Seminary professor rips Lutheran CORE a new one

The "core of Lutheran CORE is rotten," says Jon Pahl, professor of church history at the Lutheran Theological Seminary at Philadelphia.  How rotten?  Not only does it flirt with historic heresies, at bottom, it is a "schismatic purity movement," which will have little or no impact on Christian history.

Lutheran CORE is the primary organizing vehicle for those who are protesting the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America's (ELCA) vote of last summer to roster gays in committed relationships.

Pahl claims Lutheran CORE is guilty of promoting donatism, docetism, pelagianism, triumphalism, homophobia, white male privilege, bad breath, hemorrhoids, global warming, and the heartbreak of psoriasis--and that's just for starters.

One should read the original article and make their own assessment of whether he makes his charges stick.  I found them to be rather hit-and-miss.  When he hits, he hits hard.  On the other hand, his attempt to connect the "dissidents" to white male patriarchy seems pro forma, and their supposed link to American civil religion is not clearly made. 

The charge of donatism bears thought.  The fourth-century donatists opposed the orthodox church of the period because they felt it had been compromised by its accomodation to Rome.  They felt some pastors, and even bishops, were illegitimate because they had betrayed the faith during the period of Roman persecutions. 

Christian people ought not to be such sinners, said the donatists.  The church should be the "assembly of the pure," to their way of thinking, and pastors and bishops ought to be examples of "purity."

Similarly today, dissidents charge that the proponents of change in the ELCA have abandoned the pure orthodox faith and sold themselves out to the impure secular values of inclusion and multiculturalism.  The idea that the "pure" are those who stand on the historic faith and the "impure" are those who have been corrupted by "the world" does indeed have the whiff of donatism about it.

Even more, such a position clears the field for self-righteousness.  When one counts themselves on the "pure" side of the debate, a sense of spiritual and moral superiority toward their opponents inevitably follows, and the temptation to scapegoat the "impure Other" is irresistible.  (Self-righteousness, one notes, is arguably the biggest sin in the Bible.) 

For example, some dissidents, such as Robert Benne, have argued that the ELCA's gay-friendly stance has "led to dramatic membership losses."  We have "abandoned the historic faith" to chase a secular will-o-the-wisp.  The people are outraged and voting with their feet by walking out the door, so Benne and others say. 

Such criticism might make sense if only so-called "liberal" churches were declining while so-called "conservative" ones were prospering.  That is not the case.  The ELCA is down across the board, both liberal congregations and conservative ones, and so is the ultra-conservative Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod (LCMS).  If people were leaving the ELCA because they don't like its gay-friendly stance, the LCMS should be prospering.  It is not. 

In fact, religion, both in its liberal and conservative incarnations, is in retreat all across America.  Our energies could more profitably be spent by honestly asking why this is so, and being prepared for the responses we might receive, than in scapegoating those with whom we disagree and trying to blame whatever woes we have on them.

Pahl accuses CORE of adopting an essentially modernist template for its criticism of the ELCA's document on human sexuality, "Gift and Trust."  Indeed, some in CORE like to intone on the "Biblical view of marriage," but the true Biblical view of marriage isn't what they say it is.  Polygamy, one could argue, is the norm through most of the Bible.  No one outside of southern Utah would say that we should follow that path today.

When CORE people talk about the markers of what they call the "Biblical view of marriage," those markers seem less connected to the world of the Bible, but dovetail quite nicely with the social norms of Minneapolis suburbs in about 1955.

Robert Benne has posted his response.  It is heavy laden with sarcasm--Pahl thinks he's hot stuff, a "profound seer," his treatise a mere "rant"--but the only one of Pahl's charges that he specifically mentions is the one of homophobia.  Pahl did hurl that charge, and Benne can safely take offense because Pahl offers no evidence with which to make it stick.

Still, when gays and lesbians are derided as sinners of a particularly virulent variety, when the church is rent over issues of gay sexuality, when those who defend the actions of the ELCA are called heretics and apostates, you can bet there's at least a smidgen of homophobia around some place.  

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