Missouri, We Have a Problem

After considerable consultation with the other editors and contributors, it seemed prudent to place a temporary moratorium on the questions and debates that have been raised by certain blog posts pertaining to women in the church and the question of the teaching authority, to let the dust settle a bit, as it were. We’ll address these questions in due time. For now, we encourage you to consider some of what we’ve been discussing.

Here follows an explanation offered in hopes of turning down the heat and fostering genuine dialogue. We genuinely want healthy discussion on this issue that will serve the church.

And as we often point out, we editors and bloggers are not in lockstep on every issue. Yet all of us are committed to Holy Scripture, the Lutheran Confessions, the Order of Creation, and stand in opposition to feminism. And yet, there are some differences of opinion in specific cases of casuistry and application that arise largely from our being in a “state of confession” against the world and much of the church regarding biblical masculinity and femininity.

Fr. Bussman’s posts brought our attention to this, which is good - not only the question of where the Scriptural line is drawn in the real world regarding women teaching and publishing in our own time, place, and culture, but also regarding the roles of men and women and chivalry: the swarming of a woman by anonymous men (as recently happened in the Twitter world) is not chivalrous Christian masculine behavior, and we all agree on that. Even as we have debated these matters, we note with thanksgiving that even on these we are in agreement more than we disagree.

As a synod, we are well outside of the world’s Overton Window. With few outliers, we in the LCMS (and in our former sister church bodies in the Synodical Conference, and in a few other very small American Lutheran bodies) are remarkably united in our confession of the Scriptures and in their application to today’s world. That said, ridiculous straw-men and from the edges of both ends of the bell curve, e.g.: “You are a closet Seminexer that wants to ordain women” and “You want women in burkas chained up in the kitchen” are both unhelpful. We must learn to navigate the gray areas in a more constructive way lest we, the last man standing, so to speak, fall apart in disarray and infighting.

Fr. Weedon’s reflection on how our orthodox forbears read the Scriptures and applied them in their own day and age was helpful; he raised the issue that we have to navigate between what constitutes confession of the faith by the baptized of both sexes, versus what constitutes public teaching in the church.

Fr. Braaten too has pointed out that feminism is a subset of a larger problem: the Order of Creation: the First Article. We know the Order of Salvation well, but we also need to know how to live out the Christian life. This assault on the created order is Satanic, and is behind the sexual confusion facing the world. That assault is bleeding over into the church, and we have clearly been unprepared for it.

We appreciate the many commenters who posted thoughtful and well-constructed comments and identified themselves - some whom we agree with, some whom we disagree with, and some that have allowed us to think things through.

By an informal snapshot of the recent blogposts at CPH we note that the past three months or so, within the five tabs on the blog (Worship, Read, Study, Teach, and Serve), there are some fifty blogposts, and here is the breakdown by author: 15 men (5 different authors), 26 women (13 different authors), and 9 generically labeled as CPH. Many of these posts seem clearly to be authoritatively teaching in the church. We would not have known this had this torch not been lit.

And lest we forget, we have other issues of feminism, many of which Gottesblog has pointed out. We had a congregation openly referring to a woman as one of the congregation’s “pastors" (the DP subsequently addressed the issue). We had a deaconess in vestments serving as the officiant of a Divine Service without communion and of a confirmation service (the DP also resolved this issue). There is the ongoing problem of women being consecrated as “deacons” and being vested in albs and stoles. There are deaconesses carrying out liturgical roles (which we understand they are forbidden from doing by the Concordia Deaconess Conference), and even one who was praying at the altar during the National Youth Gathering. Contrary to earlier assurances, there are deaconesses serving both men and women in institutional chaplaincy and being certified by the synod’s office of Special Pastoral Ministries. They are using the Pastoral Care Companion, and are teaching adult men in Bible classes. Of course, it goes without saying that most deaconesses are not doing these things, but there seems to be no mechanism of oversight to rein the outliers in - whether it is apathy, fear, or complicity from the COP.

Portals of Prayer routinely features female authors. Is this proper? Why or why not? Should laymen of either sex be writing this kind of devotional material? And there is the very real issue that men and women speak in different ways. Is it wrong for women to write and publish devotional works specifically for women? Many LCMS women are indeed reading devotional literature such as Jesus Calling (which claims to be an example of “inspirational writing” in the person of Jesus - very close to the practice of “channeling”), and books by Joyce Meyer, a heretic who left the LCMS. In calling upon Lutheran women to reject these works that are attractive to women by virtue of their style and language, how might we replace these works? These are the kinds of questions we need to address.

We clearly have a lot of work to do - not so much in exegesis, but really in practical theology. St. Paul was largely dealing with an illiterate population, and certainly even among the literate and learned, there were no printed books, no self-publishing, no YouTube, no blogs, no CPH, and no social media of any kind. And so, not only do we have to navigate issues that did not exist when the Gospels and Epistles were being written, we live in a day and age of feminism, of a rejection of biology, of a rejection of ontology, as well as a rejection of the Scriptures and the Christian faith.

So let us be thankful for the confessional unity we share, and seek genuine understanding and consensus on these matters, without compromise and with fidelity to the Word of God. Clearly, Gottesdienst, the synod, confessional Lutheranism, the church catholic, and the world itself have to work through these issues - and it will require some patience.

Finally, it has been our policy for several years not to allow anonymous posts. We decided that we need to enforce it. There may be a need for anonymity in discussing political and hot-button social topics, but when it comes to discussing our faith, we are called upon to confess. Further, putting your name on something requires you to put more thought into your comment, to choose your words and your accusations more carefully, and subjects you to consequences within the church: that you will be held accountable by your pastor, and in the case of pastors, by your brothers in the ministerium.

Fr. Larry Beane contributed significantly to this post.