A Chicago “church” has an interesting new twist on Lent. Oak Park United Church (sic) of Christ (sic) is “fasting from whiteness” for the penitential season.

In our worship services throughout Lent, we will not be using any music or liturgy written or composed by white people.

I guess this is supposed to signal virtue regarding non-white people, but it actually sends the opposite message. For fasting - especially at Lent - usually means giving up something you really like and prefer, something that is good. During Lent, you discipline yourself by imposing a temporary hardship on yourself.

They are sending the message that they think singing hymns by black authors is a form of self-deprivation, something to look forward to getting rid of when the fast ends and the feast begins. So once again, the Left is doing something both irrational and racist against non-white people. And I cannot even say, “OK Boomer” in this case! For the pastor is a millennial white guy who signaled his virtue in 2017 by getting arrested for harassing a US senator with whom he disagreed.

So stunning. So brave.

The sad part is that our faith and our salvation are not shallow and superficial in the manner of our virtue-signaling, skin-color obsessed culture. This preacher has the opportunity to proclaim the Gospel so that God’s Word can heal divisions, ethnic and otherwise, that are caused by sin. He could preach on Galatians 3:28, in which St. Paul teaches us that in our salvation in Christ, the distinctions between ethnicity, sex, and status as free or slave become meaningless. Instead, he chooses the way of race-consciousness, of segregation, of apartheid, of judging people by the color of their skin and not by the content of their character, by instilling division and a kind-of Hindu caste system.

Sadly, I can see some “woke” LCMS pastors and congregations adopting such a Lenten practice. And it would be a spiritual fast that would inflict damage upon the souls of the people. Imagine deliberately jettisoning such scriptural, Christological, and cruciform hymns from our venerable tradition as:

On My Heart Imprint Your Image
O Christ, You Walked the Road
When I Survey the Wondrous Cross
In the Cross of Christ I Glory
Cross of Jesus, Cross of Sorrow
My Song is Love Unknown
Not All the Blood of Beasts
Lamb of God, Pure and Holy
Come to Calvary’s Holy Mountain
Go to Dark Gethsemane
Alas! And Did My Savior Bleed
A Lamb Goes Uncomplaining Forth
O Dearest Jesus, What Law Hast Thou Broken
Jesus, I Will Ponder Now
Ride On, Ride On in Majesty
All Glory, Laud, and Honor
Hosanna, Loud Hosanna
No Tramp of Soldiers’ Marching Feet
When You Woke That Thursday Morning
O Sacred Head, Now Wounded
Stricken, Smitten, and Afflicted
O Perfect Life of Love
Upon the Cross Extended
Sing, My Tongue, the Glorious Battle
The Royal Banners Forward Go

…and others. And for no reason other than the skin color of the authors of the texts and melodies, most of whose skin has been thus destroyed as they await the glorious resurrection. Imagine banishing the hymnody of Luther, Gerhard, Heerman, Bernard of Clairvaux, Nicolai, Bach, Pretorius, Patrick, Gerike, Aquinas, Watts, Herl, Wesley, Franzmann, Handel, Vaughan Williams, Beethoven, Starke, Crueger, and countless others from our ancient Christian tradition that transcends space and time, confessing the truths of God’s Word to all men - merely because of the current political incorrectness of their ethnicity. Hopefully, future generations will stand in ridicule and disbelief of this Orwellian cultural-political madness that permeates our Zeitgeist. Hopefully museums in ages to come will be dedicated to holding up this godless ideology to scrutiny and remembrance.

This “wokeness” is insidious, and constitutes a form of idolatry. It is a false god and counterfeit religion that is incompatible with Christianity. It needs to be eradicated from our fellowship: from our churches, from our clergy, and from our Sunday schools, day schools, colleges, and universities. It is what happens when the focus is taken away from Christ and the cross and placed elsewhere: on ourselves, on politics, on trendy social teachings that originate in Marxism and Atheism, on the “social gospel” and so-called “social justice” - instead of centering our theology on sin, redemption, atonement, forgiveness, reconciliation, Law and Gospel, Word and Sacrament, the blood of the Lamb, and true worship offered to the Most Holy Trinity as opposed to ourselves.

The mother of black Lutheranism in the United States, Rosa Young, had a different take regarding Christian hymnody, especially from our Lutheran theological and liturgical tradition:

As a postscript, here is a mixed-race South African choir’s rendition of A Mighty Fortress to scandalize the “woke” among us. And it’s good for them.