Evangelical Hope Against Cultural Anxiety

Evangelical Hope Against Cultural Anxiety

Matthew O. Staneck

“For I know the plans I have for you, declares the Lord, plans for welfare and not for evil, to give you a future and a hope.”

—Jeremiah 29:11

The seductive siren’s call of societal decline is a preoccupation of conservative Americans, and so it is also a preoccupation of conservative American Lutherans. While the verse from Jeremiah above has been misapplied countless times to more trivial matters—and matters having nothing to do with the verse’s context at all—it is pertinent in an article that hopes to give hope from within Babylon. American Lutheran church bodies are in decline, and the Lutheran Church–Missouri Synod is no stranger to this phenomenon. As of this issue’s publication, we are just a year away from the results of another election for synod president, and just over a year away from another synod convention. No matter who you may support as synod president, the question at this point should be: what will be the hope-filled vision for the future of the LCMS?

The Holy Christian Memory

The Holy Christian Memory

Jonathan T. Crawford

”The power of the memory is prodigious, my God. It is a vast, immeasurable sanctuary. Who can plumb its depths? And yet it is a faculty of my soul. Although it is part of my nature, I cannot understand all that I am.”
—St. Augustine

The ability to store and retrieve information is a mysterious and wonderful capacity with which human beings have been blessed. Augustine devotes several pages of his Confessions to pondering the mysteries of memory. Neuroscientists are only beginning to understand its inner workings.

The Wind Stirs Up The Leaves In All The Gardens: A Crown of Sonnets On the Fourteen Stations of the Cross

The Wind Stirs Up The Leaves In All The Gardens: A Crown of Sonnets On the Fourteen Stations of the Cross

Lisbeth Smedegaard Andersen

The way of the cross meditations take as their origin the stations of the cross piety of the Middle Ages from the close of the fourteenth century.  The tradition arose from a wish to have the Via Dolorosa in a closer environment where people, during the period before Easter, could undertake a pilgrimage along mountain paths, marked by pictures with motifs from Jesus’ way of sorrow. Soon it came to pass that there was a growth of stations and meaning in these images, with texts from the Bible mixed in with legends, and prayers and texts for meditating upon during the pilgrimage. 

The Unambiguous Cross and the Interconnectedness of All Things

The Unambiguous Cross and the Interconnectedness of All Things

Lutheran Forum

In this issue we are excited to also be featuring the artwork of Alice Sielle. Ms. Sielle, of the United Kingdom, is an abstract painter by trade but will also do figurative work, “when the subject demands no ambiguity.”[1] There are few subjects that project less ambiguity than the crucified Christ.

To be sure, there has been plenty of interpretive hand-wringing over the meaning of the cross, but its method of torment for its subject is intentionally cruel. Its natural for us to pivot towards our favorite atonement theories in order to make sense of the cross, but we don’t seem just as quick to simply allow the horror of the cross to stay before our eyes. We have a habit of anesthetizing the cross when we turn the awe of its stunning inhumanity into a graduate school lecture (even if an advanced lecture). 

New Wine: The Art of Makoto Fujimura

New Wine: The Art of Makoto Fujimura

Lutheran Forum

Makoto Fujimura, the director of Culture Care Initiative at Fuller Seminary's Brehm Center, is an artist, writer, and speaker who is recognized worldwide as a cultural shaper. A presidential appointee to the National Council on the Arts from 2003-2009, Fujimura served as an international advocate for the arts, speaking with decision makers and advising governmental policies on the arts. In 2014, the American Academy of Religion named Makoto Fujimura as its “2014 Religion and the Arts” award recipient. He has had numerous museum exhibits including Tikotin Museum in Israel and the upcoming Gonzaga Museum. New York's Waterfall Mansion Gallery and Taipei's Artrue Gallery have had regular exhibits of his work. 

Review of "Seculosity: How Career, Parenting, Technology, Food, Politics, and Romance Became Our New Religion And What To Do About It"

Review of "Seculosity: How Career, Parenting, Technology, Food, Politics, and Romance Became Our New Religion And What To Do About It"

Matthew O. Staneck

Author David Zahl is the founder of the Law-Gospel focused Mockingbird Ministries (www.mbird.com). I’ve long been a reader of David Zahl. We initially were introduced over coffee some several Thursday mornings by the pastor for whom I was interning in New York City during the summer of 2009. Since that summer I have been a reader of both Zahl and the ministry he founded. There was a time when a Friday afternoon wouldn’t turn into Friday evening until I had read Zahl’s “Another Week Ends” column on his website. I subscribe to The Mockingbird quarterly journal he publishes and own several of his books. I  also annually attend the conference he runs through Mockingbird in New York City every April.

Book Review: At the Heart of the White Rose: Letters and Diaries of Hans and Sophie Scholl

Book Review: At the Heart of the White Rose: Letters and Diaries of Hans and Sophie Scholl

Sarah Hinlicky Wilson

Ever since I started the Hagiography project at Lutheran Forum I’ve been on the hunt for Lutheran saints, so it was inevitable that before long I’d stumble across Sophie Scholl and Hans Scholl, siblings beheaded by the Nazi regime for their resistance activities. Since Germans are on the whole a pretty good bet (whether as sixteenth-century reformers or twentieth-century resisters), I hoped they’d qualify.

Learning To Pray

Learning To Pray

Amy Schifrin

A baby makes her entrance into this world needing to be held close, and then bathed, and then swaddled. She may have been handed from midwife to young assistant to father before she is at last embraced at her mother’s heart, a short distance from where she had been clothed in the perfect love of amniotic fluid, held in a holy suspension where every need was met by her creator, Who designed it all. Now in this world, we will hear her cry and soon see her reach out with arms flailing until her needs for comfort, sleep, and nourishment are met.

Curating Worship, Culture, and the Church

Curating Worship, Culture, and the Church

Timothy K. Snyder

It has become common to think about worship styles as merely a matter of taste or preference, but I’m not sure that’s the best way to think about our worship. After all, most of the language we use to describe worship styles invites more questions than it answers. For example, take the common designations “contemporary” and “traditional.” Traditional? Which tradition do you mean? The historic liturgy? Which one and whose history? Contemporary? Contemporary compared to what? What happens when “contemporary worship” is a thirty-year-old movement? A closer look at recent trends in worship practice reveals that there are actually whole families of responses to contemporary global culture.

A Statement from Edward A. Engelbrecht

Edward A. Engelbrecht

The Lord founded the Church upon truth and dedicated it to truth, both of the Law and of the Gospel (Exodus 20:6; John 14:6). It cannot thrive on falsehood. For this reason, practices such as mobbing are particularly damaging to churches and those who serve in them. In the past few days, knowledge of this devastating affliction in churches has grown considerably, which is simply the first step toward addressing the problem. Some of you are clamoring for more information. It’s coming—the persons stepping forward to report the widespread and devastating effects of mobbing are supplementing my over-long 10,000 word essay. I wrote about the Machine (this term was used by proponents in St. Louis). Others are describing similar practices from other parties in the synod. This is helpful for seeing the extent of the issue.

Mobbing: Organized Spiritual Abuse in the Lutheran Church - Missouri Synod

Mobbing: Organized Spiritual Abuse in the Lutheran Church - Missouri Synod

Edward A. Engelbrecht

In 1987 a group of students sat together at the dining hall in Concordia Seminary, St. Louis, sharing stories about church life. One of the students described events at a congregation near his home. He set the story in the tense times surrounding the Walkout from Concordia Seminary (1974). Members of a congregation suspected their pastor of being a liberal/moderate. Instead of dealing with their concerns in a straightforward way, they began to antagonize their pastor by repeating certain clandestine activities. For example, when the pastor was not present, they would remove a rollaway pulpit and put it in a closet. They would enter his office to remove certain books from his library. When the pastor returned these items to where they should be, again and again members of the congregation would move them in an effort to confuse and discourage the pastor. As the student finished this story, those around the table wondered at the bizarre behavior of those in the congregation.

When, Why, and How to Baptize Mormons

When, Why, and How to Baptize Mormons

Katie Langston

I never planned on doubting Mormonism. But a crisis of faith arose anyway, spurred by the collision of my hypersensitive conscience with Mormonism’s high-demand, works-based theology. The Book of Mormon teaches that we are saved by grace “after all we can do” (II Nephi 25:12), a passage that is commonly interpreted to mean that we must perform our very best before God’s grace kicks in to make up for what we lack. By the time I reached my mid-twenties, I was in the throes of crippling despair over the realization that I would never be able to say I’d done “all” I could and incessantly anxious about the state of my eternal soul. But then something unexpected happened: I heard the gospel…

The Church and Happiness

The Church and Happiness

Sarah Hinlicky Wilson

Eleven and a half years ago, I introduced myself as the new editor of Lutheran Forum. In preparing to say words of farewell in this, my final issue, I re-read that article and discovered that I have been thinking the exact same thoughts all these years. I’m not sure whether I should be commended for fidelity to my vision or criticized for the narrowness of my range!

That first editorial was entitled “Church Breaks Your Heart”—and that was back in 2007. Since then, plenty of a heartbreaking nature has taken place in the church (locally, denominationally, ecumenically, globally), even more heartbreaking than I could have foreseen at the time. Meanwhile, our wider society appears to have entered into competition with the church to prove itself even more fractured, disputatious, and heartbreaking.

The Book of Esther and God Hidden and Revealed

The Book of Esther and God Hidden and Revealed

Katie M. Benjamin

I suppose the first thing to say about the book of Esther is that Martin Luther hated it. He absolutely hated it. He called Esther “less worthy of being held canonical” than any other writing of the Old Testament, and he put it on a list with II Maccabees for books that “Judaize too much and contain much pagan naughtiness. Luther may have been uniquely vocal and vitriolic on the matter, but he is far from alone among Esther’s critics, particularly her Christian ones. A robust treatment of Esther’s defects would surely include the book’s famed failure to mention the name of God or to recognize divine providence…

Putting the Advents Back into Advent

Putting the Advents Back into Advent

Mary Jane Haemig

A serious misconception concerning Advent has taken hold among Lutherans. This misconception insists on seeing Advent as a season of preparation. In many churches we hear what we are supposed to do during Advent, rather than what God does for us in the past, present, and future advents (arrivals or comings) of Christ. Human actions have become the focal point. Whether phrased in inviting motivational language or harsher command language, listeners are told that they must “prepare” for the coming of Christ at Christmas and now have a wonderful opportunity (four weeks!) to do so. The preparatory works recommended may be psychological (clearing one’s mind of distractions) or spiritual (repentance, meditation, remembering, or “holy waiting”) or social (works for others, even helping others prepare for Christmas)…

One Thousand Years of Catholics, Lutherans, and Revolutionaries in Strasbourg’s Cathedral

One Thousand Years of Catholics, Lutherans, and Revolutionaries in Strasbourg’s Cathedral

Andrew L. Wilson

Floating down the Rhine from Basel, a medieval bargeman would have seen few monuments of any size. Fishermen and ferries would ply their trade; smoke would rise from forest huts. At Briesach he could admire the grand St. Stephan’s church upon the hill, skirted by that fortress city’s walls. Some vineyards and some fields would show on distant slopes. But mostly he would float, the dark line of the Black Forest rising to the east, the Vosges Mountains its mirror image to the west. 

Nearing Strasbourg he would spy a different sight, something angular and unnatural, a dusky smudge erupting up from the plain, the only sign of the great city teeming below. And at last, off the Rhine and through the tollhouse of the river Ill, he would raise his eyes and see that spindly mass of heaven-piercing height, the Cathedral of Our Lady.

Shall Christians Pray the Imprecatory Psalms?

Shall Christians Pray the Imprecatory Psalms?

Matthew D. Musteric

What is the place of the imprecatory Psalms in Christian prayer? They are uncomfortable to pray—until you need them. They use language that shocks—until those words express exactly what you are feeling. How do the imprecatory Psalms fit within a tradition that also strives to obey Jesus’ commands to love our enemies and pray for those who persecute us (Matthew 5:44)? Aren’t these commands of Jesus directly opposed to the language of the imprecatory Psalms?…

Lutheran Commentary on the American Political Scene

Lutheran Commentary on the American Political Scene

John A. Nunes, Derek R. Nelson, Timothy J. Furry, Richard Lischer

Editor’s note: The Attached PDF contains four short articles for your reflection regarding Lutheran commentary on the American political scene. These were originally printed shortly following Donald J. Trump’s inauguration as president of the United States in 2017. We offer them again to you ahead of next week’s midterm elections. The article printed below on this website is the first of these articles in the attached pdf.

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