The Woke Spirits of the ELCA - Past, Present, and Future
“I am here to-night to warn you that you have yet a chance and hope of escaping my fate.”
“Not surprisingly, for a church whose constitution can point no higher than “service in the world” as its raison d’etre, within a short time, programs were being pressed upon synods and congregations bearing the sanctimonious humbug of “peace, justice, and the care of the environment.” Under this pious Jolly Roger, congregations were urged toward the absurdly presumptuous goal of “meeting the world’s needs,” by lobbying and advocacy instead of such ministries to word and sacrament as would define the world’s real needs. Thus the ELCA emerged as subservient to relevancy in the kingdoms of this world, but indifferent to revelation from the kingdom of heaven. ”
In 2001, the Rev. Michael McDaniel, who knew he was dying at the time, spoke at the annual Symposia at Concordia Theological Seminary, Fort Wayne. He said:
I thought of Ebenezer Scrooge and Marley’s Ghost. Perhaps I should view my assignment as similar to that of Marley, who was, as Dickens assures us, “dead as a doornail.” Marley tells Scrooge, “I am here to warn you that you have yet a chance and hope of escaping my fate.”
You can read his paper, warning the LCMS to remain focused on the Word of God instead of secular claptrap, here.
Fast forward more than twenty years, and we see that the ELCA in McDaniel’s day was quaint indeed by comparison. But the ax was indeed laid at the root even then.
So here we are today, as Megan Rohrer is an alleged bishop in the Evangelical (sic) Lutheran (sic) Church (sic) of America. She demands being referred to by plurals, and is the highly celebrated first “transgender bishop” in that organization. She was “ordained” at an ELCA parish that worships a goddess. However, in a collision of various woke factions, she has been asked to resign by the female alleged “presiding bishop” of the ELCA for stepping on the toes of an ethnic minority in the more-white-than-the-LCMS denomination - and doing so on a Roman Catholic holiday honoring a supposed Marian apparition.
This intersectional you-know-what show reads like a cross between a Kurt Vonnegut novel and the BBC comedy “Fawlty Towers.” If only C.S. Lewis were alive today to write a sequel to The Screwtape Letters!
Again, to borrow from Charles Dickens, we can just imagine Jacob Marley warning the LCMS that this is our fate if we don’t crush the nascent woke movement within the LCMS.
You can catch a glimpse of our possible dystopian future by checking out the comments to this post. This is what happens when churches cease being churches and go woke. I encourage you to scan the comments to this post, and keep in mind, these are intended to be serious. This gobbledygook is not a post by the “Babylon Bee.” It is not satire. This is the world’s Luciferian vocabulary and dialogue, and it has overtaken any discussion of our Lord Jesus Christ, the cross, the Gospel, our Lord’s victory over death and the grave, the resurrection, or any other theological consideration. This is not Christianity. This is not Church.
Bishop McDaniel, like Jacob Marley, begged us to avoid the ELCA’s path. He warned us about Wokism even before the word existed.
Two structural flaws and abuses in the ELCA have become painfully evident: 1) the ideological principle of" diversity" or "inclusivity," which rapidly became a greater force in decision-making than either the law or the gospel; and 2) the operational principle of coercive power.
We can either be faithful to our Lord, or we can be woke. We cannot be both.