
In any case, to get back on track a little, they are rightfully breaking fellowship with the ELCA. Yet, as a fellow Lutheran looking on from the outside at the developments in these church bodies that are breaking from the ELCA, and in many ways cheering them, I see a danger here, American Evangelicalism. In other words I’m wondering if these groups are holding on to anything resembling a Lutheran identity.
One of the tell tale signs of this is the reluctance of these groups to look back and investigate the rest of the issues that have historically separated them from other Lutherans such as the LCMS, WELS, or the ELS. They are claiming the word of God, chanting the Bible, the Bible, but are in American evangelical fashion, ignoring everything the Bible has to say concerning things they like: Open Communion, Women’s Ordination, and perhaps even justification by Faith alone.
Now I know I am painting with somewhat I wide brush here. But in talking with the LCMC I find they are using Rick Warren’s “The Purpose Driven Church” to give them marching orders, and are getting men for the pastoral office that have been trained at seminaries where there are no Lutherans on staff. And that just raises a few red flags for me. Just a few.
But perhaps more than that is their most often quoted reason for breaking with the ELCA, “Unrepentant Sin.” Again in American Evangelical fashion, doctrine has been relegated to a back burner, and it is moralism that counts. What is the problem with the ELCA? It isn’t a rejection of scripture as the word of God, or the Lutheran confessions as the true exposition of Holy Scripture. It is moralism, and this just isn’t a very Lutheran thing to concentrate on. Oh they reference scripture, but only where they want, another typically American Evangelical thing to do.
I’m not saying that we think unrepentant sin is something to be tolerated. We with Luther and his 95 theses realize that the whole Christian life is to be one of repentance. But we also realize we probably aren’t as repentant as we should be, and truth be told have many sins we aren’t much aware of. But where as others attacked the Roman Catholic Church for its decadent priests and popes, and licentious living, that was never Luther’s big beef with the Roman Catholic Church, rather it was doctrine. It was justification by faith alone, article 4, that doctrine upon which the church stands or falls. Men are men, and we all have plenty of planks to pull out of our eyes before we can get around to pulling slivers from our neighbor’s eye.
The danger I see here, is that they aren’t Lutheran at all anymore, they are American Evangelicals. The doctrine of the American Evangelical scene, characterized by Baptists, Nazarenes, Calvary Chapel, the Non-denominational movement etc, is vacuous, bereft of scriptural support, and just as dangerous for the Christians soul as was the Roman Catholic Doctrine that Luther attacked with his very life and career. It is subjective, semi-pelagian decision theology. Lutherans are evangelicals, not American Evangelicals.
But why? Why are they turning to Rick Warren, why are they turning to he American Evangelical movement? I suspect that over the last 20 some years of the ELCA’s life span, faithful Christians have been looking for substance, for something that at least had the aroma of being Biblical and Christian as they watched the congregations where generation after generation of their family had been baptized and brought up in the Christian faith, descend into doctrinal decadence. I also suspect that the LCMs has a pretty sour taste in their mouths for plenty of reasons, some may even be valid. So they turned to the writings of Max Lucado and Chuck Swindol, Rick Warren etc. Their own confessional voices in men like Gerhard Forde, and James Nestingen, their rich heritage in men like M. Reu, were silenced and jettisoned. In the long run, the devil has been at play, not only destroying a Lutheran church, but obscuring Lutheranism to such a point as to make it invisible. When they wanted to return to the Bible they knew no longer where to look, but the evangelical movement, and increasingly they are losing anything that might identify them as Lutheran.
It isn’t true of all the churches and congregations. There are faithful voices, but is anyone listening to them? I am really beginning to wonder. In fact I hope I am wrong about most of what I have written here. But the movement does look to me to be not much more than an American Evangelical movement, more worried about a culture war than proclaiming the Gospel the forgiveness of sins, and in the end not really all that concerned with repentance either, a pietism of the right against a pietism of the left, both unwilling to reflect on their own sins and receive forgiveness.
Well this paper probably could be fleshed out a bit. Some quotes from sources etc. But then I want to be proven wrong. We don’t need another church body spouting warmed over American Evangelicalism. We could use a few more Gerhard Forde’s though. Perhaps some honest conversation as to what it means to be Lutheran. Is this possible? I hope so.